Secret Origins

Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension!
Part 2

The secret origin of Flip Falcon continues . . .

Comic book writer and store owner Jordan Lowe wrote the first script for the comic book that would eventually become Five Star Comics. Jordan enlisted Gary Gibeaut, creator of The Guard Dawgs, as artist, and after many months of labor, Gary drew his Flip Falcon story to a close. By then, Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, Terence Hanley, and Matt Marshall were on board and the first issue of Five Star Comics was in the works. Our comic book made its debut at the Mothman Festival in 2011 and has since received great reviews.

So just who is this character Flip Falcon and where did he come from? As I said in Part 1, Flip Falcon was drawn by the artist Don Rico (1912-1985) for the first issue of Fantastic Comics, a title published by Fox Publications. Then in his late twenties, Rico had gotten his start as an artist by engraving woodblocks under the tutelage of Hendrik J. Glintenkamp. In 1939, Rico began working in comic books. His pencils and inks for the first Flip Falcon story must have been one of his earliest efforts in the new art form.

You wouldn't know it to look at the black-and-white version in Five Star Comics, but Flip Falcon was originally a redhead. Unlike Superman and hundreds of other superheroes, he didn't sport a fancy costume, just a white shirt, regular pants, and, as Gary Gibeaut says, "sensible shoes." The thing that set him apart was his fantastic Fourth Dimension Machine. Red hair . . . ordinary clothing . . . a super-science gadget . . . that sounds an awful lot like another character from the 1930s and '40s, a character who was very popular in his day but is seldom remembered now: William Ritt and Clarence Gray's Brick Bradford.

To be concluded . . .

Jordan Lowe's and Gary Gibeaut's "Flip Falcon in the Fourth Dimension" from Five Star Comics #1.

Flip Falcon script copyright 2012 Jordan Lowe.
Flip Falcon artwork copyright 2012 Gary Gibeaut
Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics