Don Flowers
(1908-1968)
Don Flowers’s newspaper career began at age seventeen, when he ran away from Custer City, Oklahoma, to work for the Kansas City Star. After a stint there and with the Chicago American, he moved to the Associated Press. Flowers introduced an array of comics; his first success came with Oh Diana, an adventure strip featuring a female lead. In 1931 this was uncommon. At the same time he developed a single panel cartoon he called Modest Maidens. The long-legged ladies of his cartoon gained popularity and by the mid-1940s, it was his main focus. The Associated Press owned the rights to the title, so when William Randolph Hearst’s office approached Flowers with a pay raise to move to King Features Syndicate, he accepted. The new title, Glamor Girls, ran in King Features’ papers until 1968 when Flowers died suddenly from emphysema.
Flowers drew his cartoons among many famous contemporaries including Al Capp and Milt Caniff. His work is identified by cartoonists and fans alike as some of the best inking in the field. His signature ladies have long been imitated but never surpassed.