Friday, April 9, 2010

H. J. Ward’s Pulp Art

The new issue of Illustration magazine gives all its pages to a detailed article on pulp artist H.J. Ward (1909-1945).

The issue has an astounding 154 reproductions, some black and white, but mostly full color, showing everything from Ward’s early efforts at newspaper cartooning, his preliminary studies, his finished paintings (with some full-page close-up details), and his tearsheets, from magazines like “Spicy Mystery Stories” and “Super Detective.”

Author David Saunders has done a very thorough job of digging through the history, even locating Ward’s studio. The provocative imagery in this issue should interest not only illustrators and graphic designers, but also social historians trying to understand the zeitgeist of American culture in the late 1930s and early ‘40s.
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Illustration Magazine
View the Digital Edition

2 comments:

Unknown said...

thanks james, i love pulp comic covers

Scott Conner said...

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across it in the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble, which had not carried it in the past.