Ask Lud No. 2...

~GuyBcaps asked: "Considering your art style and subject matter, do you consider yourself influenced by the 'Humorama' pin-up comics, by the likes of Bill Wenzel and Bill Ward?"

Oh, most definitely! But I didn't even know about the Humorama digests of the 1940s–70s until my early 30's, which would be around the mid-1990s… Like most guys my age, I started discovering pin-up humor via Playboy, and thank the gods that good ol' Hef was a major fan of the Humorama cartoons as well! When he started Playboy, he convinced a classic Humorama cartoonist to work for his magazine, namely Jack Cole, creator of Plastic Man. Hefner followed with a lot of incredible cartooning talent such as Doug Sneyd, Jules Feiffer, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder (Little Annie Fanny!) Eldon Dedini, Erich Sokol, Al Stine, John Dempsey, Bobby London, Clive Collins, and the like, up to modern contemporaries like Dean Yeagle. 

Now I knew about Humorama legends like Bill Ward and Dan DeCarlo, but that was because of what they were producing when I was growing up-- Ward drawing legendary Cracked interviewer Nanny Dickering, and DeCarlo drawing for Archie Comics, but it wasn't until I finally got a computer and the internet about their earlier, spicier work! Bill Ward was a master of the glamourous busty ladies, drawn with conte crayons on massive boards that drove the Humorama production crew crazy having to reduce them down to digest size! DeCarlo's ladies were adult versions of the Archie's teen girls-- imagine Betty, Veronica, Midge, Josie, and Melody about 8 to 10 years older, getting into wild situations with boyfriends, bosses, husbands, and even unknown guys off the street! And then there was Bill Wenzel, whose curvaceous cuties floored me when I first saw them! Although DeCarlo wasn't as prolific as Ward & Wenzel, his work stood out so much, that he was guaranteed to have at least one or two cartoons in every Humorama issue, even if they were reprinted over and over again! These three I consider the "Big Three" of the Humorama cartoonists… At one time I had an original Humorama work from Wenzel, Ward, and DeCarlo in my collection. Thanks to the economy, I ended up selling all three (sob!)...

But they're just the tip of the iceberg! You've got Jack Cole, who worked at Humorama until Playboy snatched him up, Stan Goldberg (one of the few Humorama artists still alive), Dave Berg (known as "Davy" Berg, went on to become a legendary Mad artist), comic book pros Jim Mooney & Wayne Boring, Bill Hoest (of Lockhorns fame), Jefferson Machamer, Kirk Stiles, Joe Shuster (of Superman fame[!]), Bill Kresse, Lynn Harrison, and perhaps the most prolific Humorama cartoonist of all: Frank Beaven, who also signed his work with the pen name "Rekoj" (Joker spelled backwards).

When I discovered Humorama, I went on a buying spree, snatching up copies on eBay whenever I could! And I spent hours on hours pouring over those old, musty, browned digests…

Huh, that reminds me… I wonder if there are any good auctions on eBay right now…

Anyway, YES! A lot of the pin-up cartoons I currently do are heavily-influenced by those old Humorama classics… 

Keep those questions coming!

Lud