THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL
1. The historian Ron Goulart recalled some of its members in an eight-part series published over the course of 2016. The series began with Goulart, “Connecticut Cartoonists #1: The Alex Raymond Circle,” The Comics Journal, January 28, 2016, http://www.tcj.com/connecticut-cartoonists-1-the-alex-raymond-circle/.
2. A. S. Hamrah, “The Beckett/Bushmiller Letters,” The American Reader, http://theamericanreader.com/the-beckettbushmiller-letters/. The correspondence originally appeared in Hermenaut no. 15, 1999.
3. Mort Walker, interview with the author, August 2013.
4. Dik Browne, interview with the author, July 1974.
5. Brian Walker, “The Dik Browne Story,” in Dik Browne, The Best of Hägar the Horrible, ed. Brian Walker (New York: Henry Holt, 1985).
6. Sarah Boxer, “A Gaggle of Cartoonists, but It’s Not All Smiles,” New York Times, February 14, 2000.
7. James Stevenson, interview with the author, December 2015.
8. Matthew J. Bruccoli, The O’Hara Concern: A Biography of John O’Hara (New York: Random House, 1975), 172.
9. The accident and the events leading up to it are recounted in a number of sources. One comprehensive account, and one of the best and most detailed accounts overall, can be found in Brian Walker, “He Was Completely Absorbed with Rip and Seeking His Own Pleasures,” introduction to Alex Raymond, Rip Kirby: The First Modern Detective, vol. 4, ed. Dean Mullaney (San Diego: IDW Publishing, 2011). See also Arlen Schumer, “Alex Raymond’s Last Ride,” Hogan’s Alley, March 2012 (reprinted from Hogan’s Alley 3). Other information, about events before and after the accident, was provided by Jerry Dumas, interview with the author, August 2013.
10. Randy Kennedy, “The Draw of a Mail-Order Art School,” New York Times, March 20, 2014.
11. James E. B. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 61.
12. Armando Mendez, “A Place in the Sun: Stan Drake and The Heart of Juliet Jones,” in Stan Drake and Elliot Caplin, The Heart of Juliet Jones: Dailies, vol. 1, ed. Charles Pelto (River Forest, IL: Classic Comics Press, 2009), 12, 16.
13. Letter from Jerry Dumas to the author, August 2013.
14. See, for instance, Jack Wasserman, Michelangelo’s Florence Pièta (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
15. George Bridgman, Constructive Anatomy (London: The Bodley Head, 1920), 12.
16. Mort Walker, interview with the author, August 2013.
17. A full account of this episode can be found in Cullen Murphy, “Deliverance,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1987, 22–23.
18. “Newspaper Circulation Volume,” Newspaper Association of America, March 2015.
19. Statistical Abstract of the United States, Bureau of the Census (Washington, D.C., 1999), 874.
20. Mort Walker, Mort Walker’s Private Scrapbook: Celebrating a Life of Love and Laughter (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, 2000), 154.
21. Neal Thompson, A Curious Man: The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2013), 255.
22. See John Cullen Murphy and Elliot Caplin, Big Ben Bolt: Dailies, vol. 1 (River Forest, IL: Classic Comics Press, 2010).
23. Brian Walker, “The Cartoonists’ Cartoonist,” in Dik Browne, The Best of Hägar the Horrible, ed. Brian Walker (New York: Henry Holt, 1985).
24. Joseph P. Mastrangelo, “Treasured Castoffs and the King,” Washington Post, November 14, 1981.
25. Jeet Heer, “Pulp Propaganda,” The New Republic, November 2015, 55–59.