DESCRIPTION:
by Alex Chun & Jacob Covey
Mature Readers
256 pages; soft cover; partial color
The Pin-Up Art of Bill Ward continues Fantagraphics’ dedication to showcasing the best
of the classic pin-up artists. Culling through thousands of images, editor Alex Chun has
selected the best of Ward’s Conte crayon pin-ups, including many of his infamous
telephone girls, many of which have not seen print in almost half a century. In those
countless cheap and long forgotten men’s humor magazines, Ward’s voluptuous “girly”
drawings shared the pages with photos of Bettie Page and Mamie Van Doren, and pin-up
cartoons by the likes of Archie’s Dan DeCarlo and Playboy magazine’s Jack Cole.
Thumbing through those digests, it quickly becomes evident that Ward was Humorama’s
dominant pin-up cartoon artist. His mastery of the Conte crayon allowed him to produce
unparalleled textures, including the wonderful sheen on satiny curve-hugging dresses and
on black thigh-high stockings that became Ward trademarks. The Pin-Up Art of Bill Ward
is presented in the same accessible sotfcover format as The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo
and The Pin-Up Art of Bill Wenzel. |