Barney Baxter
Encyclopedia
Barney Baxter in the Air was a comic strip by Frank Miller
. It started its run in 1935 for the Denver's Rocky Mountain News
and later was syndicated by King Features
.
The strip was drawn by Miller until 1943 when Bob Naylor took over the duties for a short period. In 1943, the title was shortened to Barney Baxter. Miller returned to the strip in 1946. The strip was discontinued by King Features in 1950, following Miller's death on March 12, 1949.
, he battled both Nazis and Japanese villains. Baxter was often accompanied by his sidekick Gopher Gus. Other characters were Barney's mom, his girlfriend Patricia and his buddy Hap Walters. Comic strip historian Don Markstein noted:
Frank Miller (newspaper cartoonist)
Frank Miller was an American cartoonist.Born in Sheldon, Iowa, Miller was most famous for his comic strip Barney Baxter in the Air, created in 1936 for King Features Syndicate, and renamed simply Barney Baxter in 1943...
. It started its run in 1935 for the Denver's Rocky Mountain News
Rocky Mountain News
The Rocky Mountain News was a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado, United States from April 23, 1859, until February 27, 2009. It was owned by the E. W. Scripps Company from 1926 until its closing. As of March 2006, the Monday-Friday circulation was 255,427...
and later was syndicated by King Features
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
.
The strip was drawn by Miller until 1943 when Bob Naylor took over the duties for a short period. In 1943, the title was shortened to Barney Baxter. Miller returned to the strip in 1946. The strip was discontinued by King Features in 1950, following Miller's death on March 12, 1949.
Characters and story
Young aviator Barney Baxter experienced numerous airborne adventures, and during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he battled both Nazis and Japanese villains. Baxter was often accompanied by his sidekick Gopher Gus. Other characters were Barney's mom, his girlfriend Patricia and his buddy Hap Walters. Comic strip historian Don Markstein noted:
- Barney wasn't your standard pretty-boy hero. He was a bit on the short side and pudgy. His face looked kind of lumpy and was covered with freckles. He didn't have a big, toothy grin—in fact, he didn't smile very much at all. Of course, he wasn't downright ugly—his pal, Gopher Gus, a desert rat turned pilot, was the ugly one. His other pal, Hap Walters, a sometime-girlfriend named Patricia and Barney's mom rounded out the cast. They had one thrilling adventure after another, fighting spies, air pirates, Latin American warlords and, when the time came, Nazis and Japs; and they kept it up for almost a decade and a half. The cartoonist behind Barney and his entourage was Frank Miller—but not the Frank Miller who became famous decades later for his work on Elektra, BatmanBatmanBatman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
and Sin City. This Frank Miller was born in 1898 and spent his early thirties working on staff at Denver's Rocky Mountain News. There, he created Barney in 1935 for the paper's "Junior Aviator" page. At first the hero was a boy just entering his teens, who had a burning interest in airplanes; but the series took a more adventurous turn when a grown-up aviator named Cyclone Smith took him (with Mom's permission) on a trip to Alaska. By the time Barney got home, he was a seasoned crime fighter. Barney Baxter in the Air (as the strip was originally called—it dropped the last part in 1943) had been running a little more than a year when Miller moved East to work at William Randolph HearstWilliam Randolph HearstWilliam Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's New York Mirror; and from then on, Barney was no longer a one-paper strip. Starting in December, 1936, it was distributed by Hearst's King Features Syndicate. By that time, Barney had rapidly aged to about his late teens or early twenties. Miller's plots moved fast enough to keep most readers from noticing the occasionally large holes in them.