Excerpt from:
                 
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN COMICS
                         Edited by Ron Goulart


          KEATON, RUSSELL (1910-1945)  In his short lifetime Keaton drew
  three major features:  BUCK ROGERS, SKYROADS, AND FLYIN' JENNY.
  He became a professional cartoonist while still in his teens, and his
  work was seen in newspapers from 1929 until his death in 1945.
          Keaton- his nickname was Buster- left his hometown of Corinth,
  Mississippi, in the late 1920s and came to Chicago to study art.  Fresh
  out of school he was hired by Dick Calkins, as was another young
  cartoonist named Zack Mosley.  The two young men did most of the drawing
  on the SKYROADS aviation adventure strip that Calkins was signing his
  name to, and Keaton alone did all the drawing on the BUCK ROGERS Sunday
  page Calkins was taking credit for.  Keaton seems to have been a
  natural-born artist, and his work on the BUCK ROGERS Sundays in the early
  1930s was considerably better than anything his employer could do.
  Without doubt Keaton's Sunday pages contributed a good deal to the initial
  success of BUCK ROGERS.  After leaving the feature, he took over SKYROADS
  and was allowed to sign it.
          Like several other strip artists of the Chicago area, he had
  developed a style that was an attractive blend of the cartoony and the
  illustrative.   And his handling of air adventure material was an
  effective alternative to the more realistic approach of the gifted Noel
  Sickles.
          Keaton finally got a strip of his own when FLYIN' JENNY began
  late in 1939.  His interest in planes had by this time gone beyond the
  drawing board, and when his lady aviator made her debut Keaton was only a
  few hours of flying time away from getting his own pilot's license.
          When he sold JENNY to the Bell Syndicate he was living again in
  Corinth.  Early in 1945 he entered the hospital for what was expected to
  be a short stay.  But Keaton turned out to have a very rapidly
  progressing cancer.  He died on  February 13, 1945, at the age
  of 35.                                           R.G.   [p.213]

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          FLYIN' JENNY -  Although Amelia Earhart flew the Atlantic alone
  in 1932 and Jacqueline Cochran won the Bendix Trophy in 1938, a girl
  aviator didn't get to solo in her own comic strip until the autumn of
  1939.  FLYIN' JENNY, offering separate continuities daily and Sunday, was
  by Russell Keaton.                                           
          The daily opened with pretty blonde Jenny Dare winging over the
  Starcraft Aviation Factory and impressing everybody with her skills,
  which included "coming in for a landing- upside down!"  A feisty,
  independent young woman, Jenny talked herself into a job as a test piot
  for Starcraft.  This led to her life being filled with intrigue,
  sabotage, shipwreck, murder, violence, and romance- the usual components
  of a fictional pilot's life.
          The first Sunday sequence found Jenny, "daring girl pilot," based
  at the Airdale Airport and getting ready for the Trans-America Trophy
  Race in which she was flying a plane designed by her handsome friend Rick
  Davis.  Things didn't go smoothly, though, what with gamblers wrecking
  the plane, competition from a fat, brash pilot named Spinner Martin, and
  the entry of a mystery woman.
          Initially Keaton wrote the scripts himself, then Frank Wead came
  in to do the writing.  A former Navy pilot and author of the scripts for
  such movies as HELL DIVERS and BLAZE OF NOON, Wead was later the subject
  of the John Wayne movie THE WINGS OF EAGLES.  During the war Glenn
  Chaffin, the cocreator of TAILSPIN TOMMY, took over the writing.
          Keaton worked in an attractive, uncluttered, and slightly
  cartoony style, though as the strip progressed he swung to a more
  illustrative approach.  While his work was never as realistic as that of
  Milton Caniff or Noel Sickles, he was nevertheless very good at depicting
  the airplanes and weaponry the strip required.  His Jenny was an
  attractive character, and, unlike her male contemporaries in the aviation
  game, she often appeared in her underwear.  The Sunday page also included
  paper dolls- under the title JENNY'S STYLE SHOW- at least once per month.
          The daily grew increasingly serious, and soon after the United
  States entered World War II Jenny began flying missions for Army
  Intelligence.  She teamed up with a plump, dark-haired lady newspaper
  photographer named Babe Woods, and by 1943 the two were involved in
  combat missions in Europe.  Several fellows, military and civilian, fell
  in love with Jenny, but she had little time for romance.  The chubby Babe
  fared better, marrying and settling down just as the war came to a close
  in 1945.  For most of the life of the feature Jenny lived a separate life
  in the Sunday page.  She never got to Europe on Sunday, her contribution
  to the war effort being the organizing of a "bird-girl shuttle command"
  to fly essential cargo.
          Soon after FLYIN' JENNY got going Marc Swayze joined on as
  assistant.  He left to work in comic books, then returned to help out on
  the Sunday page when Keaton became a wartime flying instructor.  When
  Keaton died in February of 1945, Swayze and Chaffin kept the strip going.
  One of the final stories was concerned with Jenny's attempts to adjust to
  the civilian world.  After cashing in her last war bond, she made the
  rounds of possible employers.  Like her real-life compatriots, she ws
  told, "Sorry, Jenny, pilots are a dime a dozen."  Jenny did manage to
  have a few more adventures in the postwar world, including one that
  involved hidden Nazi loot and a treasure island.  But the feature ended
  in July 1946.                                    R.G.    [pp.136-137]

           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

          SKYROADS - One of the several early aviation strips inspired by
  the increased public interest in planes and pilots in the late 1920s,
  SKYROADS was written by Lt. Lester J. Maitland and drawn by Dick Calkins.
  It managed to stay in the air for well over a decade.
          A daily only, it was syndicated by the John F. Dille Co. and
  started in 1929.  Both the author and the artist were aviators.  In June
  of 1927 Maitland and a fellow Army lieutenant had made the first flight
  from California to Hawaii, a 2,400 mile-nonstop hop in a Fokker trimotor.
  Calkins had been a pilot and flight instructor with the Army Air Service
  toward the end of World War I.  The strip concerned itself initially with
  Ace Arnes and Buster Evans, who "find themselves the owners of a new
  biplane" and form a business called Skyroads, Unlimited.  "Some crate,"
  observes Ace of their new craft.  The early continuities involved the two
  heros with smugglers, a lost race of the Amazon, and similar problems.
          Unlike most adventure strips, SKYROADS never settled on one hero
  or team of heroes; instead, it gave room to an assortment of daredevil
  pilots over the years.  In the late 1920s there were Ace and Buster; by
  the early 1930s, after Maitland's name had been dropped fromt he credits,
  a youthful aviator named Hurricane Hawk took over as star.  Typical of
  the villains Hurricane tangled with were a gang of Asian bandits and
  their hooded leader, the Crimson Skull.  The Skull was a first-rate pilot
  himself and a sinister Oriental as well.  At other times Hurricane
  concentrated on his flying, planning things like a "super atmosphere
  flight which might revolutionize aviation."  Later on in the decade,
  Speed McCloud was the head man, and in the feature's final years a new
  group of good guys, with a mature ace named Clipper Williams, a boy flyer
  named Tommy, and a skyful of others known as the Flying Legion, were in
  charge.
          Calkins, who was also signing BUCK ROGERS, had help on the strip.
  The two young men he had working for him in the early 1930s, at very
  small wages, were Russell Keaton and Zack Mosley.  Close inspection of
  the early dailies will show them sneaking their names into panels now and
  then, usually on the sides of boats or planes.  Mosley moved on to
  SMILIN' JACK in 1934; Keaton, a much better artist than his boss, took
  over the drawing of SKYROADS in the arly 1930s and was soon getting a
  credit.
          Keaton took off with an aviation strip of his own, FLYIN' JENNY,
  in the late 1930s.  The final artist to draw SKYROADS was Leonard
  Dworkins.  Using the pen name Leon Gordon, he did the strip until its end
  in 1942.                                          R.G.   [p.337]

           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


          MOSLEY, ZACK (1906-1993) - Mosley was not the first  
  to create an adventure strip about flying, but his SMILIN' JACK was
  one of the most popular, and the longest-lived example of the genre
  in American comics. Mosley (whose full name is Zack Terrell Mosley)
  kept the strip in the air from a 1933 takeoff until 1973.
          His love for airplanes goes back to his childhood in Hickory,
  Oklahoma, whre he was born the year before that Indian Territory became a
  state.  The sight of a plane that crashed there when he was seven years
  old so seized his imagination that he never lost his fascination, and
  when an Army "Jenny" landed nearby four years later, he began the habit
  of sketching planes that was to continue throughout his professional life.
  At the age of 20 he took his savings and enrolled at the Chicago Academy
  of Fine Arts.  Three years there and at the Art Institute of Chicago
  prepared him to get a job, along with his roommate Russell Keaton,
  assisting cartoonist Dick Calkins with BUCK ROGERS and SKYROADS, the
  pioneer aviation strip.  In time, he and Keaton came to do most of the
  drawing of SKYROADS, and Mosley began to write some of the episodes.
          Mosley's early style was somewhat crude, but his lively
  imagination (and his friendship with popular cartoonist Walter Berndt)
  enabled him to sell Joseph Medill Patterson, an aviation buff and owner
  of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, his own strip in 1933.
  The Sunday feature ON THE WING, a comedy-adventure strip about three
  terrified student pilots, left the runway on October 1; 14 Sundays later,
  on December 31, Patterson ordered the named changed, and as SMILIN' JACK
  it was to remain aloft (with dailies added three years later) for the
  next four decades.
          Mosley's expertise on matters aeronautical derived from
  first-hand experience in the field.  Along with fellow-cartoonist Keaton
  (who had taken over SKYROADS and was to create his own aviation strip,
  and so had an equal reason for knowing the subject), he had taken flying
  lessons since 1932, and was licensed to fly in 1936.  He was very actie
  in aviation throughout the 1930s and '40s: A founder of the Civil Air
  Patrol in 1941, he flew over 300 anti-sub patrols during World War II,
  and as a wing public realations officer for Florida he held the rank of
  colonel and won the United States Air Medal.  In 1976 he was inducted
  into the United States Air Force Hall of Honor.  He cheerfully lent his
  talents to illustrating aviation material and designed many squadron
  insignia for units of all branches of the armed services.  He has owned
  nine planes and flown over a million miles.
          Mosley went into what he calls "semi-retirement" with the
  grounding of SMILIN' JACK in 1973, but he still does some advertising
  work from his home in Stuart, Florida, along with organizing and
  publishing collections of old SMILIN' JACK material.  He has issued two
  books with episodes from the 1930s and '40s, HOT ROCK GLIDE (1979) and
  DE-ICERS GALORE (1980), as well as his memoirs, BRAVE COWARD ZACK
  (1976).                                              D.W.    [p.267]

                                OBITUARY

          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

          SMILIN' JACK - One of the first and most enduring
  aviation-based adventure strips, SMILIN' JACK began as a Sunday page
  called ON THE WING on October 1, 1933, and added a daily strip on
  June 15, 1936.  It was created for the Chicago Tribune- New York News
  Syndicate by flying-enthusiast Zack Mosley, who had earned his
  professional wings assisting Dick Calkins on his similar strip
  SKYROADS from 1929.
          Beginning as a humorous strip about nervous flying students
  (exactly the situation in which Mosley, who had begun flying lessons in
  1932, found himself), ON THE WING had only modest success for its
  fourteen-week trial flight, but when the syndicate ordered its name
  changed to SMILIN' JACK, it began to assume the lively narrative form it
  was to maintain for the next 40 years.  Mack Martin, the scared
  student-pilot, became Jack, grew a snappy little mustache, and acquired a
  suave smile that four decades of harrowing adventure were never
  completely to wipe off his handsome face.
          Jack became a commercial pilot whose delivery of goods and
  pasengers carried him to the most remote places and called for an
  anstonishing range of talents.  Forever entangled with bizarre crooks and
  spies, the unflappable Jack prevailed through a combination of
  resourcefulness, skill, and luck.  He bested the Head, whose drooping
  eyelids were the epitome of the sinister; the Claw, whose prosthetic hook
  dealt death; and Toemain the Terrible, who raised piranhas with an
  appetite for human flesh.
          Mosley's talent for extraordinary characters extended to the good
  guys as well; Jack's friends included such memorable figures as his
  Polynesian pal Fatstuff, who kept popping his shirt buttons into the open
  mouths of hungry chickens, and the sexually hyperactive Downwind Jaxon,
  whose face was so handsome that we never permitted to see more than a
  one-quarter profile.  Jack was never without appropriate female
  companionship, either;  "Hellcat" Cindy, the Incindiary Blonde; the
  tempestuous Gale; and an endless succession of anonymous sexpots, the
  famous "li'l de-icers" who were so hot they de-iced the airplanes' wings,
  kept the strip balanced.
          Always suspenseful even when they stretched the limits of
  credibility, Jack's adventures were fast-paced, and the occasional
  romantic interlude (women could no more resist his smilin' face than they
  could Downwind's averted one) was never long enough to interrupt the
  slam-bang action.
          Unlike all but a few continuity strips, SMILIN' JACK had genuine
  development.  Kids grew up, adults got old, some even died.  jack
  married, not once but twice, and sired a son.  His improbably-named
  offspring "Jungle Jolly" progressed from an infant to a toddler to a
  clean-cut young man, as dashing as the now graying hero, and with a
  boyish smile all his own.
          Always personally active in aviation, Mosley kept SMILIN' JACK
  both current and accurate.  However fantastic his plots may have been,
  the technical details of his aircraft drawings were flawless, and two
  generations of American youth got an education in aeronautics from them.
  Otherwise, the graphic style of the strip tended to a simplicity that
  many regarded as awkward, though it never seemed to cost it any readers.
  Among Mosley's assistants were Gordon "Boody" Rogers and Ward Albertson.
          SMILIN' JACK was widely reprinted in comic books by Dell, which
  also brought out numerous voluse through the 1940s.  In addition, the
  strip was the basis of a thirteen-episode movie serial produced by
  Universal in 1943.
          As the romance of aviation and the public taste for adventure
  comics declined, SMILIN' JACK was felt to have flown its course, and the
  venerable strip was brought in for a landing on April 1, 1973.
                                                        D.W.  [p.338]

          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

       Source:  Ron Goulart, Editor.  THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN
                COMICS. New York, NY:  Facts On File, A Promised Land
                Production , 19__.


       Data transcription by:  Milton Sandy, Jr. May 30, 1993.


see also 

  mw013