The Glamor Girls of Don Flowers

    (Fantagraphics, 2005)
™ and © 2005 Don Flowers

From the Publisher:

When the life of Don Flowers was cut short in 1968 by the ill effects of emphysema, he left behind a career in newspaper cartooning that spanned more than four decades, as well as one of the most fluid lines ever to grace the comics page. His cartoons evoked images of Russell Patterson and Hank Ketcham, and nowhere was this more evident than in his quintessential single-panel pinup cartoon, the aptly named Glamor Girls. Whether blondes or brunettes, showgirls or housewives, Flowers rendered his comely protagonists with equal aplomb.

Continuing Fantagraphics Books’ popular pin-up series, this volume collects the best of those cartoons, and showcases Flowers at the height of his skill. The Glamor Girls of Don Flowers also features a foreward by cartoon legend Sergio Aragonés and an introductory essay by editor Alex Chun.

From the Comic Buyer’s Guide:

In the Playboy age, women were ogled as hourglass-shaped honeys, idealized as consummate shoppers, and pigeon–holed as pestering wives and flirting secretaries. Passing away before most of Generation X was born, Don Flowers made a living exploiting these stereotypes of the amazingly attractive female, and this paperback collects nearly 300 strips from his 40–year career.

In a style oddly reminiscent of Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace, Flowers created the one–panel strip Modern Maidens for the Associated Press and later renamed it Glamor Girls during its heyday with King Features, when it was published in almost 300 newspapers. Tight—lipped and—bodied, Flower’s gals are perfect objects of desire, merely props for quips rendered quaint with passage into more progressive times.

Editor Alex Chun has covered many pinup artists, and Flowers does exhibit a quintessential eye for leggy grace and perky busts. However, today his ladies seem strangely unnecessary in his New Yorkeresque setups, when regular women would have better served average humor.

— Oliver Chin
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Cover Price: $19.95
1 copy available for $17.00 		Sergio Aragonés, Don Flowers Jr.Don Flowers