Last January we told you about a French publication of our Scorchy Smith and The Art of Noel Sickles volume. Editions Barbier and the Centre National du Livre broke our book in two and published the second volume of their set in late 2025. (You can read about and see samples from Volume 1 here.)
It took me a while to get a copy of the concluding volume, with the delays caused by no one else but me. Still, as I like to say, “Books are patient things,” and the Editions Barbier Volume 2 waited for me to put the wheels in motion so I could secure a copy, which I’m happy to say is now in my pulpy little paws! (Click images throughout for an isolated view.)
Four years of German and some on-line lessons in Italian ill-prepare me to read these contents, but the passages of both essay text and comic strip dialogue that I’ve typed into an appropriate software tool show this to be a sensitive and careful translation. It was also a delight to re-acquaint myself with so many beautiful pieces of “Bud” Sickles’s magazine and advertising illustration. I’ve always found this selection — from a 1950 Saturday Evening Post story titled “The Old Man’s Bride” — particularly arresting, with its eye-catching color scheme and terrific use of drapery:
Here are the reprinted selections from Sickles’s illustrations for James Michner’s Bridges of Toko-Ri when it was published in Life‘s July 6, 1953 issue. The artist prepared a total of seventeen different paintings for this project. I’m lucky enough to own two of the originals; the “strafing” picture at lower left below is one of them.
Of course, the main attraction for comics lovers is the Scorchy Smith material, and this book collects the rest of Bud’s run on the series in fine fashion.
The strip reproduction is clear and sharp, and I am mightily impressed with the skill that went into not just translating the English text into French, but also the re-lettering and re-placing/re-fitting of word balloons so they look seamless, as if this was how they had originally appeared in 1935 and ’36:
The concluding volume of Scorchy Smith et le Genie de Noel Sickles lives up to the high standards set by its predecessor. It’s satisfying to know Sickles’s work is being introduced to a fresh audience in such fine fashion, and I thank Editions Barbier for giving me a reason to revisit one of my very favorite books in the wide-ranging LOAC stable.
