Golden Age Collection 22 22

[Theagenes]

The first appearance of Carson of Venus.

 

 

Argosy (January 8, 1938)

 

You know I've never read the Venus series. I understand that contains a good bit of political allegory, with various groups representing communists, fascists, etc. I should probably check it out sometime.

 

BB posted another Carson cover with the "tailess whipscorpion" the other day, so here's a third:

 

 

[Scrooge]

As we bandy around cover by Norman Blaine Saunders, I was wondering what Norman thought about his work for Donenfeld and his Saucy titles, racy as they were. I talked to David, his son, at the Pulp show in Chicago last weekend and left completely forgetting to ask that question. Since, David has emailed me his recollection about that fact so here's edited his extensive comments in answer to my question:

 

"Norm Saunders worked for Fawcett Publications in Minneapolis from 1927 to 1934, where he had been hired to do his first illustration work. It was a fun and close group of creative people. Their biggest money-maker was Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, which was an irreverent saucy joke book with a few photos of semi-nude starlets. Whiz Bang was among the most popular periodicals of the Post-War 1920s. By 1929, Fawcett's domination of this market was particularly challenged by a growing competitor in NYC, Harry Donnenfeld and Frank Armer, who produced a group of Spicy pulps. This history is well documented in the Gerard Jones book THE MEN OF TOMORROW. Many of the "talent" at Fawcett Publications was being pilfered by this NYC competitor, and one by one, Fawcett lost ground. By 1935, Norman Saunders was regularly selling freelance illustrations to the Donnenfeld & Armer magazines, which at that time were using the name "Movie Digest" publications. Norman Blaine Saunders signed these illustrations with his middle name, "Blaine," a pen name that he was never used before and was never to use again. I believe he used this name to mask his identity, out of a sense shame for his disloyalty to Fawcett Publications, for which he was always grateful for giving him his start in illustration. He did not use the name "Blaine" to disguise his identity because of his shame in the subject matter, which was not too different from his art in Whiz Bang, which was signed "Nifty Saunders" on some occasions. He certainly did not regret those artworks. Also, he did not mask his artistic style, as some other illustrators did when they wanted to remain unknown. My father's style of painting in 1936 for his work for the Saucy magazines was exactly the same as his work for Fawcetts, Dell, and Street & Smith, so there was sign of his desire to mask his identity out of regret for the subject matter.

 

Norman Saunders was an entirely unpretentious artist. His early, middle and late work was thoroughly peppered with equally "naughty" illustrations, so there is no chance that he viewed his 1936 work for the Saucy magazines of Donnefeld and Armer as "regrettable" or below his standards. The only element of truth in this idea is that Norm began to take advanced level painting classes in NYC in 1936 from Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art, and after three years of night classes, Norm had learned a great deal more about the mastery of painting craft, so he would naturally feel that his earlier painted covers were inferior from a technical point of view, and he may well have viewed them as inferior, but that is totally unrelated to his use of the pen name "Blaine" of the sexual subject matter."

 

and here's a follow-up after some comments I made about the above:

 

"Freelance artists were all in competition with each other and they needed to maintain "friendships" with the art directors working at as many publishers as possible. A freelance artist really was a lone wolf. They had no guaranteed income what so ever. So they could not afford to make enemies in the industry. Nevertheless, the artists competed against each other for survival, and the publishers competed against each other for survival, so the business environment was very treacherous and the results are many unsigned illustrations and pseudonyms. Likewise, the publishers used many false company names to avoid repercussions from their own illegal activities, which often resulted from theirfiercecompetitiveness. So my father's loyalty to Fawcett was partly attributable to his gratitude for their having first entrusted him with seven years of work, but it was also because he did not want to burn any bridges with Fawcett Publications, and indeed, he did continue to get freelance assignments with Fawcett for the next three decades, so it would be misleading to attribute his actions entirely to his loyalty to friends. Norman Saunders did comic covers for Fawcett comics from 1948 to 1953, and covers for Fawcett paperbacks, and also illustrated stories for Fawcett slick magazines in the post war period. He may well have never received any of those future jobs if he had openly used his real name on the Saucy pulps at that time, when Donnenfeld's NYC magazines were considered the "enemy" of Whiz Bang."

 

Hopefully, you find this as interesting as I did.

 

As an addendum, David also mentioned that:

 

"As a comic book collector, you may be interested to know that another artist who "defected" with Norman Saunders from Minneapolis Whiz Bang to the NYC Saucy magazines was the cartoonist Carl Von Buettner. He did many of the best interior illustrations of Whiz Bang and Saucy Movie Tales. At least two of my father's covers for Saucy pulps are actually designed by Carl Buettner and then painted by Saunders. In those cases the cover artist is credited as "Carl Blaine" a pen name that reflects their uniquely shared authorship. Carl Buettner is a wonderful artist about whom I would like to know more. He did the daily newspaper strip of CHARLIE McCARTHY the ventriloquist dummy around 1937. He worked for Ub Iwerks around 1936. He worked for Disney animation around 1940s. He drew some Uncle Scrooge comics in the 1950s. He did a children's book about How To Draw Woody Woodpecker around 1958. He died in Los Angeles in 1965."

 

David runs the www.normansaunders.com website about his dad and has a biography of his father in progress, the book is being sent to China to the printers later this Spring so look for ads about it coming up soon! This book is going to expand on David's article about his father that appeared in back in Ilustration Magazine # 2.

[selegue]

As we bandy around cover by Norman Blaine Saunders, I was wondering what Norman thought about his work for Donenfeld and his Saucy titles, racy as they were. I talked to David, his son, at the Pulp show in Chicago last weekend and left completely forgetting to ask that question. Since, David has emailed me his recollection about that fact so here's edited his extensive comments in answer to my question:....

 

Yowsah!

Bangzoom, do you have a "Post of the Year" award in that pile of emoticons that you keep handy? We have a contender.

 

Thanks for inquiring and for posting the answers. It must have been fun to meet David. I enjoyed his input to the list earlier this year (or was it late 2007?).

 

Jack

[shiverbones]

amazing post! What a wealth of info! Thanks!

[selegue]

Something mysteriously crashed my browser and cleared my cache, so when I opened this thread I went back to post #1.

 

I got a big laugh out of, "Being a latecomer to these boards I realize that almost anything I choose to post has probably already been uploaded. So, I'm going to pick things from my collection rather randomly and hope there's some interest."

 

I was just about to complain about all your repetitive posting of the same old stuff, BZ. Argosy (January 8, 1938) AGAIN!? Sheesh. It's like yet another Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon, y'know?

 

By the way, did you ever notice any interest in your random choices?

 

Jack

 

The first appearance of Carson of Venus.

 

 

Argosy (January 8, 1938)

[BangZoom]

By the way, did you ever notice any interest in your random choices?

 

Occasionally I post something that elicits a response.

 

So, Jack, you've reread all 749 pages of this thread?

[BangZoom]

As we bandy around cover by Norman Blaine Saunders, I was wondering what Norman thought about his work for Donenfeld and his Saucy titles, racy as they were. I talked to David, his son, at the Pulp show in Chicago last weekend and left completely forgetting to ask that question. Since, David has emailed me his recollection about that fact...

 

Wonderful info, Scrooge.

 

Thanks for sharing it with us.

 

I wrote to David late last year to ask him some questions about his father's work in the comic industry and the subject of misattributions. David replied with a wealth of information that I posted earlier this year in another thread.

 

Here it is again for those who might find it of interest.

 

 

[MrBedrock]

Great post, Scrooge.

 

And thanks for the thread, BZ.

 

Big kudos to the both of you. (thumbs u

[BangZoom]

 

Norman Saunders (1907-1989) had a long and influential career from 1926 to 1984. During those decades his paintings were a constant presence on American newsstands, where his work graced the covers of thousands of publications, all of which were sold for pocket change. Despite their petty cost, in his field, the paintings of Norm Saunders were just as impressive, irreverent, and colorful as his own personality. Publishers of popular culture periodicals paid him very well and regarded him as an industry leader. Norm was privileged to sell freelance cover paintings to all of the major competing publishers, so It should be expected that there would be many other younger artists who were eager to follow in his footsteps. Some pulp artists openly asked for his guidance and advice, such as Ralph DeSoto and Lillis. Some pulp artists copied his style, as much as their individual skills allowed them to, such as J. W. Scott and Clarence Doore. But Allen Anderson was the only artist who Norman Saunders actually took under his wing and encouraged to become a freelance cover artist, when Anderson was content to remain a low-paying staff artist doing paste-up and mechanicals for Fawcett publications, where the artists first met as young men in 1928. After years of cajoling, Norm finally lured Allen Anderson to quit steady job and move to NYC and work as a freelance pulp artist. They never lived together or shared a studio space, but Allen did eat dinner at Norm's studio most of the time from 1940 to 1942.

 

By the 1950s there was no longer any hope that an artist could make a living as a freelance artist painting covers for the pulp magazine industry, because tastes had evolved away from that format. From that point onward, the hierarchy of mastery had crumbled and my father's former-prominence was as meaningless as yesterday's newspaper. Another, far-more tragic example of how revolutions upset the established order is the after-effects of the Russian Revolution, when there was a mass exodus of political refugees that flooded Europe and America. These Russians were all searching for the basics of a new life. They all met together in the dark and filthy steerage section of immigrant transport ships, regardless of their formerly-separate social status. In its own way, the collapse of the pulp magazine industry washed away the former "pecking order" and all illustrators wound up looking for the same scarce low-paying jobs. Their names and reputations were quickly forgotten, outside of their own inter-personal circle. By 1950 they were all lined up at old dry wells, begging for any handouts they might find.

 

The same half-dozen publishers who had made the pulps were anxious to follow public tastes into whatever new media format was preferred by the fickle post-war public, so the publishers all began to concentrate on publishing material in five different categories: 1.- paperback books, 2.- comic books, 3.- men's adventure magazines, or 4.- girlie magazines, or 5.- mainstream "slick" magazines. Each of the six big publishers, who had formerly manufactured pulp magazines, tried to do as much experimentation as they could afford to in these five "new" formats, while they hoped to generate the next big money-making hit.

 

The pulp artists were all knocked back down to "entry-level" laborers who were forced to scramble for the few scraps of employment that the publishers occasionally needed. The pulp industry had needed hundreds of cover paintings every month, but the new genres required only a fraction of that number, so the jobs for freelance illustrators were far fewer and far less pay after the pulp industry collapsed around 1950.

 

These social circumstances during the era from 1948 to 1970 all added up to my father switching from painting pulp magazine covers to doing 115 comic book covers, 106 paperback covers, and 60 men's adventure covers, (with over a thousand black-and-white interior story illustrations). he made no covers for girlie magazines or slick magazines in that era.

 

Thanks to the superior quality in his work, and the fact that he signed most of his comic book covers, he was eventually recognized by comic book collectors (in retrospect) as a significant contributor to the pre-code genre. On top that those distinctions, Norm's pre-cove comic work was infamous for his gruesome brutality on covers for Worlds of Fear, Ellery Queen, Strange Stories From Another World, Crime Clinic, Unknown Worlds. As a result of this notoriety, and compounded by the general collapse of the previous hierarchy, Norm's reputation grew among cognoscenti to eclipse many other pulp artists who also found small jobs painting comic covers, until it became "common knowledge" that every painted cover on any comic book from the 1950s was a "Saunders."

 

In fact, there were many different un-employed pulp artists doing cover artwork for comic books -- Bob Stanley, Harold Winfield Scott, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Ralph DeSoto, Clarence Doore, Sam Savitt, Ernesto Nordli, Sid Shores, and Allen Anderson.

 

Dad's first comic book cover work was for Fawcett. He painted covers for Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy and a wide variety of their other Fawcett comic titles. His next comic book cover work was for Ziff-Davis. He had previously worked for their pulp magazine AMAZING STORIES, but when they decided to start a comic book line, and to assemble it in NYC instead of their home turf in Chicago, Ziff decided he wanted Norman Saunders to paint all of his comic covers. Because he was the first person they commissioned for these frelance assignments, Norm painted the covers of many of the inaugural issues of Ziff-Davis comic titles. Dad proudly signed the artwork with a painted signature. During this initial phase, when Ziff-Davis was just implementing their strategy to burst into the comic business with a full line of titles, there was so much work and so little time, Norm suggested they also hire Allen Anderson to paint whatever work he was unable to do in time for their deadlines. They reluctantly agreed. There was a lot of pressure and the pay was low. Ziff was demanding and he wanted to make changes, which was an insulting new experience for Saunders, who had been accustomed to being treated like a master. Eventually Ziff fired my father when he refused to follow Ziff's instructions on how to compose a cover. Dad walked out and never looked back, but the art editor, Herb Rogoff, was immediately tasked with finding a more docile replacement for Norman Saunders. At first he continued to hire Allen Anderson, but he later hired Ralph DeSoto, and then Clarence Doore. All three of those artists were hired to paint covers for subsequent issues of Ziff-Davis comic books that revolved around characters that had originally been created by Norman Saunders on the cover art for the introductory issues, so these new artists were in the unpleasant position of being asked to basically imitate the pre-existing character, and thereby "copy" a Saunders. Because of this practical twist, these three unique individual pulp artists were forced by Ziff to imitate Norm's paintings to some degree.

 

I think they each made their own distinct creations, but with these circumstances, misattributions were inevitable, and as the hobby of collecting old comic books grew, those misattributions have grown into a commonly accepted "urban legend," (which is no more truthful than the commonly accepted urban legend that a greaser's molll was stung to death by black widow spiders nesting in her bee-hive hairdoo). Those rumors were finally carved in stone when the Overstreet price guide began to print these misattributions as historical "facts." That destroyed any chances that collectors would use their own common sense to distinguish the many separate painting styles of the various artists that worked for Ziff-Davis in those golden years.

 

My frustration has been that no one seems to care about correcting those misattributions, especially after everyone has bought or sold, or expects to sell, a comic book that is listed in the Overstreet Guide as a "Saunders" when in fact it is an Anderson. When I realized that no collectors would ever welcome my "down-grading" their investment to an "Anderson" I realized that I had a new mission... I had to let people know that Anderson, and DeSoto and Doore were each great artists in their own right. It so happened that a publisher was beginning a new magazine called ILLUSTRATION at that same time and he contacted me to write a biographical article on my Dad, which I did in issue #2, and then I offered to write a comparable article on Allen Anderson, which finally came out in issue #18. Following that same train of thought, I have also documented Ralph DeSoto (#10) and Clarence Doore (#11), in my efforts to raise the public awareness of these other noteworthy artists. I am happy to report that I have detected an increased instance of comic book sellers properly listing the cover artists since these articles were published, despite the fact that (I believe) Overstreet has not amended their previous misattributions. When I mentioned this anomaly to a knowledgeable person, I was told that was because Overstreet himself is not an unbiased historian of comic books, but is in fact himself a major investor in the buying and selling of comic books, he will therefore be among the last people to "down-grade" his "property" from a "Saunders" to a "Anderson." I have no idea if this is true, (or just another urban legend) but it does explain the frustrating lack of interest in accepting my efforts to supply them with correcting for the many obvious misattributions. To be completely fair, I confess that I do not buy each new edition that comes out, and I gave up on knocking my head against that door. So perhaps by now Overstreet has corrected all of the old misattributions, but the last time I bothered to check out a current copy of Overstreet at my friendly neighborhood comic shop, I still found the same old mistaken attributions, but that was a while back.

 

Rather than compose my own list of attributions for all comic books, which would assume an authority I do not have beyond common-sense stylistic assessment, I thought I should confine my "authoritative judgments" to only listing those comic book covers that my father did paint, which are facts that I have a right to claim with authority because I assembled that list when Dad was still alive and he approved it and he still had the original proof sheet for each comic book. Anyone who cares to see that list can go to my website for my father, http://www.normansaunders.com and see a checklist of all his comic book covers. or they can wait a few months until my new coffee table book on Norman Saunders comes out in february and buy their own copy. If it ain't on that list, it ain't by Saunders. If it is by Saunders, it is on the list.

 

[BangZoom]

 

Here's a checklist of Norman Saunders comic book covers.

 

1. 49-01,Tom Mix # 13

2. 49-01,Western Hero # 74

3. 49-02,Tom Mix # 14

4. 49-04,Hopalong Cassidy # 30

5. 49-04,Tom Mix # 16

6. 49-04,Western Hero # 77

7. 49-05,Hopalong Cassidy # 31

8. 49-05,Tom Mix # 17

9. 49-05,Western Hero # 78

10. 49-06,Hopalong Cassidy # 32

11. 49-06,Tom Mix # 18

12. 49-06,Western Hero # 79

13. 49-07,Hopalong Cassidy # 33

14. 49-07,Western Hero # 80

15. 49-08,Hopalong Cassidy # 34

16. 49-08,Tom Mix # 20

17. 49-08,Western Hero #8 1

18. 49-09,Tom Mix # 21

19. 49-09,Western Hero # 82

20. 49-10,Tom Mix # 22

21. 49-10,Western Hero # 83

22. 49-11,Hopalong Cassidy # 37

23. 49-11,Tom Mix # 23

24. 49-12,Hopalong Cassidy # 38

25. 50-01,Hopalong Cassidy # 39

26. 50-02,Hopalong Cassidy # 40

27. 50-03,Hopalong Cassidy # 41

28. 50-03,Romantic Marriage # 3

29. 50-04,Bill Boyd # 2

30. 50-04,Modern Love # 1

31. 50-05,Romantic Marriage # 4

32. 50-11,Little Al of the FBI # 1 (# 10)

33. 50-11,Sky Pilot # 1

34. 50-12,Wild Boy # 1 (# 10)

35. 51-04,Cinderella Love # 2 (# 11)

36. 51-04,G.I. Joe # 2 (# 11)

37. 51-04,Little Al of the FBI # 2 (# 11)

38. 51-04,Little Al of the Secret Service # 2 (# 11)

39. 51-04,Sky Pilot # 2 (# 11)

40. 51-04,Wild Boy # 2 (# 11)

41. 51-05,Amazing Adventures # 3

42. 51-05,Bob Swift - Boy Sportsman # 1

43. 51-05,Kid Cowboy # 4

44. 51-06,Baseball Thrills # 1

45. 51-06,G.I. Joe # 3 (# 12)

46. 51-07,Bob Swift - Boy Sportsman # 2

47. 51-07,Crime Clinic # 1

48. 51-07,Little Al of the Secret Service # 1 (# 10)

49. 51-08,Baseball Thrills # 2

50. 51-08,G.I. Joe # 4 (# 13)

51. 51-08,Wild Boy #3 (# 12)

52. 51-09,Bob Swift - Boy Sportsman # 3

53. 51-09,Crime Clinic # 2

54. 51-09,Little Al of the Secret Service # 2

55. 51-10,Bob Swift - Boy Sportsman # 4

56. 51-10,Football Thrills # 1

57. 51-10,G.I. Joe # 5 (# 14)

58. 51-10,Wild Boy # 4

59. 51-11,Crime Clinic # 3

60. 51-11,Explorer Joe # 1

61. 51-12,G.I. Joe # 6

62. 51-12,Little Al of the Secret Service # 3

63. 51-12,Wild Boy #05

64. 52-01,Bob Swift - Boy Sportsman #5

65. 52-01,G.I. Joe #7

66. 52-01,Speed Smith - Hot Rod King # 1

67. 52-02,Crime Clinic # 4

68. 52-02,G.I. Joe # 8

69. 52-03,G.I. Joe # 9

70. 52-04,Ellery Queen # 1

71. 52-04,Fly Boy # 1

72. 52-04,G.I. Joe # 10 (v2 #10)

73. 52-04,Space Busters # 1

74. 52-04,Wild Boy # 6

75. 52-05,G.I. Joe # 11 (v2 #11)

76. 52-06,Crime Clinic # 5

77. 52-06,Ellery Queen # 2

78. 52-06,G.I. Joe # 12 (v2 #12)

79. 52-06,Space Patrol # 1

80. 52-06,Unkown World # 1

81. 52-08,Strange Stories From Another World # 2

82. 52-10,Strange Stories From Another World # 3

83. 52-10,Cloak & Dagger # 1

84. 52-10,Explorer Joe # 2

85. 52-10,Space Patrol # 2

86. 52-12,Strange Stories From Another World # 4

87. 53-02,Strange Stories From Another World # 5

88. 53-06,Worlds of Fear # 10

89. 54-03,Atomic Spy Cases, Approved # 1

90. 54-03,Invisible Boy, Approved #2

91. 54-04,Wild Boy (re-issue), Approved #3

92. 57-05,Classics Illustrated #138 - Center of the Earth

93. 58-00,Boys Life Illustrated Treasury

94. 58-07,Classics Illustrated #145 - The Crisis

95. 58-09,Classics Illustrated #026 - Frankenstein

96. 59-01,Classics Illustrated #148 - The Buccaneer

97. 59-03,Classic Illustrated - Story of Pirates

 

 

[BangZoom]

As an addendum, David also mentioned that:

 

"As a comic book collector, you may be interested to know that another artist who "defected" with Norman Saunders from Minneapolis Whiz Bang to the NYC Saucy magazines was the cartoonist Carl Von Buettner. He did many of the best interior illustrations of Whiz Bang and Saucy Movie Tales. At least two of my father's covers for Saucy pulps are actually designed by Carl Buettner and then painted by Saunders. In those cases the cover artist is credited as "Carl Blaine" a pen name that reflects their uniquely shared authorship. Carl Buettner is a wonderful artist about whom I would like to know more. He did the daily newspaper strip of CHARLIE McCARTHY the ventriloquist dummy around 1937. He worked for Ub Iwerks around 1936. He worked for Disney animation around 1940s. He drew some Uncle Scrooge comics in the 1950s. He did a children's book about How To Draw Woody Woodpecker around 1958. He died in Los Angeles in 1965."

I think I have a copy of Carl Buettner's book around here. I'll take a look and see if I can put my hands on it easily.

 

I also have approximately 50 Whiz Bangs. I'll try to post a few of those, too.

 

[ashrael]

By the way, did you ever notice any interest in your random choices?

 

Occasionally I post something that elicits a response.

 

So, Jack, you've reread all 749 pages of this thread?

 

I actually went through this entire thread over the last 2 weeks and checked out your incredible collection again. I keep forgetting about the breadth of you collection. So, do you collect baseball cards too? Have a certain Honus Wagner card you want to share with us?

 

Thanks for the years of sharing!

[Scrooge]

I wrote to David late last year to ask him some questions about his father's work in the comic industry and the subject of misattributions. David replied with a wealth of information that I posted earlier this year in another thread.

 

Here it is again for those who might find it of interest.

 

Thanks for posting that again. I'd never seen it. I must have missed it when I was in Europe last.

[BangZoom]

I actually went through this entire thread over the last 2 weeks and checked out your incredible collection again. I keep forgetting about the breadth of you collection. So, do you collect baseball cards too? Have a certain Honus Wagner card you want to share with us?

 

I collected baseball cards when I was a kid and still have them.

 

When I was about seven I went door to door in the neighborhood asking if anyone had any old cards they'd be willing to give away.

 

I ended up acquiring a bunch more baseball cards that way and even more memorable for me, I picked up a number of 3 Stooges cards and "You'll Die Laughing" cards (illustrated by Jack Davis). Those were my favorites.

 

 

 

[BB-Gun]

Wow! Early Barks. Cool stuff.

Below are a couple of Barks drawings from Aug and Sept 1928 issues of CEO.

bb

 

[HouseofComics.Com]

You went door to door asking for baseball cards? Why didn't I ever think of that!

 

That is right out of the Gary Carter handbook btw. He did that for comic books with his little red wagon and ended up with tons of 50s non-hero stuff one summer.

[BangZoom]

You went door to door asking for baseball cards? Why didn't I ever think of that!

 

I would also stop and ask older boys, that I didn't even know, if they had any comic books I could have.

 

I was a pretty nervy kid, I guess.

[G.A.tor]

You went door to door asking for baseball cards? Why didn't I ever think of that!

 

I would also stop and ask older boys, that I didn't even know, if they had any comic books I could have.

 

I was a pretty nervy kid, I guess.

it certainly appears to have paid off!

[BangZoom]

 

I also loved Mars Attacks cards with illustrations painted by Norman Saunders. I bought these out of a coin operated machine that sold nothing but packages of these cards.

 

I wish I had a photo of it.

 

[BB-Gun]

As we bandy around cover by Norman Blaine Saunders, I was wondering what Norman thought about his work for Donenfeld and his Saucy titles, racy as they were. I talked to David, his son, at the Pulp show in Chicago last weekend and left completely forgetting to ask that question. Since, David has emailed me his recollection about that fact so here's edited his extensive comments in answer to my question:

 

"Norm Saunders worked for Fawcett Publications in Minneapolis from 1927 to 1934, where he had been hired to do his first illustration work. It was a fun and close group of creative people. Their biggest money-maker was Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, which was an irreverent saucy joke book with a few photos of semi-nude starlets. Whiz Bang was among the most popular periodicals of the Post-War 1920s. By 1929, Fawcett's domination of this market was particularly challenged by a growing competitor in NYC, Harry Donnenfeld and Frank Armer, who produced a group of Spicy pulps. This history is well documented in the Gerard Jones book THE MEN OF TOMORROW. Many of the "talent" at Fawcett Publications was being pilfered by this NYC competitor, and one by one, Fawcett lost ground. By 1935, Norman Saunders was regularly selling freelance illustrations to the Donnenfeld & Armer magazines, which at that time were using the name "Movie Digest" publications. Norman Blaine Saunders signed these illustrations with his middle name, "Blaine," a pen name that he was never used before and was never to use again. I believe he used this name to mask his identity, out of a sense shame for his disloyalty to Fawcett Publications, for which he was always grateful for giving him his start in illustration. He did not use the name "Blaine" to disguise his identity because of his shame in the subject matter, which was not too different from his art in Whiz Bang, which was signed "Nifty Saunders" on some occasions. He certainly did not regret those artworks. Also, he did not mask his artistic style, as some other illustrators did when they wanted to remain unknown. My father's style of painting in 1936 for his work for the Saucy magazines was exactly the same as his work for Fawcetts, Dell, and Street & Smith, so there was sign of his desire to mask his identity out of regret for the subject matter.

 

Norman Saunders was an entirely unpretentious artist. His early, middle and late work was thoroughly peppered with equally "naughty" illustrations, so there is no chance that he viewed his 1936 work for the Saucy magazines of Donnefeld and Armer as "regrettable" or below his standards. The only element of truth in this idea is that Norm began to take advanced level painting classes in NYC in 1936 from Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art, and after three years of night classes, Norm had learned a great deal more about the mastery of painting craft, so he would naturally feel that his earlier painted covers were inferior from a technical point of view, and he may well have viewed them as inferior, but that is totally unrelated to his use of the pen name "Blaine" of the sexual subject matter."

 

and here's a follow-up after some comments I made about the above:

 

"Freelance artists were all in competition with each other and they needed to maintain "friendships" with the art directors working at as many publishers as possible. A freelance artist really was a lone wolf. They had no guaranteed income what so ever. So they could not afford to make enemies in the industry. Nevertheless, the artists competed against each other for survival, and the publishers competed against each other for survival, so the business environment was very treacherous and the results are many unsigned illustrations and pseudonyms. Likewise, the publishers used many false company names to avoid repercussions from their own illegal activities, which often resulted from theirfiercecompetitiveness. So my father's loyalty to Fawcett was partly attributable to his gratitude for their having first entrusted him with seven years of work, but it was also because he did not want to burn any bridges with Fawcett Publications, and indeed, he did continue to get freelance assignments with Fawcett for the next three decades, so it would be misleading to attribute his actions entirely to his loyalty to friends. Norman Saunders did comic covers for Fawcett comics from 1948 to 1953, and covers for Fawcett paperbacks, and also illustrated stories for Fawcett slick magazines in the post war period. He may well have never received any of those future jobs if he had openly used his real name on the Saucy pulps at that time, when Donnenfeld's NYC magazines were considered the "enemy" of Whiz Bang."

 

Hopefully, you find this as interesting as I did.

 

As an addendum, David also mentioned that:

 

"As a comic book collector, you may be interested to know that another artist who "defected" with Norman Saunders from Minneapolis Whiz Bang to the NYC Saucy magazines was the cartoonist Carl Von Buettner. He did many of the best interior illustrations of Whiz Bang and Saucy Movie Tales. At least two of my father's covers for Saucy pulps are actually designed by Carl Buettner and then painted by Saunders. In those cases the cover artist is credited as "Carl Blaine" a pen name that reflects their uniquely shared authorship. Carl Buettner is a wonderful artist about whom I would like to know more. He did the daily newspaper strip of CHARLIE McCARTHY the ventriloquist dummy around 1937. He worked for Ub Iwerks around 1936. He worked for Disney animation around 1940s. He drew some Uncle Scrooge comics in the 1950s. He did a children's book about How To Draw Woody Woodpecker around 1958. He died in Los Angeles in 1965."

 

David runs the www.normansaunders.com website about his dad and has a biography of his father in progress, the book is being sent to China to the printers later this Spring so look for ads about it coming up soon! This book is going to expand on David's article about his father that appeared in back in Ilustration Magazine # 2.

 

BZ,

That is a pretty good list on the website. It even has the more obscure pulps from 1936 and 1937.