Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past.
Artist: Bill Ward (1919–1998)
William Hess Ward was an American cartoonist notable as a "good girl" artist and creator of the risqué comics character Torchy. Early in life Bill discovered that drawing might be something more than a hobby at Ocean City, Maryland when he was seventeen. He earned enough painting pictures on other kids' jackets to support himself through the summer. And more than earning money, as Ward says, "what a fantastic way to meet girls." What better motivation could a young man want! Ward enrolled in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Right away, Ward started specializing. He drew girls. Ward took little advantage of attending one of the finest commercial art schools in the country. With the certain advent of war and the knowledge that he'd be going into the service when he turned nineteen, he neglected his studies and concentrated on girls and fraternity life. In his own opinion, he wasn't a good artist when he graduated in 1941.
Ward got his big break when he did an entire Captain Marvel book. He decided to try for a job at Quality, the top comic line at that time. His timing was perfect. Reed Crandall had just been drafted and Quality offered him Blackhawk. Ward was somewhat overwhelmed. He had only hoped to do a secondary story in one of their books. Instead he was replacing who was, in Ward's words, "the greatest comic book artist of them all." According to Ward, his training by Jack Binder had prepared him well for Blackhawk. All of his practice in inking paid off. Quality particularly liked his covers. Ward was at the top of the comic book world, when as had happened to many others before him, he was drafted. Ward did, and created Ack-Ack Amy. That strip eventually evolved to become the character for which he is best known, Torchy, the blonde bombshell.
It was the early fifties, and Dr. Wertham's campaign to paint comics as bad for kids was having effects. Soon the diminished sales caused Quality to go out of business. Ward found other work drawing cartoons for Abe Goodman's Humorama, and in 1954, at Cracked magazine where he continued for many years.
"Bill Ward was known as the "Master of the Conte Crayon" for his unique ability to render such shading and sheens with the charcoal conte crayon." - Gary Ward, Son
The Pin-Up Art of Bill Ward
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. Ward's other trademark, of course, was his penchant for drawing extremely well endowed women accentuated by tiny waists, and whether playing the role of office secretaries, arm candy at cocktail parties or vamping it up in a boudoir, his women played to multiple fetishes adorned in opera-length gloves, lacy lingerie, and five-inch stiletto heals. Sometimes bawdy, but never tawdry, Ward's top-heavy Humorama women always managed to maintain their allure, innocence and glamour that made Torchy so popular.