Hey, JC!

 Saturday Advertising Day.

Ever since I started this blog about 15 years ago, I have included comic style advertisements as they were found in the Sunday comic sections. Along the way, I found that the Johstone and Cushong agancy was one of the largest producers of these ads, employing all sorts of talent. Some one off, some regulars. Tom Heintjes' article in Hogan's Alley (available online) was one of the major steps in finding out more about this legendary agency. Dave O'Dell did some important reserach, as well.

I tried to find out more, but unfortunately all of the artists of the Golden Age of Johstone and Cushing have pasted on. I was able to talk to two of the later talents (Neal Adams and Tom Scheuer/Sawyer) but they both only worked there from the late fifties and had very little to say about their predecessors. 

Lately I have been gathering 'evidence' to do a series of articles (or possibly a book) about the most important of the Johnstone and Cushing regulars. I learned from Doc Vassallo that the best way to learn to identify styles is to look at as much material as possible, preferable chronologically. This is what that looks like. These ads are from a paper that I never had acces to before. There are still some holes, I have to go back and fill.

Pacquins ads are a long runing series, many of which I have shown before (even in color). The flowery style has made me wonder who was the artist on them, sometimes even wondering if Dr. Kildare artist Ken Bald was involved. He had an equally fluid and often very thin line in his drawing and he excelled at pretty women. But looking at the whole lot from the start, it is clear to me that Swedish born artist Gunnar Peterson may have been responsible, certainly at the start. I earlier did a seperate post on these, which has more samples (probably a lot of the same, but from different sources). His trademark style elements are the larger opening panel (which on some ads he painted rather than drew) and the bland Lou Fine-like smile on his women characters.

In the comments, Allan Holtz (he of the unmissable American Newspaper Comics) asked me what I look at to indentify certain artists that have not digned. In many cases, it is a combination of factors, having to do with the faces, the poses, the line quality and the history of a company in combination with other works that are signed. With Gunnar Peterson, I was not even sure where I first found his name, but looking back at previous posts I found that one my my regular visitors called Fortunato had alerted me to him. This led me to a website about American Illustrators, where I immediately recognized his painted style. Also, some of his ads for Colgate were shown as samples of his advertising work. The Colgate ads became the basis to compare his other work to. They used a painted and larger first panel in combination with two tiers of smaller inked panels. This same format was used for some of the Pacquins ads, with a regulary inked panel as the first one. The Colgate ads also show how Peterson used bland smiling faces with perfect teeth for the women, which are completely the same as the smiling faces Lou Fine used in all of his work. But Peterson's men are less slick and manly than Fine's, so that's something to distinguish between them. Also Peterson staging is much more stiff and posed compared to Fine's masterful comic book staging. Once you get a feel for Peterson's staging, it is easy to recognize his work. 

Of course, one of the factors at Johstone and Cushing that makes all of this harder, is the fact that often for various customers, different twams were formed of some of the 'main suspects'. I will say something more about the individual styles of Creig Flessel and Craig Pineo, but Flessel particulary seems to have done more collaborations. These Peterson samples seem to have various inkers and I would not be surprised if Ken Bald did some of the more thinlined ones.

Another regular series was that for Sal Hepatica laxative. It can also be seen on the Johnstone and Cuching publicity ad above. I have always been. I have always been convinced that it was done by Johnstone and Cushing regular Elmer Wexler (who later tought both Neal Adams and Tom Scheuer/Sawyer), based on the similarity to his confirmed series for Gillette razor blades. But going through my files, I found some color ones that look more like Al Avison was invovled (a prolific artist who mainly worked for Harvey Comics) and I even had one that was signed by Johstone and Cushing other regular Creig Flessel (CJ in the last panel). Now I am not sure anymore. They are not by Stan Drake, who did the daily version.

The Purex ads are signed by Pineo, a realistic artist from the early fifties. I did a seperate post on him as well, where I added these two as well. He was one of a few artists to regulary sign his work and I hope to find more of it.

I was alerted to the Kool ads featuring Willie the Penguin by my friend Ken Quattro (The Comics Detective) when he did a post somewhere about the comic book version of this seemingly innocent children's character. The comic books were drawn by Chad Grothkopf, but I don't think the ad were. So the artist remains unknown, although the insidious intention of the cigarette company who prodcued them isn't. You gotta get them hooked young.

The Tiron ads are one of the many series that took a Ripley Believe it or not/Seein' Stars type of format and used it for advertising. I am not sure about the artist. The loose style points to Avison, but I would have to see more to be sure.

The rest is a mix of unknown and known ads.  The Jergens Lotion ad has the diary set-up that Gill Fox used in his Jeanie Sundays around the same time (with the same lettering), but the art does not seem to be his.

The Nescafe ad seems to have been drawn by Stan Randall, who not much later actually took over the Right Around Home newspaper feature which inspired this ad.

The Philip Morris ad is #92 in the long running Lou Fine series.

The artist of this Royal Dessert ad is unknown to me, but I like thse ads that used movies and movie actors as their entry point.

The faces here are clearly by Gill Fox, although the inking style suggest another artist worked on it as well.

Someone should do a complete collections of all Sunday, Daily and comic book Captain Tootsie ads, which was started by C.C. Beck, contunued (probably with him) by Pete Costanza and later made more realistic by Bill Schreiber.

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It Pays To Advertise

Wednesday Adverising Day.

I haven't shared a lot of advertising strips from the fifties lately, mainly because I have shown so many already. Another thing that is hlding me back, is my inabillity to determine the artist on most of them. Here are a couple with some comments, just to show how my thing goes.

The main provider for Sunday Newspaper advertising strips was the Johnstone and Advertising agency. Some artists worked or were approched on their own, but most of the work came through J&C in some way. Not very much is know about the workings of this outfit, except that some of the rugulars working at the office in the forties and fifties were Dik Browne, Gill Fox, Bill Williams, Jack Betts, Elmer Wexler, Craig Flessel and Stan Drake. Stan Drake was the only one not signing his work - and the only one to clain afterwards that he was one of the first to be allowed to sign.

Stan Drake's work is often recognizable, although he did admit in several interviews that he had to learn how to draw realistically, so maybe the earlier pieces are harder to spot. Dik Browne worked at the office and told many storie about how the guys used to play practicle jokes on each other. For a long time I thought that meant everyone working for J&C worked at the office. But these days I am not so sure any more. Longer running accounts were often handled by a regular artist, so they may have been doing that out of their own home. Others may have walked in and grabbed assignments. It is remarkable for a company so commercial, that most of the artwork seems to have been done by one artist, though sometimes with different inkers.

Elmer Exler was one of the mainstays as far as realistic art is concerned. Neal Adams told me that in the later days Wexler acted as a mentor to him and showed him te ropes. From some of the catalogues we know that one of Wexler's regular accounts was Rusty and Dusty. That gives us a nice basis for his style in the fifties. You can see some of those here: https://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search?q=gillette. And here is one with two new Rusty and Dustys after it:

Another series I suspected Wexler to have had a hand in, is the long running Sal Hepatica series, some of which can be found here: https://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2012/10/good-hair-day-wednesday-advertising-day.html. And although there are similarities, now that I have a couple in color, they do remind me of another artist, whom I did not know worked at Johnstone and Cushing (but may have). Al Avison was a journeyman artist, who worked a lot with Joe Simon at Harvey. He did a lot of covers for the Harvey horror titles, more than he did stories. His swirling style can be seen in these samples.

Here are two of his Harvey covers.

Another artist working for Johnstone and Cushing in the early fifties was Ken Bald. Blad had started out as a romance artist at Timely-Atlas and would go on to do newspaper strips Dr. Kildare and Dark Shadows. His style in the fifties was a lot more slick than it would later become and he is a hard artist to spot. He also drew a lot of romance comics covers for the American Comcis Group, which gives me a basis.

But did he do the Folgers series? He might have, but I don't really think so.

I think the Gem ad is by Bald.

And I have another one, I forgot to clean up. Generic or Bald?

The Mentholeum ad might be by Bald. Though the extra ad on the bottom certainly isn't.

This Halo ad with Ralph Flanagan (the composer of The Typewriter Song) is probably by one of those full color illustrators, trying to work in a clear line style, like Gunnar Peterson.

And since we started with Drake, let's finish with him. I have shown several of these daily ad strips earlier, taken from an online source. But this set are my own scans, from a small collection I aquired. Stan Drake was rumored to have done the Sal Hepatica Sundays. Did he do these as well?

One of the biggest quetions remains: who did the long running Camels celebrity series? There is a similarity in the style if you look through all fifteen years of them. But sometimes one jumps out as being just a bit different.