Jack Davis, Illustrator Known for Work at Mad Magazine, Dies at 91
The New York Times by Karen Zraic, July 28, 2016

Jack Davis, an illustrator who poked fun at celebrities and politicians in Mad magazine for decades and whose work appeared on the covers of Time and TV Guide, died on Wednesday in St. Simons Island, Ga. He was 91.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his son, Jack Davis III, said.

Mr. Davis was a prolific artist, drawing movie posters for films like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and The Long Goodbye, as well as record album covers.

“There wasn’t anything Jack couldn’t do,” Mad’s editor, John Ficarra, said in a statement on the magazine’s website. “Front covers, caricatures, sports scenes, monsters — his comedic range was just incredible.”

He got his start in 1950 selling drawings to EC Comics, which published horror fiction titles like Tales From the Crypt. Two years later, amid an outcry over the potentially harmful effects of violent comics on children, the company started what became Mad magazine, edited by Harvey Kurtzman. Mr. Davis was a member of the “Usual Gang of Idiots,” the nickname for the crew that put out the magazine.

“There is not a humorous illustrator in the past 50 years who hasn’t been influenced by him,” the magazine’s current art director, Sam Viviano, said in its statement.

Jack Burton Davis, Jr. was born in Atlanta on Dec. 2, 1924, the only child of Callie Davis, a schoolteacher, and Jack Davis, a salesman. After high school, he joined the Navy, serving in Guam, where he drew a comic called Boondocker for The Navy Times.
He returned to his home state and enrolled in the University of Georgia, where he drew for the student newspaper. Before long, his teachers were encouraging him to go to New York to pursue his art career. He moved north and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League.

His early work was dark, craggy, and high contrast, while most illustrators at the time used more realistic and flattering styles, said Chris Garvin, the director of the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art.

“He really looks like a painter in the way he uses a marker,” Mr. Garvin said. “That is something new for illustration at that time.”

His work softened later on. He became known for drawing all sorts of characters with oversized heads and feet, and skinny legs between.

He established himself as a versatile artist known for producing distinctive work quickly. He soon expanded into movie posters, advertising, album covers and other promotional materials.

“I remember going into New York and seeing big, three-story posters, and he’d say, ‘I did that!’ ” Mr. Davis’s son recalled. “There was a time when every single day, you could go to the supermarket or train station, and you could see his work. Those were the glory years.”

Mr. Davis and his wife, Dena, returned to Georgia from New York in the 1990s, settling on St. Simons Island in a house that their son, an architect, designed.

The National Cartoonists Society honored him with a lifetime achievement award in 1996, and he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2005.

In addition to his son and his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Katie Lloyd, and two grandchildren.

Comic book cartoonist and commercial artist Jack Davis (John Burton Davis) was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1924. His cartoons first appeared in 1936 at the young age of ten, when Tip Top Comics accepted, as was its practice, work from a reader. After drawing cartoons for the school paper in high school, Davis drew for the Navy News, while in that branch of the service during the latter stages of World War II. He later drew cartoons while attending the University of Georgia, and in 1951, completed studies at the Art Students League, in New York City.

A training manual he illustrated in 1949 for the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company earned him enough money to buy a car and go to New York. Within a few months his money and car were stolen. But Davis was hired by EC Comics to work on their magazines Mad and its successor, Panic, as well as Small Town Horror Stories. Two of his drawings were reprinted in anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham's 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, as shocking examples of the sort of comic books that were corrupting America's youth.

Davis continued to work for Mad magazine, when, in 1955, EC ended its traditional comic books. He also worked for Atlas Comics, the 1950s forerunner of Marvel. By the 1960s, he was doing bubble gum cards, movie posters and display advertising. He also worked on Little Annie Fanny and Yak Yak, Dell Comics' now-obscure 1961-62 attempt at hip humor. He illustrated three 1963 issues of The Rawhide Kid, his last work in traditional comic books.

Davis went on to dozens of covers for music albums and magazines including Time and TV Guide. He was given the Reuben Award by The National Cartoonists Society in 2000, naming him Cartoonist of the Year.

Source:
www.lambiek.net/davis.htm

Few cartoonists have been as successful or as widely published as the versatile Jack Davis. His first commercial job was created in 1949, an in-house booklet for Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia. After moving to New York City in the early fifties, Davis' work in the comic book field gained instant notoriety when he was hired by EC, where he worked on such titles as Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, and so on, as well as a celebrated stint at Mad.

A fast and talented illustrator, especially as caricaturist, Davis has created magazine covers for Life, Time, Esquire, True West, Frontier Times, and TV Guide, as well as countless paperback and hardback book covers. His work has graced many record album covers and been showcased on movie posters for such notable films as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, The Russians are Coming, Heaven Can Wait, Kelly's Heroes, Bananas, The Producers, The Long Goodbye, The Party, and Sergeants 3.

The prolific Davis has also created advertising art for such clients as L and M, Mennen, Ford, NBC, Columbia Records, Purina, Spalding, Nestle's, and Michelob. In addition, he has also drawn scores of memorable greeting and bubble-gum cards.

Source:
Heritage Auctions