Hey, where are the “Passing Scene” comics?

You may have noticed that for the fast few months, I haven’t posted any Passing Scenes comics.

Since March, I had been posting a whole month’s worth of cartoonist Gene Patrick’s well-remembered Journal strip from exactly 50 years ago, providing a nice capsule of what was going on in Lorain at the time.

But I decided to put that regular feature on hold when another artist began drawing the feature on June 22, 1968. The new artist – Larry Alvarez – was certainly talented, but his style was quite different from Gene Patrick's. Here's one of his strips from this period.

Alvarez also created the iconic illustration for the Journal’s Clothe-A-Child program (below) which accompanied articles about the charity drive for years.

The drawing first appeared in the paper in 1969, when the Clothe-a-Child program was making the transition from a glitzy benefit show to a Journal reader donation-driven effort.

Anyway, the “new” Passing Scene strip did not enjoy the prominent place at the top of the second section that had been its home for so long. The comic seemed to move around the paper, appearing at the top of the page one week and at the bottom of the page the following week. Plus, the Journal reproduced it much smaller than before, making it easier to overlook.

Gene Patrick returned to his creation fairly soon, because in the past, I posted a Passing Scene of his from March 1969. There are also posted samples of the strip from the early to mid-70s. So it appears that his sabbatical from the strip was merely a temporary one.

So who drew the strip in September? Watch for the answer here next month.