I have a forthcoming article about Tove Jansson, her Moomin newspaper comic strip, and the Moominvalley adventures. She originally published a strip of sorts in a very small leftist newspaper run by her friend and onetime romantic interest beginning in 1947. It was essentially a reinterpretation of one of her early books in a picture story format. When she was brought under the masthead of the London Evening News in 1954, her strip was much more akin to what most of us would recognize as a newspaper comic strip. Jansson was already an accomplished author and illustrator, but she had a few things to work out when it came to doing a daily comic strip. So, she went to London to work out of the newspaper offices there. In September 1954, it so happened that a cartoonist’s office was not in use, though it had only recently been temporarily vacated by the usual occupant: Wally Fawkes. In her letters, she called him “Forks,” which must have been how it sounded to her, especially considering English was her fourth or fifth language. Tove Jansson would work on the earliest Moomin comic strips in Wally Fawkes’ office, under the editors’ supervision and with other cartoonists stopping by to see her progress. But, who is Wally Fawkes?
In the United States, Wally Fawkes’ work is not as well known, but in 1950s London, he had a popular comic strip called Flook. Also a well-regarded jazz musician, he cartooned under the pen name Trog. In my article, I described his strip as starring a boy named Rufus and his fantastical “pig-faced Labubu,” called Flook, though this is perhaps a harsh and overly simplified description. I do stand by the visual similarities to Labubus, though. Labubus? Labubi? Whatever. They’ll be flooding thrift store donation bins soon enough.
Flook is a magical creature, and his boy companion, Rufus, is … well, a little obnoxious. Rufus has the British version of a “Gee, whiz!” personality, neither real nor particularly engaging. But we root for the duo and the friends they find, as they are thrown against impossible odds and truly evil villains. However, it is difficult to find a collection of this strip in the U.S. for comic strip fans to become acquainted with it. So, my description in the article wasn’t based on very much. I have learned that some of the characters were renamed when the strip came to the U.S., but Flook was not among them.
But, recently, in an online forum, I happened across a comic strip fan asking about Flook. They also couldn’t find any samples online. And since turning in my article, I’ve found I can dig up some samples. The drawing is pretty fun, and stylistically very different from what American comic strip readers are used to. Trog worked with some assistants, and I’m not totally sure what everyone did or when, but in some storylines, you can clearly see other hands at work. So, here is most of a random storyline from Flook by Trog:
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.
