'Speed Saunders' (Detective Comics #3, 1937).
Creig Flessel was one of the original artists of DC comics. Born in Huntington, Long Island, he attended Alfred University in New York. He began his career assisting John H. Striebel on the newspaper strip 'Dixie Dugan', and additionally doing a lot of advertising work, often in comic strip form. His cartoons appeared in Boy's Life and Playboy, but he is best remembered for his comic book work at National/DC.
He was present in the earliest issues of Detecive Comics (before 'Batman'), and also illustrated most of the early covers. Later he worked on the original 'Sandman' and 'The Shining Knight' for Adventure Comics, and is credited as the creator of features like 'Speed Saunders', 'Hank the Cowhand', 'The Bradley Boys' and 'Pep Morgan'.
'David Crane' (6 August 1961).
Flessel followed editor Vin Sullivan to Columbia Comics and later to Magazine Enterprises, for which he was also associate editor. He returned to DC several times over the years, inking 'Superman' related titles in the 1950s and working with Joe Simon on 'Prez' in the 1970s. However, when the Golden Age of comic books was over, Flessel mainly returned to advertising and magazine art. He occasionally assisted Al Capp on 'Li'l Abner' and took over 'David Crane' from Win Mortimer between 1960 and 1971. In the 1980s he was present in Playboy with the comic 'Tales of Baron Von Furstinbed'. Craig Flessel passed away at age 96 in July 2008.
