The Pin-Up Art of Humorama

Description

During the 1950s, Abe Goodman—brother of Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman—was the largest buyer of cartoons in the world. Publishing out of New York City under the Humorama banner, Goodman churned out scores of cheap digest-sized magazines boasting inventive titles like Romp, Stare and Joker that featured hackneyed jokes, cheesecake photos and the publications’ bread and butter, single panel pin-up cartoons. These magazines were an unlikely proving ground for neophyte gag cartoonists as well as a welcomed alternative to the daily grind of comic book sweatshops. In the 1950s and 1960s, these digests featured the likes of Playboy’s Jack Cole, Archie’s Dan DeCarlo and glamour girl legend Bill Ward. In addition to these three pin-up cartooning luminaries, other notables who contributed included longtime illustrator Jefferson Machamer, Basil Wolverton, MAD’s Dave Berg (“The Lighter Side”), and future syndicated cartoonists George Crenshaw (Belvedere), Bill Hoest (The Lockhorns) and Brad Anderson (Marmaduke). Drawing from private collections of original art and thousands of Humorama digests, editor Alex Chun has once again selected the best of these long out-of-print images.