Heaven Must Be Missing A Flessel

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

One of the joys of doing this blog, is discovering the old masters of comic art. Creig Flessel has had a long and respectful career with many highlights. Those inclide his being an editor and cover artist at DC when Superman was first brought in (and before that), doing his own comic book line in the late forties, working for the comic strip advertising company Johnstone and Cushing in the forties and fifties (during which period he did the long running Eveready comic strip ad series, as well as contributing many strips for the comic section in Boy's Life they produced) and doing covers for The Pictorial Review. All of which are shown here on my blog in earlier entries. In 1960 he took over the daily and Sunday David Crane strip from Win Mortimer. David Crane was a soap strip for the churchgoing crowd. The main character was a young handsome clergyman and the stories (written uncredited by Marl Trail creator Ed Dodd)were all about his good work for his flock. Under Mortimer the Sunday were usually some sort of sermon, complete with illustrated bible quote. Towards the end of Mortimer's run, the character of an elderly vicor took over the Sundays and they were turned into gag strips, not involved with the storyline. Flessel took to that is such a way, that I always thought he wrote them himself. The majority of the gags have a visuel element, which if they were written for him show a very comics oriented writer.Anyway, these gags are also so different from the still soapy storylines of the dailies, that it sometimes seems they were two different strips. For the Sundays, Flessel also took on a looser inkline, a sort of realistic version of Hank Ketcham's cartoon line. Very impressive. Look at the way he indicated folds in cloths and lines in faces. He uses a lively open line, that on the one hand makes the whole thing more cartoony and on the other hand makes it more realisticly alive.

I have shown this strip here before and have added the four or five Sundays I did earlier as well as a couple of black and white samples. From the three tier ones, you can see how the strip was adapted from a three tier strip to a tabloid by losing the middel panel.

For Christmas 1961 Flessel (and Dodd?) returned to the earlier sermon mode. For Boy's Life Flessel had done Biblical stories, so he must have been really at home. Then again, in later interviews he remarked how easily he had gone from pious to smutty when he started a strip for Playboy after David Crane.

A Set of Twins

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Today two runs of twin ads. The first, the trailer twins is only in black and white. They look like the work of Creig Flessel to me. But they may also be by someone else, possibly Elmer Wexler, who is sadly quite unknown to me (except for one signed ad which you'll see if you follow the tag).

The second set of twins is better known. Dik Browne's work on The Trouble Twins is mentioned as one of the reasons he got to draw Mort Walker's new fmily strip Hi and Lois. I have shown quite a few of these earlier, some in seperate posts and some because they were attached to (color and black and white) scans of Rusty and Dusty strips. I should really gather all my Dik Brown material together one of these days.

To further confuse you, I have added another Dik Brown ad, with no twin connection. I have shown a few of these Peter Paul Playhouse ads in black and white, but here is one I made myself.

Never Judge A Cover

Saterday Leftover Day.

Here are some more Sunday Pictorial covers, two by Crieg Flessel and two by Gunnar Peterson. I forgot to have a look o e-bay for these, so I may have missed a few. Fortunately, there were also two more copies with Blake covers.

Filling 'Er Up With Regulars

Monday Easter Eggs

Cleaning out the cupboards, I came across a few bits and pieces. Each is a continuation of an earlier post, for which you are kindly requested to follow the tag.

The first is another Bud Blake Sunday Pictorial cover, from the same e-bay seller that kindly scanned in the first lot a couple of weeks ago. I shall keep an eye on this seller. The Blake cover is fascinating as usual. A masterwork of composition and color.

The second is a sample of a Greig Flessel project that was unfamiliar to me. Again taken from e-bay, it's part of a series Flessel apparently did after 'his' strip David Crane ran out of steam. Flessel alsways said he went from piety (David Crane) to pornography (Playboy), but apparently he did some psychicity inbetween.

The third offerin today is two more samples of Gill Fox lesser known New York City only Sunday strip Bumper to Bumper. I have shown more samples of this charming strip, which was obviously influenced by Dennis the Menace in the art and Hi and Lois as far as far the gags go. It appeared on and off between the mid fifties and the mid sixties and although a lot of Fox' original art appeared on the market after his death a couple of years ago, I have never seen any of the art or anything resembling a collection. I anyone has any more samples, I'd love to share them here.

Sunday Pictorial July 21 1957:


Nov 26 1972:


Feb 18 1962:


Feb 25 1962: