Stories From The Bible

Remember last year when I spent weeks downloading, cleaning up and re-posting the entire run of Al Stenzel's SPACE CONQUERORS! strip from BOYS' LIFE magazine? Well, I'm finally at it again!

Just posted the 1st 2 installments of STORIES FROM THE BIBLE. What can I say? Even as a kid, 2 of my favorite subjects were the future... and the past.  Which may explain my interest in science-fiction, Biblical movies, and anything involving time-travel (heh).

By the way, if anyone can identify the artist who did these, please let me know so I can update the blog page.

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  • According to Wikipedia, "Boys Life contracted with the Johnstone and Cushing art agency to produce much of its early cartooning content."

    According to the article itself where this blurb came from, "Flessel was in awe of the staff, which was a cartooning Who’s Who: “There was Albert Dorne, Austin Briggs, Bill Sakren, Joe King, Stan Randall, Paul Fung, Milt Gross, Milt Caniff, Lou Fine, Stan Drake, Noel Sickles, Ralston Jones, Katie Osann…everybody went through there at some point. The talent level was just intimidating,”

    You should find the following quote from the same article interesting. "Tim Johnstone said that his father had long talked about introducing a comics section into a national magazine, so the company struck a deal to supply Boy’s Life with a color comics section. Art director Al Stenzel wrote the lion’s share of the material, includingThe Tracy TwinsPee Wee HarrisThe Space Conquerors and Bible Stories, which were drawn by a variety of Johnstone and Cushing cartoonists."

    It doesn't mention who drew what. The only way you may be able to find out is by talking to the artists themselves or maybe Al Stenzel himself, if he's still alive.

  • There's an article on the Johnstone and Cushing agency here that says Al Stenzel wrote them.

     

    This post (nudity warning) by Ger Apeldoorn says the strips you posted were drawn by Creig Flessel. He has other posts with examples of Flessel's work in the period which might provide a comparison. Flessel's first name is misspelled two ways in the tags.

     

    Frank Bolle's website says here he drew comics for Boys' Life between 1978-1996. He includes "Bible Stories" among the strips he drew at some time during that period.

  • Thanks for all that!  Al Stenzel passed away in 1979.

    I did a lot of research on this stuff a year ago when I was doing the SPACE CONQUERORS' project.  On there, I was able to identify Al Stenzel, George Evans (I knew his stuff by sight), Lou Fine (from all I've read, NOTHING of his own style turned up in his SC art, it was totally sublimated to the J&C house style), Alden McWilliams, and Gray Morrow. ESPECIALLY Gray Morrow.  Near the end, Fine took over again, until he passed away, then Morrow came back to finish it off.  However, it's been repeatedly suggested that there may be other artists involved, and if I had to guess, I'd say it would be during the "Lou Fine" period, since his stuff isn't even recognizable as his stuff.  (Whereas, you can't miss Evans, McWilliams & Morrow.)

    Creig Flessel's name turned up on the 3rd installment of the BIBLE series. Well, that was quick. Looking them over, I'm not sure he did the first 2.  But it's hard to tell.  I'm not that familiar with Flessel to be able to recognize his work, which makes it hard to be certain if I'm really seeing 2 different artists already or not.

    I did a lot of research this week, just flippng thru every page of every issue from about 1940-up, just to make sure that the earliest BIBLE episode I'd found last year (Sep'52) was, in fact, the first.  IT WAS.  Which figures, SPACE CONQUERORS started the same month.

    There was a period from at least July 1940 to May 1942 when they had a page of humor strips, probably reprinted from newspapers.  The regular line-up was:  BRINGING UP FATHER, FELIX, TIPPY AND "CAP" STUBBS, KRAZY KAT and POPEYE.  It's interesting that a few months into WW2, they dropped those.  Most of the "comics" over the next several years were all advertisements, for things like RC Cola, Westinghouse, Tootsie Roll, and Remington .22 caliber rifles.  YEAH, they were selling rifles in a "kids" magazine!  I bet that stopped by the end of the 60's.

    There were also some occasional features, SCIENCE SILHOUETTES by Bob Brent & Fred Kida, later Kit Gregory (Nov'47-Feb'50, only 7 installments I could find); EAGLE TRAILER by Bob Brent & Fred Kida (Oct'47-Feb'52, 13 installments), and HEROES OF LEGEND (Aug'53-Aug'55, 6 installments).  There was also the long-running series SCOUTS IN ACTION (debuted Jan'47) and OLD TIME TALES OF KIT CARSON (debuted Mar'51).  I've got 37 of the one and 25 of the other so far.  I'm leaning toward doing KIT CARSON next (I like westerns), but I'll have to go back and find all the later ones I'm missing later.

    I've also run across the beginning of MOG-AN-AH The Mound Builder, a series starring a Native American Indian, by Irving Crump (debuted Oct'52).  That also looks like it could be interesting.

    The problem right now is, the BOYS' LIFE "Wayback Machine" website has one of the most maddenning formats I've ever seen online.  You can't download individual pages, only a "complete page" at a time, and when you do this, all the images are very small, EXCEPT for 2-3 pages you happen to be browsing thru at the time, and ONLY if you zoom in real close on those.  And the temporary memory build-up on my computer is terrible!  I usually have to reboot occasionally, or everything just cranks to a halt.

    Then, for EACH file I download (which has a TON of small images and a few big ones I want), I have to scroll thru each directory every time, GRAB the ones I want, move them into a separate directory, and RE-NAME them as I go, if I want to be able to keep track of them (by name and issue date).  After that, I do my usual "restoration" job-- correct rotation, cropping, "levels", brightness & contrast, and cleaning up the borders with fence & paint bucket.  That's for every single image I want to post.  I then create a smaller version, at 700 pixels wide, to re-post online at my blog.  That way, it fits perfect in my browser, and I only have to scroll vertically, not horizontally.  Makes it SO much easier to read these things!

  • From BOY'S LIFE magazine, TALES FROM THE BIBLE, 1956-- Irving Novick takes over from Creig Flessel.  Stories retold this year include 2 tales of King Nebuchadnezzar, "Daniel in the Lions' Den", "Easter", "Passover", "Queen Esther", "The Prodigal Son", "Sodom and Gomorrah", "The Good Samaritan", and "The Nativity".

    1952

    1953

    1954

    1955

    1956

  • From BOY'S LIFE magazine, TALES FROM THE BIBLE, 1957-- Irving Novick retells "The Garden of Eden", "Cain and Abel", "Noah's Ark", "The Tower of Babel", "Abraham and Lot", "Jacob and Joseph", and, yet again, "The Nativity".

    http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2013/03/tales-from-bi...

  • I read Boys Life for a few years when I was a kid. I liked a lot of the comics, but I have to admit that I only glanced at the "Tales from the Bible" at the time. Having since bought The Bible by Joe Kubert and Nestor Redondo from DC, I have to say it would be fun to read a collection of these. I wouldn't even mind owning a hardcover collection similar to the DC volume.

  • I only had a one-year subscription to BL back in 1968-69, and my 2 favorite features were SPACE CONQUERORS! and TALES FROM THE BIBLE.  (The future and the past) Most of these I've never read, and trust me, what I'm posting at my blog looks MUCH better than it does at the actual BL site I'm grabbing them off of. Bigger, brighter, cleaner, rotated properly & cropped. Also, much easier to access and read.

    Most of these I've never read before, so it's fascinating for me to see them for the first time.

    I also have a hardbound collection called THE PICTURE BIBLE with art by Andre LeBlanc.  I just tonight found a website that explained the background of that, those were originally published in a monthly religious magazine, then collected later.  The main difference is, the BL series jumps around all over, and apparently redoes certain stories over and over, while the Andre LeBlanc version is a SINGLE chronological project from beginning to end.

    I have a feeling there are an AWFUL LOT of comics versions out there, in various styles. I also had a hardbound book decades ago, all in B&W, but I haven't seen it in ages, and fear it's either been misplaced, or else my parents gave it away to someone. No idea who did the art in that one, but I'm pretty sure it's not either of the two versions described above.

    It's like having a half-dozen different movie versions of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", or "Dracula"!

  • The latest retelling of the story of "Moses" continued for the bulk of 1959!  In addition, there were the latest retellings of "Passover", "Easter" and "The Nativity", which had become real perennials by here.

  • 1961.  The chronological retelling of the Biblical stories begun with the February 1957 installment continues with the stories of "Jonathan", "David And King Saul", "David And Goliath", "Solomon", and yet again, "Hanukkah".

  • 1962.  The chronological retelling of the Biblical stories begun with the February 1957 installment continues with the stories of "Elijah", "Elisha", "Queen Esther", "Daniel", plus, "The Twenty-Third Psalm".

    More Irv Novick art!

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