George Petty was a popular American pin-up artist for several decades. His work appeared in advertisements and in ESQUIRE Magazine. These illustrations are taken from 1952 and 1953 calendars produced for Ridgid Tools.Petty died in 1975.
When MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman first went to EC Comics he was unaware the name had been changed to Entertaining Comics from its original name, Educational Comics. Maxwell Gaines, who started EC after selling his All American Comics line to National (DC) Comics, died in a boating accident in 1947, and his son, Bill, took over the company.
Kurtzman was partly right, because EC published commercial giveaway comic books. LUCKY FIGHTS IT THROUGH, which was Kurtzman's first work for EC, published in 1949, is a giveaway public health comic book about syphilis, using a cowboy theme. It's Educational Comics, but it's also Entertaining Comics!
A couple of days ago I posted one of Clay Geerdes' comix. Here's a comic written, drawn and self-published by Geerdes' friend and neighbor, David Miller. Dave is not only a talented cartoonist, but is administrator of Geerdes' estate, which includes thousands of photographs taken in the Bay Area during the 1960s through the mid-1990s. Dave has contributed several items from his own massive cartoon and comic art collection to this blog, and also to Pappy's.
