I have been selling my issues of 1000 jokes on Ebay and among the later ones I came across a silly comic story that I like very much. It is a funny fable by Paul Hodge, who I only know as a comic book artist for Timely/Atlas between 1954 and 1956 - doing 15 stories in total. What he did besides that or after that period, I don't know. His style was solid, related to what I call 'the Chicago School', a realistic style in line form purely, not using the Caniff influenced black and white inking. You see it most in newspaper comics, but it spreads to comics with artists such as Carl Hubbel, Norman Maurer and Bob Bean. For his work at Timely/Atlas he did not seem to have inked himself more than a couple of times (which I prefer to the slicker inking of others).
When he return to comics in this 1964 story from 1000 Jokes, his style has evolved to a more breezy cartoon style, not typical for it's time, but fitting in there nicely. This leads me to conclude he must have worked in some sort of advertising job and was doing comics on the side.
he also did Wild Boy stories for St. John and some work for Andu and Esposito's Mad comic book imitation Get Lost.
The only other credit I can find for Paul Hodge is one as illustrator:
And apparently there was one before that:
The Ad Dahlin he worked with here, was a famous cartoonis, who worked for Humorama in the fifties. Humorama was Timely/Atlas owner Martin Goodman's line of saucy gag magazines, run by his brother from the same building as Timely/Atlas. Dahlin went on to become head of the film strip department of McGraw-Hill, which is where the above mentioned book probably originated.
If anyone knows anymore about Paul Hodge, I would of course love to know.
Here are all of Hodges contributions to Timely/Atlas, ordered by job number.
E-486: Journey Into Mystery #17:
E-543: Journey Into Unknown Worlds #29
E-676: Western Outlaws #4
E-725: Uncanny Tales #23
E-846: Outlaw Fighters #1
E-892: Battle Action #13
E-950: Jungle Action #1
F-57 Ringo Kid #3
F-145: War Comics #30
F-275: Marvel Tales #130
F-461: Marvel Tales #131
There is a short and strange one year gap, just after the comics code is introduced.
J-645: Strange Stories of Suspense #10
J-648: Journey Into Mystery #36
J-825: Mystic #50
J-973: Mystery Tales #44
Here is the story he did for Get Lost (possibly over lay-outs by Russ Andru):
2 comments:
Like the werewolf story here. Good art and story.
There’s the Paul Hodge noted to be a retired journalist and potter married to a woman who’s also an artist and went to Pratt in the 1950s. Going by the marriage, I came across a Paul M. Hodge noted to have been born on September 5, 1934, and would have been 19 by 1953.
http://avisflemingart.com/biography.html
https://nuwber.com/person/563a33fe05a684fe715a36e4
Somewhat circumstantial, though there’s also the database Fold3, which lists draft cards written down by many people. Marvel Comics’ Paul Hodge may have been to young if he started out less than 20 in 1953, though still a nice resource because it lists employers too.
https://www.fold3.com/search?keywords=Paul+hodge&general.title.content.type=draft-card:Drafts
- Daniel
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