Mature Readers

256 pages; soft cover; partial color

The Pin-Up Art of Bill Ward continues Fantagraphics’ dedication to showcasing the best of the classic pin-up artists. Culling through thousands of images, editor Alex Chun has selected the best of Ward’s Conte crayon pin-ups, including many of his infamous telephone girls, many of which have not seen print in almost half a century. In those countless cheap and long forgotten men’s humor magazines, Ward’s voluptuous “girly” drawings shared the pages with photos of Bettie Page and Mamie Van Doren, and pin-up cartoons by the likes of Archie’s Dan DeCarlo and Playboy magazine’s Jack Cole. Thumbing through those digests, it quickly becomes evident that Ward was Humorama’s dominant pin-up cartoon artist. His mastery of the Conte crayon allowed him to produce unparalleled textures, including the wonderful sheen on satiny curve-hugging dresses and on black thigh-high stockings that became Ward trademarks. The Pin-Up Art of Bill Ward is presented in the same accessible sotfcover format as The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo and The Pin-Up Art of Bill Wenzel.