[ericinwisconsin]

Girlie magazines from the 40's to the 70's are a particular interest of mine, and Yoc made a brief comment elsewhere that these magazines often bought cartoons from comic book artists. A lot of them tried using different styles or names to disguise who they were, since girlie mags were considered a sleazy business.

The most obvious one is Bill Ward, of course. Originally, he used a pseudonym to sign his adult stuff, but he gave that up quickly enough. His style always fascinated me. A lot of comic book artists who did more realistic art often complained that they had a hard time doing more cartoonish art, but Ward managed to go from "Blackhawk" and the more realistic version of "Torchy" he did during WWII straight into his enormously endowed women for magazines like Jest and Humorama.

Ward used to have two portfolios for his adult stuff. He called them his "A-Style" and his "B-Style". He worked harder on the A-Style stuff and it showed, so he was able to charge more for it. The B-Style work went to cheaper publications that couldn't afford his better work. Toward the end, I think, he either lost the ability or the desire to do the A-Style work. His art was never the same again after the mid 1970's, in my opinion.

Dan DeCarlo, on the other hand, didn't change a thing between his work on Archie and adult cartoons. Since his was the "house style" for the Archie books, I find his adult stuff very interesting, especially since most of his women looked like Betty and Veronica. Seeing them as strippers and working girls kinda makes you wonder what they did when they grew up. LOL.

I'm sure there are a lot more comic book artists who also sold cartoons to the men's mags. Does anyone know of others?

[darkmark]

Jack Cole, for one.  And Steve Ditko used to help out Eric Stanton.

[ericinwisconsin]

Yeah, I'd forgotten about those. Ditko shared an apartment with Stanton, I believe, and assisted when he was between assignments. That was back in the 1950's, before he did Spider-Man for Marvel.

Jack Cole, on the other hand, did work under the name of "Jake". Once he started working for Hugh Hefner, he did work almost exclusively for Playboy. He was commissioned by Hefner to round up some comic book artists to do some work for Playboy. According to the story, he asked Will Eisner if he would be interested. Eisner politely refused and Cole said that he was relieved because he really didn't want any REAL competition, and he saw an artist of Eisner's calibre to be exactly that.

Sadly, Cole took his own life in 1958, for unknown reasons.

[Yoc]

Interesting!
I'd never heard the Cole/Eisner at Playboy story before.

[ericinwisconsin]

There was also Wally Wood, who did some work for underground comics. Wood was pretty much forced to do it because of financial problems and he was very ashamed of the work.

Wood also took his own life. He was an alcoholic and had pretty much destroyed his kidneys. He killed himself rather than face dialysis.

[Yoc]

Yes, I've seen Wood's 'Gang Bang' book at a convention years ago. 
Pretty ugly stuff and a sad end to a fantastic talent.

[rez]

You all talking about Wally Wood of Tower's Thunder Agents Wally Wood?

Man, I'd never heard that.
Sad how things go sometimes. Always carried a high regard for his artistry.

[narfstar]

I read that Eisner also refused to do any Tijuana bibles even though the pay would have been very good for very little work.

[ericinwisconsin]

Wood was an incredible talent. If you look at the "Gang Bang" stuff, you can see that his heart really wasn't in it. It's probably his weakest work ever.

He did a GREAT run as inker on All Star Comics, back in the 70's. His heart probably wasn't in that either, but his talent shone through. He made Keith Geffin look like, well, Wally Wood.

[phabox]

Wally Wood was IMO one of the greatest comic book talents EVER and as noted elsewhere as an inker could bring out the best in even the most hack artists work ( no names but at least TWO come to mind !!!)

Like most people 'Woody' produced his best work when he had his heart in it, my favorite examples of his stuff are the EC SF Books, The Thunder Agents, his short run on Marvel's Daredevil and some of the stuff he did for the Warren black and white magazines.

Also worth checking out is Wood's self published 'Witzend' fanzine as this is another venue of his finest work.

-Nigel

[narfstar]

I like most of Wood's stuff a lot.  I have all 3 versions of his Wizard King book including a signed copy of the self published edition.  I do not want to sell it but would like to know what it is worth.  I do not find all of Wood's work to be that good and I do not care for his Daredevil run.  I think his work with Ditko on Heroes Inc is amazing stuff.  The little things I dislike about each one's style are covered up be the greatness of the other.

[phabox]

I Guess its all a matter of personal taste,  I have a soft spot for wood's Daredevil as it was my introduction to the artist via a British 'Alan Class 'Black and White reprint edition as I recall.

Back in the early-mid 60's B&W reprints of Marvel stuff was often easier and ALWAYS cheaper to pick up that the 'Real Deal'

Apart from the monthly Class reprints Marvel stuff also appeared WEEKLY in comics such as WHAM ! SMASH ! POW ! and best of all Fantastic and Terrific, the major drawback with these comics was the lack of credits and the half hearted attempt to 'anglosize' things, one good example that I still recall was a kid in an early Spider-Man story who in the original called out for his 'Mom' in the UK version this was changed to 'Mum'

Even back then as a kid this kind of tampering anoyed me.

in the late 60's all five comics ultimatly merged into one title before vanishing forever and Marvel Comics set up its own UK operation in the early 70's which although mainly reprint did strick out with original material from time to time including the creation of 'Captain Britain'.

-Nigel