Today in Comics History, April 22: Happy birthday, Ralph Byrd!

Born on this day in 1909: actor Ralph Byrd, who appeared in dozens of movies and film serials across two decades, including The Trigger Trio, S.O.S. Tidal Wave, The Howards of Virginia, The Mark of Zorro, North West Mounted Police, The Son of Monte Cristo, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, Radar Secret Service, Jungle Goddess (those last two riffed on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000), and lots more, but he's especially know as Chester Gould's square-jawed detective Dick Tracy in four serials. When the role was recast at RKO in 1945 with Morgan Conway, movie exhbitors protested and Byrd returned to the role to do two more features in 1947!


photo cover of Ralph Byrd on A Cop Called Tracy #7 (Avalon, 1999)
Byrd played another comics character role portraying cowboy crimefighter Greg Sanders/Saunders in 1947's movie serial The Vigilante: Fighting Hero of the West from Columbia.


cover of Real Fact Comics #10 (DC/National, September 1947), pencils and inks by Mort Meskin
DC Comics didn't adapt the story, but they did publish a making-of-the-movie-series story in Real Fact Comics!


from "How a Movie Serial Is Made!" in Real Fact Comics #10; script by Jack Schiff, Mort Weisinger, and/or Bernard Breslauer; pencils by Mort Meskin, inks by George Roussos
Happy birthday, Ralph Byrd!