He'll Be Back

 Saturday Leftover Day.

 Last week I shared the last few weeks of Win Mortimer's work on the 'religious' soap opera David Crane (concieved and written by Mart Trail's Ed Dodd) and the first weeks of Craig Flessel's version. I promised more and here it is. 

After more than ten years on David Crane Craig Flessel left to go and do other stuff (including work for Playboy). The change in his style indicates he had less time to spend on it, so the number of papers carrying this one popular strip may have dwindled beyond the level Craig found his worth his effort. 

But who to replace him? Well, as it happens the original artist Win Mortimer was not having the best time. After Crane he had left for his home land Canada, done a mildly succesful adventure strip and returned to the comics. I have not checked specifically, but from what I remember having seen he was not getting as much work as he used to. He may have been among the people at DC who were phased out and he did do some work on Marvels romance and 'horror' titles - but he was not suited for superheroes and may have been struggling. So... he returned to David Crane and continued it more than four years (but more about that later). He doesn't skimp on rendering, like Flessel did and makes the most of it.

The transition itself was smooth, so I think it was planned. The storyline ends on a saturday and the next Monday Mortimer is back. I don't have the Sundays for this period, so I don't know if the transition was in the same week of two weeks earlier (as it was last time). There is no goodby for Flessel in the last panel, except that the girl asks him if she will ever see him again. But he answers that he she will see him, because he will need help with his studies. Next Monday it is not him who's back, but David Crane and Win Mortimer.

But there is more to come... next week I will look at the last strips by Mortimer. The final goodbye.

Bait and Switch

 Saturday Leftover Day.

A while back I showed a couple of strips at the end of their run. I like those sad endings, especially if the artist or writer saw them coming and able to refer to the ending in the story - or at least hint to it. Around the same time I started looking at the moment when Creig Flessel took over from Win Mortimer on David Crane. Crane was written by Mark Trail's Carl Dodd, so he was not able to do a lot by way of goodby. Luckily Dodd did it for him.

The switch here starts at the end of a storyline, so it must have been planned. As you would expect in that case, the switch in the Sunday page starts three weeks earlier. In a remarkable act of cooperation, the paper ever acknowledges the switch by the second installment by Addin Fleissel's name in the credit line. The first Sunday is unsigned, but the church lady in the thord panel looks distinctly like Fleissel's work. The rest doens't really, so it may also be a case of Fleissel inking Mortimer's pencils.

But that is not all of the story. Ten years later, Fleissel left the strip to work for Playboy (what a switch). A new artist replaced him, or not really a new one... you will see in next week's Saturday episode of this blog.

The Oddness of Dodd

Sunday Sermon Day. 

 

A friend of mine on the internet was talking about the Win Mortimer's David Crane, whoch was written by Ed Dodd, who also wrote and drew the ecological Mark Trail. Apparently Dodd's father was a clergyman and although he did not follow in his father's footsteps, he did create this Christian message strip as a tribute to his dad. In Mark Trail, he used the Sundays to illustrate facts about nature. In David Crane, he often used the Sundays for sermons, making for a weird, but truely unique run. After Mortimer left, the strip was taken over by Craig Flessel, which is how and why I ran into it. I am a huge fan of Flessel's style and it is nowhere better than in his David Crane. I showed many of them early on in this blog, which you can find if you follow the link and the strips were funnier. The sermons were gone by then, so maybe Dodd had also left it. In all honesty, looking at the latest Mortimer Sundays, you can see that change was set in before Flessel took over. And the dailies were just as soapy as before, so that gives us no clue either. I also amassed quite a few of Mortimer's version, but did not really care for it. I scanned a few and when I started selling my newspaper sections on Ebay I scanned some more. The recent internet conversation was a good excuse to clean them up and show them here. If not for the exciting art (because it isn't) or the Christian message (not my thing) than certainly for the oddness or unique use of the medium.