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| Pin-up Pete and his girls by Jack Sparling. |
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| Ironically, this is the best I've seen of Sparling's art! |
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| I can see Jack Sparling in the pictures of the G.I.s, but who knew that he was such a good girl artist??
Certainly not me. I can hardly seem to credit this as an accurate attribution, but I'll accept it as fact.
This is a true work of art, and a type of comic never duplicated again -- a real "thank you" to our boys in uniform. It's only unfortunate that the appreciation of these gals is marred by some truly atrocious off-register printing on several pages. But that's the world of small comic book publishers for you! |
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| It's Jack, all right. When I was a kid Jack Sparling was the artist my uppity friends and I identified as the ultimate talentless "crud artist." This conclusion was based largely on his work for the later Dell Comics (e.g. Space Man), in which he seemed to have taken no more than ten minutes to draw each page.
Only after years of examining his work, from its 1940s origins on the Hap Hopper strip through Jack's last days on Buck Rogers, did I realize we were wrong. Sparling was in fact an artist of considerable ability. From time to time he'd do truly interesting art jobs...his work for Toby (Billy the Kid, John Wayne) comes to mind.
As the years passed Sparling became ever more prolific, and the more prolific he was the sketchier his inking became. It didn't help that a large percentage of his output was for low-paying publishers. Sparling doesn't seem to have put a pennysworth more effort into a job than he was paid for. I'm sure this is why some of his Dell stuff was so awful: he really did draw a page in ten minutes.
I wouldn't be surprised if after so many years cranking at top speed, Jack Sparling couldn't have taken his time if he wanted to. Sparling pencilled two jobs for Marvel in the 60s. Stan Lee tried to slick him up by giving him for inkers John Tartaglione (X-Men) and the slickest of all, Joe Sinnott (Captain America). The results were not good. Sloppy or not, Sparling looked best inked by Sparling. |
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| Additional Information |
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| Publication | 1952 | Price: 0.10 USD | Pages: 1 |
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| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: Military |
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| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: War |
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| Comic Story | One Hunnert Percent Female!! (5 pages) |
| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: Humor; War |
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| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: Military |
| Notes | Includes three full-page pin-ups. |
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| Text Story | Up Front with the Marines (2 pages) |
| Credits | Pencils:? (illustration) | Inks:? (illustration) | Letters: typeset |
| Content | Genre: War |
| Notes | Several short stories. |
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| Synopsis | Full size pinup pages with captions |
| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: Military |
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| Featuring | Pin-Up Pete |
| Content | Genre: Military |
| Notes | Consists primarily of four full-page pin-ups. |
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| Comic Story | From the Halls of Montezuma... (1 page) |
| Content | Genre: Non-fiction; War |
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| Comic Story | ...To the Shores of Tripoli! (1 page) |
| Content | Genre: Non-fiction; War |
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| Comic Story | Blue Plate Blossom (4 pages) |
| Synopsis | Lover O'Leary is the "pre-eminent gal-hound" of the United States Marine Corps and agrees to take two nerdy, young "chowderheads" out on the town. The three pass their time ogling busty, leggy Good Girls in little clothing. |
| Featuring | Lover O'Leary and His Liberty Belles |
| Content | Genre: Humor; Military | Characters: Lover O'Leary; Blue Plate Blossom; Queenie Quadrille; Marlene; Three-Quarters-of-a-Mile Miriam; two nerdy, lusting young Marines |
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| The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |
