However, in doing some research I found that the strip first started around 1918 and was called Joe's Car. No one named Davy Jones was in the strip then. It was just about a little man named Joe and the problems he had with his car. Later the strip changed it's focus to what Joe did for a living. He was a fight manager and the title became Joe Jinks. This was in 1928 and predated Joe Palooka by 2 years as a comic strip dedicated to boxing.
After awhile a popular second character took over the lead role. He was called Curly Kayoe. He was one of the boxers that Joe managed. With the new name came a new look. It seems that Curly Kayoe was now more of a melodrama then the previous cartoonish style it started out with as Joe's Car.
Curly took over the daily strip and Joe was moved to Sunday only where the focus was on his family life. At times Joe would come back as a secondary character in the daily strip.
In 1961 Curly was fading in popularity as a character but a secondary character, seaman Davy Jones, proved more popular and he took over the strip for the rest of the decade just as Curly did from Joe years before. Now we can see that there was no Monkees influence at the time he took over the strip. Not hard to see why they named a seaman Davy Jones but I am certain the Monkees connection helped a little bit a few years later.
As you can see the style also changed. The art and plots seemed far more dramatic. It looked more like a soap opera comic strip. To my surprise the art chores were handled by Wayne Boring who did the art on Superman for DC Comics for about 10 years. Take a look at Davey's friend Marco in the last panel. Doesn't he look like Superman in disguise?
You can find out more about these comic strips if you click here or here.
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