Wednesday, February 9, 2011

THE FLOP FAMILY


'The Flop Family' is an American newspaper humour strip, featuring a middle-class family, by artist George Swanson (1897-1981, who signed the strip as "Swan") which had debutted in 1943 and was in syndication till the death of its creator. It's in the tradition of 'Bringing Up Father' and 'Blondie', but I personally find its art more alluring then both of its better-known precedents. I might be wrong, but as far as I know it has never been reprinted in any compilation. The above sample of a Sunday is from a preprint from 1950, which is currently being on ebay.
It had debutted in Turkey in 1954 in the daily newspaper Milliyet, retitled as 'Allahlık Ali Bey'. Below image is from Oct 1st from that year:
I recall that 'Allahlık Ali Bey' was still being run in Turkish newspapers in my childhood, that is 1970s. In 1982, it was revived in the multilingual magazine Hello aimed at teaching English. In the same decade, it was also ran in the comics supplement of the Bulvar newspaper.

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