Open the Gates

Monday Cartoon Day.

I showed some of Art Gates 1956 and 1958 cartoons in an earlier post. Here is a sampling I took from 1957. I like the earliest ones best, as they seem to have more character. This was the same for Gates' realistic style, which was rougher when he was starting out and became slicker but blander in the early sixties (when he did a lot of work for the Joe Simon edited Prize and Harvey titles). I am fascinated by the fact that anyone would be interested in a cartoon such as this in the late fifties. It seems like a throughback to the forties. He might even have reused some of his old Yank gags.

At Ease

Monday Cartoon Day.

Today's cartoonis is less interesting for his actual cartoon work than for his pedigree. Art Gates is m0stly known to comic collectors as a mid fifties artist who worked for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Mainline titles. He did some work work other publishers as well, including a short-lived hillbilly humor series for Charlton, that was probably based on a falied newspaper effort to produce a Li'l Abner clone. But most of his career he worked as a cartoonist. And not one of the top ones either. His work turns up in the low paying Humorama books and worse. He started out doing cartoons in the army (many budding artists would do anything not to be sent abroad) and even had a couple of cartoons published in Yank. In the late fifties he had a daily panel series based on his experiences in the army.

From Yank:




From 1956;



FROM 1958: