Monday, October 14, 2019

Post Hayle

Saturday Leftover Day.

I know I am late with this 'saturday' post, but there was a lot of scanning and cleaning to be done to make it as complete as possible.

I recently bought an issue of the fifties men's magazine Jackpot. The reason I bought it, was that I had seen on eBay that the art editor was comcis book artist and later newspaper strip creator Howie Post. In the late fifties, like everyone in the business, he was struggling for a job. After doing some excellent work for Stan Lee's Mad magazine imitation (where he was the only artist clearly writing his own stuff) he did some not so impressive work for some of the other Mad magazine imitators (all shown in my book Behaving Madly). He had not yet tarted working at Harvey, where his career got a second wh=ind when he illustrated Hot Stuff, Spooky, Wendy and even Casper. Later it would get a third wind when he created the newspaper strip The Dropouts. So this probably was just another gig to pay the bills. But apart from art editing, he also did a couple of (unsigned) illustrations and a signed pin-up in his best Petty/Vargas style. Most of these are recognizable, because Howard Post could not help but drw cute, however scary of sexy he tried to be.

The big surprise however, was that Howard Post wasn't the only interesting artist in that magazine. There also was a four page article (and a cartoon) that solved a mystery for me that I hadn't been able to solve for Behaving Madly. In the late fifties and early sixties a frequent artist in the Mad magazine imitations (mainly Frantic, Zany and the early Cracked) was a 'modern' artist signing Sam Hayle. He was quite good and quite humorous. But apart from his name I could not find any information about his. And here in Jackpot #2 he was again, with a four page illustrated piece just about him. The woring of the intro to The Twisted World of Julius Hayle even suggests he might have been i other issues as well. I have #2, I wonder how many there were. Seeing him named as Lucius Hayle here, made it possible for me to identify him (probably) als Samuel Lucius Hayle, born in 1911 and died in 1996. That would fit the description as him not being an "angry young man". As Lucius Samuel Hayle he also gets a mention in the online description of the Monogram musical feature Silver Skates, as "New York artist Lucius Samuel Hayle" who "completed 'special posters' for the film".


The unsigned drawing next to the contents page could be by Howard Post.


Post did spot drawing like this for Thimk, one of the Mad magazine imitations he worked for.


I don't think the illustration on the left is by Post, but the vignette with the naked ladies is just cute enough to be by him.


This parody ad is similar enough in humor to his saire work to be by Post. In any case, it is worth showing for it's Mad/Trump/Humbug style.


And this is the masterpiece, of course. A signed pin-up. Makes me curious about the other issue(s).


Her is Julius Hayle's satirical article on coffee drinker.


Finally, for this gag Hayle chose a different style than his normal simplified one.

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