Saturday, April 14, 2007

Creig Flessel Interview


Another good interview!

The local Marin (CA) Independent Journal's Joe Wolfcale interviews golden age comic book artist Creig Flessel. Creig's also the former chair of the Berndt Toast Gang. I hadn't seen this interview before Creig brought it to my attention.

It's a short look at his career, and what he's doing now. Creig was born in Huntington, Long Island 95 years ago. He was in comics since the beginning, and also did strips, advertising, and ... well, go ahead and read the interview.

"When The Redwoods needed artwork for its Senior Prom event March 16, Flessel volunteered to illustrate the flier. The Hawaiian theme poster featured an amply endowed woman in a hula skirt and a man with hairy legs in shorts playing a ukulele.

"'They were a little concerned about the big boobs,' Flessel jokes. "Cartoons are about getting people's attention.'"


A big hat tip to Creig himself, who mailed me the clippings. (Creig doesn't do the Internets.)


You know, Creig Flessel's name is in the Pulitzer prize winning book about the comic book business THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY several times. When the book came out in 2000, someone, somewhere at Random House (probably just a standard issue spell check program) zapped his name, changing it from "Creig" to "Craig."

Author Michael Chabon, who had done his research and knew how to spell Creig, apologized to Mr. Flessel and promised that his name would be corrected for the paperback version. This was very nice of Mr. Chabon.

However, since Mr. Chabon was not personally there when the spell check happened for the Picador paperback, the misspelling reoccurred in the softcover as well.

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