Passing Over The Scans

Saturday Leftover Day.

Like Craig Yoe I am very much interested in cartoons and stories that show or spoof Modern Art.He devoted three of his earliest reprint books to it, called Modern Arf, But still I come across new ones every few months. Here is an Intellectual Amos story by Quality's Andre Lablanc. I never saw a lot of comic pages by him, just his incredible covers. I never knw he was one of the back-up fillers used in the first post war Spirit sections. I have been scanning my huge collection of sections for the Digital Comic Book Museum, where you can go to see most of my scans as well as plenty of others. They are interesting not only for The SPirit, but also for Klaus Nordling's The Barker and the many versions of Mr. Mystic. Remember, Eisner did more then ten years of these, so that's about 500 episodes of the Spirit as well as eight more pages by others.

Hear Ye Hear Ye!

Friday comic book day.

Especially for my new friend John K. I have chosen to present you with another installment of Klaus Nordling's The Barker. I think John will especially appreciate the bounding panels on one of the later pages. I seem to remember that he used a similar device in his own comic book series (which I all have an treasure). I think this story shows Nordling's remarkable skills at storytelling. As far as I know he didn't only draw these stories , but wrote them himself. Just like John K's cartoon efforts, these stories seem to be aimed at kids (and certsainly are appreciated by them) but they have a decidedly adult tone and characters. The Barker wouldn't have been out of place in any of the late forties film noir films or detective stories. Over the years many peopple have tried to do comics about circus people, but only The Barker and P.T. Bimbo stand out as serious and uncompromising efforts by dedicated creators.

This story, which is signed by Nordling, is from National Comics #72. I have added the cover, which is unrelated to the story inside and seems to have been drawn by Gill Fox. It is very hard to distinguish between Nordling and Fox's styles at this point. Not only because Fox was such a good imitator, but also because Nordling's natural style seems to have dovetailed with Fox's. One issue onward, Fox started signing the National covers, which from then on only had The Barker and his extended family on them.