When I was in junior high school Big Pappy took me aside to give me the talk. You know, the one where he warned me about what girls and women to avoid. After hearing about how those girls and women would lead me down the road to sex, sin and ruin, I spent the rest of my teenage years looking for them.
He never warned me about is the subject of today’s post, the waterfront girl (probably because we lived 700 miles inland). Our story is about Sal Benson, singer in a waterfront dive. Our gal Sal has had a rough life, and is now trapped on an island entertaining a bunch of coarse roughnecks. She sees a chance to get out by stealing another woman’s fiancé.
“I Was a Waterfront Girl” is drawn by Paul Gustavson and Bill Ward, and is from Quality Comics’ Love Letters #3 (1950).
Kent’s girlfriend, Sue,* is naïve. She wonders “what has come over him,” when Kent is obviously stunned at the sight of sexy Tari, the siren of the tropics. Not only is Sue blind to the obvious, she loses Kent. He follows Tari, who is heading home to her home of Manaloa, but only after breaking the heart of some other poor schmoe.
I see the attraction, since Tari is drawn by Bill Ward, one of the greatest pin-up artists ever to work as a cartoonist, both in comic books and later in gag cartoons. But when Kent comes whimpering home after learning a painful lesson from Tari, Sue takes him back. I ask you women, would you do the same? This is a love comic, and in love stories love conquers all. But if I were to advise Sue, I’d tell her to keep Kent on a very short leash.
From Heart Throbs #2 (1949):
*On page one Sue has “four more letters” to type. Her name plate says “Miss Ives," — missives, as in letters. Is it a deliberate pun or just a coincidence?
This is the second day of our Funky Funnies theme week. Today we light our internal fires with Torchy.
Torchy, who may be the sexiest female character to come out of the golden age of comics, began her career as a filler in Quality Comics’ Doll Man, then earned her own book in 1949. Gill Fox, a master cartoonist who could work in a variety of styles, did a terrific job interpreting Bill Ward’s original vision of the statuesque blonde, and today I’m showing you the first story from Torchy #1 (1949), drawn by Fox.
Putting aside the obvious sexism represented by Torchy (who was drawn to attract young male readers, including servicemen), who do you think drew a sexier Torchy, Bill Ward, or was Fox’s Torchy “foxier”? (One female reader told me Ward’s Torchy “looked like a hooker.” That’s one opinion.) I have a love comic story by Ward coming up soon where we see again Ward's very sexy, slinky women. Should you need evidence, if you’ve never seen Ward’s work, if you have seen it and need reminding, or if you just want to ogle Ward’s beauties, click on the picture below for a Pussycat story he did in the sixties, along with a forties Torchy story reprinted in black and white in the nineties. Warning: lingerie panels abound. No more than you’ll see in the average Victoria’s Secret catalog, but I thought I’d let you know what you’re in for.
Click on the picture for Pussycat and Torchy:
From the Hairy Green Eyeball blog, Pussycat #1 in its entirety!
This is the third of our Funky Funnies postings, funny comic book stories from the Golden Age.
Bill Ward (1919-1998) was a very fine cartoonist with an extra-special talent for drawing beautiful women. It was his bread-and-butter for over five decades. When Ward had a character such as Torchy to draw he made her the focus of the panel. The men he drew in those strips, and what must be thousands of gag cartoons done over several decades, just didn't get the attention the girls did. Of course they didn't! We don't look at Torchy to see guys. We want to see beautiful, bosomy, long-stemmed girls strutting proudly in shoes that would cripple most women. (Even when she's getting a treatment at a spa, as in this tall tale, she's wearing stilettos.) No matter that this story is from a long time ago — 1947 — Torchy is as modern in her sexiness as she was when Ward did his lovingly rendered drawings of her.
Poor little rich girl, Mona, lusts after hardworking hunky young pretty-boy seaman, Bill. After a rough trip through a bad launch and stormy weather, they end up adrift on the much calmer Sea of Love. I'm sure when Heart Throbs #1 was published in 1949 it set many a young girl's heart all-at-sea with the soggy saga of Mona and Bill. And maybe more than a few young guys, too. At one time love comics were the best selling comic books, published by the boat load. Few were as well drawn as this seaborne soap opera, done by a master of pin-up pulchritude, Bill Ward. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had pioneered the genre, and every other publisher jumped into the pool. They could not have sold as well as they did unless they were read by both men and women. So the soap opera is for the gals, and the sexy stuff is for the guys. Or maybe the other way around...or even a mix of both. Everyone likes a good fantasy, and there were no fantasies like love comics.
At this stage of my life when I'm retired not only from my job but relationships, I can understand the fantasy, but always find it tempered by the reality. I often thought that stories of superheroes were more realistic than the love stories I read in these comics. At the end Bill says he and Mona will have to live on a seaman's pay, and she says, "With you, darling, I'd gladly live on bread and water." Ah, that's where these comics get real phony, because she won't. I give Mona and Bill about six months; she's at home and he's at sea and she misses the privileged life of a One Percenter. Back she goes to mom and dad at their mansion, leaving poor Bill with a shipwrecked marriage.
Heart Throbs had smooth sailing from 1949 to 1972. Quality published the first 46 issues. DC bought the Quality line and kept it afloat for 100 issues more.
Another sailor named Bill, Barnacle Bill, that is, is played by Bluto, Popeye's enemy in a few dozen animated cartoons. The eternal triangle is played over and over again, with my personal favorite entry this cartoon from 1935:
