Flash To Flush To Flesh

Let's look at some of the early parodies of Flash Gordon. He's one of our cultural archetypes, with his spawn still going strong. (see Star Wars, et al.) Let's not forget, of course, that Flash was the spawn of Buck Rogers. We won't be ignoring him. (Actually, we will be ignoring him today.)

There is at least one parody earlier than the ones we have here today listed for Lala Palooza in Feature Comics #32. (Don't bother with the digital golden age archives. What i've seen of #32 may have the right cover, but the interior seems to be issue #44. There is an odd superhuman in Poison Ivy reminiscent of Flash, but only in appearance.)

Conveniently enough, since we've been doing a lot of Funny Animals lately, the next earliest i've found is Flash Rabbit from All Top Comics #s 1 & 2, written by Pat Parrish (artist unknown) -

Zany #2 brought us Flush Gordon -

Whack #2 remixed the name to Flush Jordan with artwork by William (Alex) Overgard...

...and Humbug #10, Jack Davis had fun mixing it with the paranoid times and gave us Flyashi Gordonovich, Intergalactic Commissar...

...while Wally Wood was hinting towards later work over in Mad #11 with the title Flesh Garden! -

Of course, there have been many more over the years - we're only scratching into the 1950s here. But this post is getting long, so...
So long!

page art by listed creators, otherwise unknown, for All Top Comics #2 1 & 2, Zany #2, Whack #2, Humbug #10, and Mad #11 (1946, 1953, 1954, 1958)

Warren Piece

What's this? Another cover post immediately following a cover post?
Yup.

I've spoken a few times of Warren's use of painted covers - let's pull up a pile and take a look. We'll stick to just Creepy and Eerie this time, and we'll still wind up with too many covers to fit in a single post.

First, an odd bit, just because - Odd. Check out the first issue of Eerie:

 With that cheaper-to-print black & white image giving it a small press feel, you might think this was perhaps the first Warren publication. But, as noted on the cover, Eerie came after Creepy, and Creepy had painted covers from the first issue. Not to mention that Warren had been publishing magazine for quite some time before Creepy debuted.

So why the stark b&w image? Sure, it's a great piece from  Joe Orlando  Jack Davis,  a great artist, but still... it's quite the anomaly and i'm left to wonder how the decision came about. I may not have that answer, but we do have 42 covers here so we need only find the question.

With a name like -3-, it's no surprise that i like things in threes, so next up - another cover post!
But one with a bit of purpose...

covers from the indicated issues of Creepy & Eerie (1964-1982)