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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Now A Word From Our Sponsors

Wednesday Advertising Day.

This month I cleaned up I lot of ads I had scanned over the last year. Here they are, with some comments.

I have always been fond of movie ads in comic strip form. This one is not really a strip, but cartoony enough to be included here. It is probably by some illustrator, although there is a vague Johnstone and Cushiness to the lady on the lef.

Parts of these Baker's ads are sufficiently similar to the work of Dik Browne (especially the second one) for me to guess he was at least involved in it. I would be one of his few attempts to draw realitiscally.

The Ben-Gay is best know for it's Jack Betts drawn Peter Pain ads, but apparently they did this type if endorsement ads as well. Or maybe just this one. It is the only one I have ever seen.

I found this Bud Blade drawn ad in a pile of comics that were cut off too much. It seems to have been a trent with certain collectors, sice there are enough of these trimmed strips about to assume it was not just one collector. What is it, an advice in a magazine or a naturally occuring obsession?

I have shown more of these Bromo-Seltzer ads. This one seems like a prime example of Ken Bald's advertising work.

My friend Michael Vassello runs a Facebook group devoted to the New York Sunday News strips and has collected a lot of Craig Fleissel's Eveready ads, which ran from the early forties until the late fifties - probably the longest running ad series ever (Camels had ads for just as long, but changed formats towards the end). As far as I can see there was a new one every two weeks, so he may have done over 400 of them. I have shown a lot of those here, but never collected them in one place (except the raw scans on my computer). The advantage of a facebook group is that Michael was able to put his together in one 'album'. The disadvantage is that he can't put long rambling comments with them, like I can.

 As this magazine version shows, even the Eveready ads were sometime recut and used in magazines.

 And here is an early pulp illustration by Fleissel, from The Hooded Detective in January 1942. In the same issue, there was another illustration by another Johnstone & Cushing regular. You find it further on.

This is as close as a comedy housestyle Johnstone and Cushing ever developed, Signed by Roland Coe, you can see traces of Coe himself, Dik Browne's kids faces, Haenigen's simplicity, Gil Fox's slickness and probably more.

This is as good as that style got, probably by Dik Browne and Gill Fox.

The cold demons were another Sunday page regular. I can't pinpoint the artist, but the bottom tier of the second one seems to be Dik Browne on his own. Withou Gill Fox, his work was always a bit more friendly.

Jack Betts' other account, Neddy Nestlé ran from just before the end of WWII to the mid fifties, when Betts disappeared (quite literally, leaving no trace). This is pure Betts - and he was even allowed to sign it in the last panel.

After his disappearance a couple of Neddy Nestlé were done by other Johnstone and Cushing artists. In 1958, the Nestlé company asked Al Capp to make his own version and this is what he (and his studio) came up with.

Yer basic American realism, as could have been done by a number of artists. The face of the kid in the first panel is quite unique and special, though.

The P.F. ads were a staple of comic books and the Boy's Life magazine for scouts, but like other ad series (The Pepsi Cop Biys come to mind) they were published in newspapers as well. For a long time I though Mad's Will Elder moght have been involved, but he never did advertising (nor had the time). Someone told me this is the work of the stilistic chameleon Al Plastino - who also drew the Archie comic strip in the early sixties, the Superman meets Kennedy story for DC in 1964 and a year of (unpublished) Peanuts for the syndicate (who wanted to show Charles Schulz they didn't need it). Plastino also took over the Hap Hopper strip form Jack Sparling between 1944 and 1948 and started at DC after that. If this ad is his work is his, he may have also done True Comics' Jack Armstrong between 1947 and 1949.

Did I show this before? One of the best drawn ad series by an artist I can't really place.

Another realitically drawn ad series by an unknown artist. More demons, which were probably very popular with ad agencies.

In the early sixties comic strip ads had all but disappeared. The Johnstone and Cushing comapny trew in the towel. One of the only artists still doing them was Mel Casson, who had a whole range of clients.

The Post cereal company had a lot of different series of ads made for them for various products. This late fifties series tried to appeal with Trailer Chique.

I have shown a lot of Lou Fine ads and written about them. In the late forties Fine started his own ad agancy together with Lou Komisarov and they did a lot of very slick and very appealing ads for several products. This is one of their signature series. For as far as I can see it was produced once every two weeks, like a lot of ad series in the late forties and early sixties. One of these days I am going to put them all together and see what I do and do not have.

This may be by the same artist as Post's Trailer Twins. Some very lively images here.

The Smith Brothers' series establishes a clear link between the work of Dik Browne, Gill Fox and Bill Williams. Each of them signed some of these Folks Nex Door. This later one is by Bill Williams.

Another late ad, by Mort Walker. This appeared about a year after he started Boner's Ark as Addison. But here he was allowed to sign the comical animals in his own name.

This ad is from 1962 and the kids on the right suggest to me it was by Mel Casson as well.

I always thought the Uguentine ad series (which used a corner of the space left over by Pepto-Bismol was started by Dik Browne (since all of my samples were by him). But here he takes over after the first two.

I have shown many of these Trouble Twins strips and told the anecdote hoe this strip git him the Hi and Lois account. Click te link to see them.

Another long running series, which was used in a Johnstone and Cushing ad suggesting the artist we see here is Elmer Wexler. Wexler was a long standing employee of Johnstone and CUshing and influenced many after him, including Neal Adams and Tom Schreuer/Sawyer.

And here is that second pulp illustration I promised, by Wexler.

So when Dik Browne left J&C to do Hi and Lois, his palce in The Trouble Twins was atlen over by Bill Williams. You can see it in the mother in the last panel.

Endorsement was always big in comcis. Camels made a feature of it, but other companies dabbled in FFR (Fanous Face Recognition) as well. For a long time I suspected Stan Drake's involvement in this, but lately I am not so sure.

Another stale of advertising - using cartoons by famous (or at least familiar) cartoonists. In the forties this was a huge trend, especially in magazines. It spread to newspapers as well, but mostly in black and white daily edition. Wildroot used Reamer Keller on a more regular basis for ads like these.