Extracts: JET-ACE LOGAN Fleetway Picture Library Classics © 2019 Book Palace Books (272 PAGES in Full edition)

FLEETWAY PICTURE LIBRARY ™ CLA SS IC S 6 series such as the western La Valle Della Morte and the science Fiction strip Urania. Interestingly in 1947 he was also one of a small group of Italian artists working for the American comic publisher Fiction House, with Caesar known to have appeared in issues of Rangers . Throughout the 1950s Caesar mixed comic strips with painted covers for the monthly Science Fiction magazine Urania (no relation to the comic strip, seemingly), producing 170 covers between 1952 and ’58. It has been noted that many of his covers, and his strips, borrowed heavily from other artists, be it Chesley Bonestall or Alex Raymond and even my 12 year old self couldn’t help but spot Dan Dare’s Anastasia prominently featured in one of his Jet-Ace Logan strips. It is of course up to each reader to decide how much they want to forgive him for this, but at least he always carried it off with great aplomb! By the mid ‘50s Italian artists had begun to make serious inroads into the higher paying British comic market, initially through the Cosmopolitan agency and then through D’Ami, and in late 1959 Caesar joined this exodus of talent. He was significantly older than most of D’Ami’s artists, a lone holdover from the facist days of the Italian first wave, but at 54, still very much at the peak of his powers artistically. Typically his British work was split between war and Science Fiction strips, initially drawing 4 episodes of the First World War Flying ace Dogfight Dixon for Thriller , 2 strips for War Picture Library and a run of 8 beautifully rendered strips for Air Ace, each stunningly believable and astonishingly detailed. Caesar worked in the UK for 3 years and most of the second half of this period was spent drawing Jet-Ace Logan for Thriller Picture Library , 6 episodes in total, each as convincingly believable as his war strips. Most of Fleetways war strips were written by ex-servicemen, which is why they were so compelling, and it is quite startling to consider that in the case of Kurt Caesar their scripts were drawn by someone who so enthusiastically embraced the very ideology they were fighting against. Caesar’s British work was wonderfully compelling, so why he left after only 3 years seems strange, but in 1964 he was back at Il Vittorioso for a third time drawing more Science Fiction ( such as Flambart L’Astronautica). In 1967 the globetrotting Caesar was working through the Giolitti agency which placed him as the first artist to draw a comic version of the pulp Hero Perry Rhodan for the German publisher Moewig, familiar territory after his stint on Jet-Ace. Presumably that same agency was responsible for finding him one final British strip; Time Fuse in the obscure Action Picture Library 25 which appeared in 1970. Kurt Caesar died in 1974 at the age of 68 leaving behind a substantial body of work and one of the most eventful lives of any comic artist. David A Roach February 2019