December 21 really is National Flashlight day!

For your perusing pleasure, we present this rare Bolles from 1932 that goes perfectly with today's celebration.  The cover was his final contribution to Pep Stories, a magazine so notorious it got yanked off the stands and tossed from one publisher to another like a hot potato.  The new owner cut the pay rate for covers and so Bolles parted ways with the magazine in late 1931.  But then months later this flashy cover shows up on the stands, and Pep Stories was once again in hot water.  My guess is that it was an older submission which had been rejected for being too risque' even for Pep, which early in its run slapped photos of semi-naked ladies on its covers.

The originals I've seen from this time period are far livelier than what ended up on the cheaply printed covers. Take a look at this original from a 1930 Pep Stories and you'll see what I mean. 

So I took the liberty of doing some digital powerwashing to the the image and the result, in my view, is truer to the actual appearance of the painting than the drab version that appeared in print. Sadly, not only did the publishers of magazine like Pep Stories stint on paying for cover art, they also stinting on printing as well.  Let's hope the actual painting comes out from the dark some day so we can make a side by side comparison.