Get to know them — Flora-style! Individual letters culled from various works by the funky font master himself.

Pen & ink sketch, early 1940s. The title likely derives from the song “I’m a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas,” penned by Phil Baxter in the late 1920s. Dumas is a town in the northwest Texas Panhandle. The song was recorded by many country and jazz artists, including Louis Armstrong (in 1930), and was later a hit for singer-bandleader Phil Harris. Flora’s take is typically idiosyncratic and perhaps references the titular “ding dong” in the…

We’ve come to a belated acceptance, and in some cases respect, for Flora’s late-life work. We still prefer the bizarre jaggedness of his 1940s and 1950s illustrations and paintings, but occasionally the old Jim peeks through the new. The Tympani Five (referring to Louis Jordan‘s fun-loving jump band of the 1940s) isn’t a top-tier work, but the spirit of Jordan synergizes with the spirit of Flora in this 1988 pen & ink with tempera on…

In an art class called “Soft Sculpture” at the University of Washington (Seattle), students were instructed to transform a favorite painting into food sculpture. SunShine McWane adapted Flora’s untitled 1950-51 tempera we casually refer to as “Gunfight on the Roof” (original work below). The resulting mixed-media delicacy, entitled “Cheese City,” was completed in January 2009. The materials—ingredients, actually—used by McWane include cheese (cheddar, Swiss, Colby, jalapeño jack), acrylic paint, plastic (GI Joe figures), one wire…

A lengthy gestation period: our new book, conceived two years ago, is today born. Fantagraphics, with godlike dominion, declared July 29 as the official publication date of The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, our third anthology. Purchase at: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or from Fantagraphics. Doesn’t matter to us. Buy it. Here’s what you’ll discover: Like its two predecessors, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (2004) and The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora…

Jim Flora Art has released a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of a 1960 Flora painting entitled Big Evening. The hyperactive tableau depicts a cavalcade of misshapen, multi-eyed mutants with bonus body parts. People just like you! The work was produced in an edition of 25. Nine were sold in the first two days after release, our most successful new print launch.

A work-in-progress (since finished) by the Angry Knitter. The background exhibit caught our eye.

Because we feel like it. Because cartoon violence is the best violence of all! Cover detail, Columbia Coda, June-July 1943. The above is not a garden variety mugging—it has to do with highbrow musical theatrics. The dagger to the heart caused the victim to sing—and thereafter to be written out of the plot. Although it’s possible he returned in later acts as a zombie.

Illustration, Parade magazine, January 18, 1959. Article about people with genetic and/or psychological dispositions to behavioral patterns that cause health problems. The above tableau (from a tearsheet in the Flora archives) appears on page 9 beneath the semi-title ” … Disease Personality.” We’re missing page 8, which would provide the rest of the title.

Absolute good taste edifies absolutely. Cartoonist/animator Gene Deitch, in a 2003 interview with AllAboutJazz.com, about his then-new book, The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove: AAJ: What is your favorite piece of album cover artwork? Deitch: Any by James Flora. Left: detail, Shorty Rogers Courts the Count (1955, RCA Victor)