Eddie Race
Created by Doug Wildey (1922-94)

E.V. "EDDIE" RACE was the handsome private eye hero of a detective strip that appeared in the short-lived (two issues!) Sojourn, Joe Kubert's tabloid-sized comics anthology magazine, which was was done to support the Joe Kubert School of Comic Art and its students.

It was written and drawn by Doug Wildey, probably best known for creating the classic cartoon adventure series Jonny Quest, which, come to think of it, had a handsome heroic character in it called Race Bannion.

Hmmmm....maybe he just liked the name...

Originally a comic book artist and writer, Wildey was a self-taught artist who had his first professional publication, Buffalo Bill, in 1949. He subsequently freelanced for a variety of comic book publishers (he once joked he'd worked for every comic publisher -- Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Archie, etc. -- except "EC, the good one."). He worked primarily on westerns, war and adventure comics, although his wide-ranging portfolio included everything from romance to superheroes.

He had a good run on The Outlaw Kid for Atlas (later Marvel) in the late fifties and drew The Saint newspaper strip until 1962. In the early sixties, he moved to television, and worked on several Saturday morning cartoons over the next decade or so, including Return to the Planet of the Apes, Jana of the Jungle, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos, Godzilla and, of course, Jonny Quest (1964-65), but he continued to do comic work as well, contributing to Weird Western Tales, Our Army at War and his own western, Rio.

COMICS

• SOJOURN
  (1977-78, White Cliffs Publishing)
  2 issues
  Text and art by Doug Wildey
  

• "E.V. Race, Private Investigator" (#1-2)

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.