His first strip was
Charlie Chan (1938–1942), an adaptation of the popular detective novels for the
McNaught Syndicate. For five months in 1943 he drew a minor superhero,
Captain Triumph, for
Quality Comics'
Crack Comics. For a year he drew the strip
Dan Dunn with writer
Allen Saunders.
Dunn ended on October 3, 1943, and the next day their
Kerry Drake debuted. Originally a district attorney's investigator, Drake became a municipal police officer when Sandy Burns, his secretary and fiancee, was murdered by Trinket and Bulldozer. As both a DA's man and a city cop, he battled a series of flamboyant villains, including Bottleneck, Mother Whistler and No-Face. Ghost-written by Saunders from its inception until the early 1970s after Andriola accepted an award for Saunders' writing without giving him credit, the strip gradually became a
soap opera strip focusing on Drake's home life with his wife Mindy and their quadruplets, as Drake's younger brother Lefty, a private eye, took over more of the adventure plots. Andriola was assisted (and ghosted) by artists
Hy Eisman,
Fran Matera,
Jerry Robinson and
Sururi Gumen, the last of whom shared credit with Andriola starting in 1976. Using the pseudonym Alfred James, he collaborated with
Mel Casson on the strip ''It's Me, Dilly
from 1957 to 1960. Kerry Drake'' was canceled after Andriola died in 1983. ==Books==