Saturday, January 18, 2025

Chris Welkin, Planeteer #1

I have been doing commentary on The Born Loser for 17 years. I know more about these characters than I ever thought possible and about the life and family of Art and Chip Sansom, mostly thanks to the Official Born Loser Facebook Page where Chip comments quite a bit and posts behind-the-scene stuff that his father did.

One of the things I learned was that before Art created The Born Loser, he was a staff artist for NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) so he would do basically anonymous fill-in stuff for the syndicate. His, I guess you could say, big break came in 1951 when he began doing the art for Russ Winterbotham's Chris Welkin, Planeteer. Chris Welkin was a science fiction soap opera comic and I don't have any point of reference for it. It showcases a different look for Art's style, a more serious and human-like look unlike The Born Loser where everything is cartoony and a bit exaggerated.

Russell R. Winterbotham, going by the pen names R.R. Winterbotham, Russ Winterbotham, J. Harvey Bond, and Franklin Hedley, was born in Salina, Kansas in 1904. He wrote westerns and science fiction, his biggest claim to fame being writing on the comic strip Red Ryder. He would pass away in 1971 in Bay Village, Ohio. When he wasn't writing, Winterbotham was the fiction editor for Scripps-Howard NEA news service.

This is the first month of Chris Welkin, Planeteer which ran from November 5, 1951 to November 30, 1951. The next month will be a future post.