Digital Comic Museum
General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: darwination on December 02, 2013, 01:05:39 AM
-
In case it's not known and of any use to you goldenagers out there, I've just figured out that "Cardwell" in the early issues of Prize Comics is Cardwell Higgins (the GCD credits H. Cardwell). I started to do a little digging to find out more about Higgins while reading tonight in Doc V and Blake Bell's new book on Timely/Atlas artists moonlighting in Goodman's pulps and magazines when I came across this cover painting for Expose Detective 1942-07 which they give a full page to (taken I assume from thie original painting that sold at Heritage):
(http://i.imgur.com/jugt4Oz.jpg)I know Higgins from the covers he did in the late 30s as the girlie pulps started to die off and maybe transition into the pin-up mags of the 40s in titles like High Heel Magazine and Silk Stocking Stories. There's some information on Higgins here:
http://grapefruitmoongallery.com/artists/cardwell-higgins
Higgins seemed to have kept a lot of his work (rare among the girlie pulp artists) which ended up in the hands of Charles Martignette which was then sold at Heritage a while back.
As far as I can tell, though he did some covers for Goodman's true crime and slick-ish magazines and paperbacks(?), he didn't do any pulp covers (though there's an unused preliminary sketch he did in 1942 for Complete War Novels at Heritage which might mean it is a possibility he did some work on Goodman's pulp covers too around that time).
Anyways, I was surprised to find a single auction of comic art among the 106 items listed at Heritage from Higgins:
http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=807&lotNo=3209
(http://i.imgur.com/2nDpS8d.jpg)While I wouldn't go so far as Graprefruitmoon as to label Higgins a forgotten genius or anything (I find his girlie pulp covers middling at best), I'm always happy to learn a little more about any of the girlie pulp artists and to see one moonlighting in the comics. I like the first panel here and will have to go back and take a look at his stuff in the first 6 issues of Prize Comics and keep my eye out for any more of his comics work.
-
Thanks for the link. It's always fascinating to look at original Golden Age art, especially when a good scan of the printed version is also there to compare it with! It's amazing how much fine detail gets lost in printing and reprinting.
-Eric
-
Very interesting read!
Thanks for the link D.
-
Eric, you might be interested in a discussion on comicsuk re. Roy Wilson, a British humour strip artist, and a comparison of a 1941 preliminary submission and the finished panel as it appeared.
http://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=5862
There should be a bit more on Bruce Laing's site by the end of the week
http://comics.brucelaing.id.au/
Hope I haven't gone too off-topic here.