Tuesday Comic Strip Day.
I love the work Klaus Nordling did for quality in the forties. His short stories for Lady Luck, Penn Miller, Bob and Swab, the Barker, most of which seem to have been written by him as well. In these he is an inventive storyteller on par with Will Eisner and an artist that almost reaches Jack Cole's level of absurdity. I don't think that he influenced them, but I do think he contributed to an atmosphere where these men were pushed to do their best.
I always thought he left comics in the fifties, never to return. The last I have on him, is that he worked for Eisner on some of the American Visuals stuff - but I am not even sure if he was involved with Eisner's PS gig. But in Alan Holtz' excellent The American Newspaper Comics I found that he returned to sequential art, when he inked and later drew The Rock Channel for Guy Gilchrist. Gilchrist was doing the Muppet strip at that time (with his brother Brad, as mentioned in the article I show), but apprently he wanted another outlet for his talent. With Greg Walker (later to return to the Walker clan to do writing chores on Hi and Lois and Beetke Bailey) he created The Rock Channel, a contemporary strip that allowed Gilchrist to do caricatures of his favorite pop stars. He had gotten to know Gill Fox, who got involved as well and he tipped him that Klaus Nordling was available as well. Nordling ended up first inking and later drawing the strip. Gilchrist even let him sign the strip, even though he kept doing the caricatures himself.
I only have a small sampling, since the paper I clipped them from only ran it once a week, on the pop music page. ahead of it's time? Anyway, the strip ran for a short period and that really seems to be the last vredited comics work by Klaus Nordling.
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