Humorama was a great little pin-up and men's humor digest mag from the 50's to the mid 60's. It was a Martin Goodman publication, who had one of his relatives Abe Goodman run the show. It wasn't a big money maker, like his full size true detective magazines. But, it did make enough dough for run for a long time and it was twenty five to thirty five cents, so cheap anyway. Lets face it guys that worked for them didn't make any to much either. Seems odd that guys like Jack Cole, who could get work at Playboy, worked there. I would think any of the other guys I like from this mag, like Bill Ward and Wenzel etc. could have made it elsewhere too. Who knows with Timely Pubs what the deal was. Humorama, Joker are from 1962-3 and the Smiles is 1955 not sure of the publisher, which had offices in Silver Spring, MD.
Years ago, 1990 or so I had the opportunity to look over great stacks of Humorama type of originals, wonderful stuff, I bought as many of the "good" ones as was possible to walk away with. Don't know where Ferd got them, he was from Canada and had links to one the larger dealers there, can't remember who he was, but I would guess he picked them up somewhere, maybe they reprinted the things in Canada, anyone know? In any case, cheap a couple of bucks each.
An nice sample from Joker Nov. 1963 by Bill Ward, I have a few originals left in my collection of these large charcoal drawings, he did them on cheap newsprint, so they don't hold up so well. His pen and ink ones do though like this original I have. It is sighed on the bottom left.
On the back the caption is "Of course I could love a person for years and years-but I'm afraid It wouldn't always be the same person!" It was first printed in Humorama somewhere, then reprinted in Zip for Jan. 1970 and reprinted in Joker for Oct. 1970. They certainly got there money's worth out of the art!
Another nice Ward from Humorama, beautiful stuff.
A wonderful Wenzel Girl.
Here's a the link to the Ward page<www.womenofward.net> good material there.
And, here is some more nice Wenzel art, very cool. <http://www.comicartfans.com/comic-artists/bill_wenzel.asp>
There are more fellas who did work for the pin-up mags some time later I would like to get to Tim Troup, Camil, and other favorites in the Humorama and like mags.
I guess the artists tried all the higher paying markets first hoping to sell work like the ones above. Then the rejects got published by the small joke books who must of paid peanuts.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a lot of these digest humor magazines at Pulpcon and Pulpfest conventions.
I picked my mags up ages ago, just wanted some samples of them, it would take a long time to find the printed versions of the originals, I have. Anyway rather have some pulps...
ReplyDeleteI never got into the humorous magazines. Read a few MAD, but that was it. Still, you've got to love the art work!
ReplyDeleteHey Tom, Well, I liked the artwork and had a bunch of originals before I ever got any of the mags. There are a lot of guys who worked for them, some very excellent, some of them just good gag writers, but whatever worked. Seems that they had a few attempts at getting the right gag on the art, some crossed out gags and new ones written on the back of the art, make for interesting reading.
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