Saturday, June 24, 2006
Media: Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper
This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 2 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about print cartoonists.
Basil Wolverton was one of the most imaginative and unique cartoonists who ever lived. He was born in 1909 and early on worked in Vaudeville and radio as a comedian. At the age of 20, he took up cartooning as a profession, and working from his home in Vancouver, Washington, drew several science fiction comic series throughout the thirties. Wolverton had a huge range... from finely detailed space monsters, to tightly drawn heros, to grizzly dripping horror, to his own bizarre caricatures, lovingly dubbed the "spaghetti and meatball school of design". We'll have some postings featuring that material soon.In 1942, Wolverton turned his cartooning skills to comedy for Timely Comics, which was later to become Marvel. The two stories here are from Timely's Joker Comics and the unfortunately titled Gay Comics. Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper comics reflected his unique sense of humor, and forshadowed the early comic book version of Mad Magazine. These scans were made from original comics in the collection of Kent Butterworth. Many thanks for sharing them with us, Kent!
Eddie Fitzgerald has posted a great post with Wolverton's work from Mad Magazine. Check it out!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
Labels: basil wolverton, comic book, comics, powerhouse pepper
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posted by Stephen Worth @ 3:32 PM
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2 Comments:
In 1946, "Li'l Abner's" Al Capp named Basil Wolverton as the winner in a contest to illustrate the previously unseen face of Capp's "Lena The Hyena". It was the first of Capp's contests to artists and aspiring cartoonists to illustrate a character he had conceived. In 1964, Capp revived this concept and invited contributors to submit their ideas for another faceless character.
I was fortunate to have one of my Wolverton-like sketches published as the runner-up winner. The winning drawing was a reader-submitted sketch of 1964 Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater. You could look it up.
(Robert J Wilson Jr, then of Hillside, NJ)
Any chance you could ask Mr. Butterworth what issue #s of Joker and Gay these two stories came from? I'd really love to know. Thanks.
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