Goodbye Creig Flessel

During my visit with Joe Simon today we got the news of the passing of Creig Flessel. It saddened us both. Joe reminisced about Creig and George Tuska being part of his crew. Joe commented that they both were beautiful people. The three lived close to one another at that time. It is a period of Joe’s career that I have not studied sufficiently and so have not posted on yet. Not because it is less important then the rest of his career, but just because there is so many parts of his life that need to be studied.

I can recall a number of occasions during previous visits where Joe would pull out a copy of some commission piece that Creig had done recently. He never could get over how beautiful Creig’s work still was (nor could I).

Mark Evanier has a nice obituary for Creig Flessel. Ger Apeldoorn’s blog has a couple of posts with nice examples of Flessel’s commission work and other oddities.

One of Joe’s last comments before I left was “I am not ready to check in yet, I just ordered a couple of boxes of cigars”. In that case Joe, keep ordering those cigars.

4 thoughts on “Goodbye Creig Flessel

  1. Ger Apeldoorn

    Hi,

    I never knew Flessel was ‘part of Joe’s crew’ at any period. Because he is mentioned together with George Tuska, my guess would be that was in the Sick period. Flessel started to branch out from the previously safe and well paying job at Johnstone and Cushing then. But I never recognized any of his work at Sick. I should have another look. Flessel did sometimes adopt a mock Jack Davis style when he was doing ‘funny’ work in the sixties and seventies. Maybe that could be a clue.

  2. Harry Post author

    I asked Joe if Flessel did any Sick work but it sounded from Joe’s reply that he may not have. But Joe did say that he used Creig for inking Grandenetti’s pencils. That would be during Joe’s DC period on comics like the Prez. I have also seen some beautiful romance art from that period that I think owes most of its quality to Flessel’s inking.

    Harry

  3. BobH

    Yeah, Flessel inked Grandenetti on at least PREZ #4 and FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL #10 (introducing the Outsiders) for Simon’s stint at DC in the mid-1970s.

  4. Ger Apeldoorn

    You are right. I have even seen his name on some of the unprinted stories in the big DC Implosion photocopy books (now available through download, although in pretty bad shape). But I have also seen Flessel’s plseudo Davis style from the late sixties somewhere in on eof the Mad imitators. I will have to dig for that.

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