Friday Comic Book Day.
Klaus Nordling's most famous creation is The Barker. The series of short stories about a carney and his circus companions ran for a long time in one of the Quality anthologu titles, which even spun off into a solo book, which ran for more then ten issues. His second most famous strip is Lady Luck, which he did not create or was even the second thord or fourth artist on. But he did take it over after the war and ran it for more than five years, also finishing with a couple of issues of a solo book. His third best known strip is Bob and Swagg, which I have shown here recently (on top of having shown The Barker and Lady Luck a couple of years ago). This lively strip has the distinction of haveing had several stroies doen by Jack Cole (who also illustrated and maybe even wrote the first Barker story). What I am showing today is Nordling's Fourth most well known strip, possibly a creation of his own. Penn Miller ran for a long time in Crack comics and features a newspaper cartoonist solving crimes and getting involved with his subjects. Like many of Qualitys strip, it is surprisingly nonjuvenile, fresh and worthy of a lot more attention than it usually gets. The stories are fun and Nordling's art, although not as flashy as in some of his other work, impressive. Look at how he uses panels casually but still innovative. This is a mature work of a major artist who is now all but completely forgotten.
7 comments:
I think that you and Paul Tumey should have a duel over who created the Barker. Just don't let him choose the weapons, or he'll clobber you with PowerPoint.
I am afraid Paul might be right. I usually base my assumptions on some article I read twenty years ago. Paul often bases his on the books themselves. All I know (and thought we agreed on) is that Jack Cole did the firt story. But I did read he mentioned a writer, whose name I just didn't recall. I am trying to get Paul to write a larger article for Hogan's Alley.
The writer whom Paul mentioned was Joe Millard.
It would definitely be good to get Paul to write for Hogan's Alley.
He should just write the forward to a 400 page book of Cole single pagers for Hogan's Alley and hope the book will come later. I did that once for a collection of warwork from a famous Dutch artist. Wrote a huge article, which then was used as the intro to a complete collection.
You guys flatter me. Just for the record, Jack Cole co-signed the first two Barker stories with writer Joe Millard, in National Comics 42 and 43. I see traces of Cole in other Barker stories, but it looks mostly like the great Nordling to me. I published both stories in the Cole's Comics blog. I love the Pen Miller stories. Nordling was one of the few Quality guys who wrote his own material. Great post, Ger!
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