Norris Less

Saturday Leftover Day. I can't see I am a huge fan of Paul Norris' work in comics or the newspapers. Since I am not particulary into superhero comics, I am not impressed by the fact that he designed the look of Aquaman, one of those heroes who is only known to the general public because he was a member of the Superfriends cartoon team. In the fifties he took over Brick Bradford in a water down version of Milt Caniff's style. But unlike otehr artists who took Caniff as their inspriration, he only seems to have made it duller. For me, he best work was when he was doing illustrations for King Featured weekly crime serials in the late forties, alongside Edd Cartier. At that point he was still leanig more towards Alex Raymond than Milt Caniff. After that, he was asked to take over the former Flash Gordon topper Jungle Jim that was originated by Raymond. At first he and writer NAME used Raymond's four panel third page lay-out with text in picture, but somwhere along the way they switched to a more normal two tier approach with dialogue ballons. They actually kept theSunday only strip going for a couple of years, before Norris switched to Bradford. Next week I'll be sharing some of the later episodes, where you can see how Norris switched form Raymonds slick approach to Caniff's more earthy one.