PaulTumey

Here's Jimmy's masterful splash page from The Music Master story in Heroic #23 - enjoy! - Paul Tumey

Just a quick update on our Jimmy Thompson article. It's still in progress but my writing partner, Frank Young, and I have both been sucked into various other time-consuming projects. I'm working on a book about Rube Goldberg and Frank just had a new graphic novel released (The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song). We haven't forgotten the project and have a lot of it written. Hopefully, Roy Thomas and Alter Ego will still be interested. We STILL haven't ascertained if JOT was African-American or not (in his recent book on GA covers, Sadowski said Thompson was African American). FYI - we have posted several Jimmy Thompson stories on our blog, Comic Book Attic blog.

Thank you Generic, for the Redmen scan from King 51!!! That's a real standout page and great have! And thank you, Scrooge, for the information and insight on that Vince Fago comment. We will be careful in our assumptions. The way we wrote the article, it's just sort of a clue, but nothing's definite. To my knowledge, Jimmy Thompson drew well over 20 Human Torch stories in about 2.5 years for Timely, and that makes Fago's comment possibly linked to Thompson. Or it could be the other fellow. There is a frustrating lack of information on Jimmy Thompson and a lot of other worthy GA folks. Arrrgh! Here's a recent rare find for all you JOT fans out there (Jimmy O. Thompson = "JOT," as he sometimes signed his work), the first three episodes of Jimmy Thompson's tour on the War On Crime comic strip from 1937, just before he started the Redmen series for David McKay.

Good thoughts, rodan57. However, Robotman was created by Jerry Siegel, not Jimmy Thompson... and yes, it certainly DOES have an undercurrent of an alien misfit in disguise in the "normal" world, just as Siegel's Superman and Funnyman creations did. However, since it was created by Jerry Siegel and developed by other writers and artists before Jimmy Thompson got to it, I don't think the idea of JOT identifying with marginalized ethnic groups holds up. We did think of the "alienated" aspect of Thompson's work right away when we considered JOT as an Afrcian-American, so I can see the thinking in your connection. In the Redmen (or "Black Hawk" ad as McKay called it) in King Comics #23, and which BZ so thoughtfully provided, the address to send the entries to is "Jimmy Thompson" followed by the address of the David McKay offices in Philadelphia. This may not be absolutely conclusive, but it certainly points to JT as the judge of the contest. Again, if anyone can come up with a source from anywhere that cites JT as an African American, or any clues to his background, I'd be grateful. I have been collecting research on JT for 3 years and have no shred of information from anywhere to indicate he was African American, and precious little to shed any light at all on his roots. This is after countless hours combing through old newspapers. Sheesh! Regarding his background, here's a possible clue that Thompson may have been German, from an interview with Timely artist-editor Vince Fago from Alter Ego #11, which is online here: http://twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/11fago.html "There was a man named Thomas who did a lot of the Human Torch stories; he later became a teacher. I don't remember anything else about him except he was German. [NOTE: Almost certainly Jimmy Thompson, who drew "Torch" tales between '43-'47, as well as "Robotman" for DC and various strips for Fawcett, et al. —Roy.]" Thanks to everyone here for your interest and help. Jimmy Thompson is certainly a mystery man! - Paul Tumey

Thanks, adamstrange. There are sure some nice folks on this Board. I appreciate everyone's insights and observations. Just for fun, here's another lovely splash page by Jimmy Thompson. This is from Detective Comics 147 (May, 1949). Happy holidays, everyone.

Ah, the Mysterious Mr. Thompson. Some months ago, we noted adamstrange's extremely interesting comment about Jimmy O. Thompson being an African American and I asked him about that. He wasn't totally sure where he had heard that, but felt it was from a authoritative source. The only bio I know of about Jimmy Thompson is Ron Goulart's, from The Great Comic Book Artists (and also from his fanzine). He doesn't mention Thompson's ethnicity. Next, we asked Roy Thomas and Ron Goulart about whether Jimmy Thompson was an African American. Roy said he hadn't heard that, and it seemed like he would have heard that mentioned when he was at DC, since Thompson worked for DC a long time and there were very few folks there at the time of African American heritage. He said any African American employees would have stood out and been remembered. But he wasn't 100% sure. We asked Ron Goulart about this, and he said Thompson was not African American. He based this on the photo he mentioned to us. We're not 100% sure this is Thompson in the photo. However... if it's not, who else could it be? Alexander McKay (David's son, who ran the company when Jimmy worked there)? The night custodian? Since the book was a reprint book, probably cut and pasted together by one person in at a desk in a small office, it's hard to think of who else this could be, and why the publisher would suggest that was Thompson when it wasn't... as that could backfire on them if they ever needed to promote Jimmy again (they didn't, as far as I know, but in 1938, it was anyone's guess as to how big a hit a comic would be). It seems to be a photo of Thompson judging the contest, as advertised I think it's a pretty safe assumption that it's Thompson --- but yes, it's an assumption.. Since Ruth Plumly Thompson (the editor, no relation to Jimmy as far as we have so far determined) was promoting Jimmy Thompson and the "Redmen" feature, it makes sense they would include a photo of him. Until we can unearth more information, we won't know for sure. The possibility exists that we will never know for sure if this is indeed a photo of the Mysterious Mr. Thompson. We are sending BZ's photo of the page from King Comics #26 to Ron Goulart to see what he has to say about it, and if he can confirm that this is indeed Jimmy Thompson. That's where we are in this moment. Perhaps in time something will surface to clear of the matter of Jimmy's identity and ethnic heritage. Based on his extremely knowledgeable and sensitive stories about American Indian culture, I sorta expected him to turn out to be of Indian descent! Any further thoughts or information on the Mysterious Mr. Thompson are indeed welcome by me! Thanks to everyone here for your help and interest. This is fun! - Paul Tumey

Thanks, Adam, for the kind comments on my blogs. Here's another Jimmy Thompson beauty for the this thread. This one is from Jimmy Wakely #1, (DC, 1949). At the end of his career, Thompson returned to his favorite subject, the American Indian. Note the fascinating autobiographical detail that this is a first-hand account.

Thanks for the issue number, BangZoom. Much appreciated!

Sure wish I could enter that contest and maybe win an original drawing by Jimmy Thompson! Here's a couple of covers from 1948, much later in his career:

Outstanding BangZoom, you made my week!!!! Christmas came early today. Thank you, man! Unh, any chance you could let me know which issue this was? #24? If anyone is interested, lots of Thompson's Timely stories can be found at this posting, "The Greatest Comic Book Artist You Never Heard Of- The Timely Stories http://comicbookattic.blogspot.com/2011/05/greatest-comic-book-artist-you-never.html

Hey BangZoom! WOW!!! Thanks for sharing that photo and clarifying what the contest was. We were thinking it could be the coloring contest from Red Eagle (Feature Book 16, August 1938), but this makes more sense. Oh gee I wish we could locate that photo of Jimmy Thompson! Thank you for sharing this -- it's a stunning page in itself!

This is a longshot, but worth a try. My friend and fellow comics scholar, Frank Young, and I are researching the work of Jimmy Thompson - most notable for his long stint on DC's "Robotman" feature. Before DC, Thompson worked at David McKay. We have just recently heard from Ron Goulart that he recalls seeing an actual photo of Jimmy Thompson. His exact words: "I used to have an issue of King Comics or one of the other McKay's and it had a picture of Thompson judging a contest involving one of his Indain pages. " This would very likely be a 1939 issue of King Comics. We don't know the issue number. This is BIG NEWS to us, since this is the first and only such photo of this important Golden Age artist that is currently known. Biographical data about Thompson is very very limited, so getting a scan of this page, with Thompson's photo, would be a huge help to us. Now my humble request: Is there anyone out there who might be able to email me a scan of this page? There are not many King or Magic comics scanned, mainly because the books are mostly strip reprints, which are of limited interest. So scans are awfully hard to come by. Many Thanks, Paul Tumey Cole's Comics Comic Book Attic paultumey@gmail.com

Thank you very much for this thread! It's a treasure to have images of Red Men and the rest that's posted here! My fellow comic book archaeologist, Frank Young, and I are writing a piece on Jimmy Thompson for a future issue of Alter Ego. We'd appreciate it if anyone has scans of the following to help with our article and research: Thompson's work as a staffer at the Philadelphia Ledger (1930's) Red Eagle Gang Busters Early issues of Famous Funnies that reprinted War on Crime comics that Thompson drew Music Master stories by Thompson that appeared in Heroic Comics Also if anyone has any photos of Jimmy Thompson or biographical information (other than the great 1-page Goulart bio that someone very kindly shared on this thread earlier), that would be very helpful! We've posted an article on Jimmy Thompson's Timely work, with several complete stories on our Comic Book Attic blog. Feel free to swing by and check it out. http://comicbookattic.blogspot.com/2011/05/greatest-comic-book-artist-you-never.html Also Frank did some nice writing and reprinting of Jimmy Thompson's Robotman work at CartoonSnap (animator and cartoonist Sherm Cohen's great blog): http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2009/09/robotman-and-jimmy-thompson-golden-age.html To contribute to this thread, here's a page of Jimmy Thompson original art, from his work on The Music Master series (Heroic Comics #23). While it's not exactly a standout page for Thompson, we can still note (cough cough, no pun intended) his skilled brush work, appealing cartoony style, and distinctive lettering.

Accidentally started new thread with my first post here. Apologies. Still learning. Here is the posting in the proper thread. This is an image I captured from the new Ernie Kovacs DVD set. I will get more info and post later. This was a live broadcast. Ernie's elbow is just visible to the right....