In the rarefied realm of classic cartoon pin-up art, nobody did it better than Jack Cole. With his quirky line-drawings and sensual watercolours, cole, under Hugh Hefner's guiding hand, catapulted to stardomin the 1950s as Playboy's marquee cartoonist, a position he held until his untimely death at the age of 43. Jack Cole has been justly celebrated as the creator of Plastic Man and an innovative comic book artist of the 1940s. Most of these drawings have not seen print in more than 50 years. Taken together, they provide a rare glimpse into the singular artistry of Jack Cole.

This beautifully reproduced selection of quirkily elegant, sensual pin-up art from Jack Cole's 1950s career as the premier Playboy cartoonist shows that there was far more to Cole than his brilliant Plastic Man. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.9px Arial; color: #424242}

by Alex Chun & Jacob Covey For more than 40 years, Dan DeCarlo best known for his definitive renditions of Archie Comics' Betty and Veronica, two of comics' most beloved icons. But before joining Archie and unbeknownst to many, DeCarlo has honed his skills as a good girl artist for the Humorama line of digest magazines. Following the immensely popular The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo, this second volume once again displays DeCarlo's sexiest Humorama pin-up cartoons, and continues Fanatagraphics' dedication to showcasing the best of the classic pin-up cartoonists.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.9px Arial; color: #424242} No other pin-up cartoon artist over a 30-year period was as prolific or as omnipresent as Bill Wenzel. Virtually every humor and men's magazine, ranging from Judge in the mid-'40s to Sex to Sexy in the '60s and '70s, boasted two, if not a dozen, of Wenzel's pin-up cartoons. Quick with pen and ink, Wenzel was equally adept with the brush, and nowhere was this more evident than in his work for the Humorama line of girlie digests.

During the 1950s, under the Humorama banner, Abe Goodman churned out scores of cheap digest-sized magazines that featured cheesecake photos and single panel pin-up cartoons. The digests featured the likes of Playboy's Jack Cole, Archie's Dan DeCarlo and glamour girl legend Bill Ward. In addition to these three pin-up cartooning luminaries, other notable who contributed to the pages of the Humorama digests included longtime illustrator Jefferson Machamer; Basil Wolverton, who influenced a generation of underground cartoonists; Mad's Dave Berg ("The Lighter Side"); and future syndicated cartoonists George Crenshaw ("Belvedere"), Bill Hoest ("The Lockhorns") and Brad Anderson ("Marmaduke").

An artist for Playboy magazine since the early 1960s, Doug Sneyd's scintillating cartoon works are now collected in this stunning art book. Featuring the most lush, sumptuous, striking, and hilarious of Doug's full-page cartoons, readers will be charmed with the lovely scantily (and even non-) clad "Sneyd" girls and the one-line jokes they so ably illustrate. This book includes a foreword by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, an introduction by Lynn Johnston, cartoonist of the nationally syndicated strip For Better or For Worse, and reflections from the artist himself!

A massive collection of never-before-collected pre-Comics Code horror comics of the 1950s. Of the myriad genres comic books ventured into during its golden age, none was as controversial as or came at a greater cost than horror; the public outrage it incited almost destroyed the entire industry. Yet before the watchdog groups and Congress could intercede, horror books were flying off the newsstands. During its peak period (1951–54) over fifty titles appeared each month. Apparently there was something perversely irresistible about these graphic excursions into our dark side, and Four Color Fear collects the finest of these into a single robust volume.

Degradation! Crime! Madness! Hysteria surrounded marijuana as a perceived gateway drug from the 1930's to the 1950's and beyond. Adventure Comics, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and works by Frank Frazetta, Jerry Robinson, Jack Kirby, and many more, reveal the social reaction to this era of "Reefer Madness". Like the anti-drug propaganda film, these stories range from comically misinformed to soberly concerned about the influence of Mary Jane on the youth of America. Eisner and Harvey Award winner Craig Yoe brings us his newest collection of wacky, wild, and culturally relevant comics. See how marijuana was perceived in the days of ignorance before it was legalized by the visionary people of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado! See marijuana demonized as a "Satan's cigarettes" in 1950's comics!

Gahan Wilson is among the most popular, widely-read and beloved cartoonists in the history of the medium, whose career spans the second half of the 20th century. His work has been seen by hundreds of millions of people in the pages of Playboy, The New Yorker, Punch, The National Lampoon and many other magazines. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood, adulthood, men, women - and monsters. This three-volume set contains every cartoon Wilson ever drew for Playboy, along with all his prose fiction and text-and-art features.

The Blighted Eye is the most copious, the most diverse, and the most lavish compilation of original comic art ever published ― all from the mind-boggling collection of Glenn Bray. Bray was an enthusiast of marginal or outsider American pop culture when he started to collect original comic art in 1965 ― a time when very few people, including the artists themselves, truly valued the original art. Bray has, over the last nearly 50 years, amassed the most eclectic collection of original comic art in private hands. The book features work by a pantheon of cartooning masters, including Charles Addams, Carl Barks, Charles Burns, Al Capp, Dan Clowes, Jack Cole, R. Crumb, Jack Davis, Kim Deitch, Will Elder, Al Feldstein, Virgil Finlay, Drew Friedman, Chester Gould, Justin Green, Rick Griffin, Bill Griffith, Matt Groening, George Grosz, V.T. Hamlin, Jaime Hernandez, George Herriman, Al Hirshfeld, Graham Ingels, Bernard Krigstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Gary Panter, Virgil Partch, Savage Pencil, Peter Pontiac, Charles Rodrigues, Spain Rodriguez, Charles Schulz, Gilbert Shelton, Joost Swarte, Stanislav Szukalski, Irving Tripp, Chris Ware, S. Clay Wilson, Basil Wolverton, Wallace Wood, Jim Woodring, Art Young, and ― it should go without saying ― many more.