Valentines Davis

I know a good trend when I see one.  After highlighting some Al Capp work last time out, this week brings us, quite serendipitously, to the intersection of Topps annual Valentines Day themed sets and Jack Davis.  There's even another trend at play as this is a two-parter on the VD front and if you really want to to push the envelope, Davis was part of EC's "New Trend!"

Davis did quite a bit of work for Topps over the years but made his first big splash with 1959's Funny Valentines.  This 66 card set marks the beginning of an annual Valentines Day set  being issued by Topps and set quite a high bar. This well-known issue came out in the year I consider to be the first to begin serious overproduction by Topps and is easily found today:

The wrapper is another bit of Davis awesomeness as well. With 1959 falling squarely in the middle of Monster Mania in the US, who not feature Frankenstein on it, and from a scene that was censored for years from the original Universal movie:

(courtesy www.collectededitions.com)

As we'll see down the road, Frankie would return.  1960 brought another set of 66, sporting an "A" suffix after the card number:

The wrapper art the second time around was much less monster-y and more cutesy:

(courtesy www.collectededitions.com)

What do you do in 1961 after a repeat?  A Giant Size repeat!

We are leaving Davis-land it seems, at this point:

The wrapper is much more like the 1960 version:

(courtesy Non Sport Archive Identification Reference by Adam R. Tucker and Mark T. Simon)

Those 2 1/2" x 4 3/4" dimensions were the updated version of the original Topps "Giant Size" cards that were prevalent from 1952-56.

The 1962 issue changed things up by offering a series of lesser-seen stickers that appear to have been executed by Wally Wood.

(courtesy www.non-sport.com)

The 1962 wrapper is a Wood work as well:

Topps would roll out a different type of Valentines Day product in 1963 and then it would get weird for a couple of years.  More on that next time out!

Linky Dink And You

I thought I would do something a little different today and highlight a few sites around the web that take in-depth looks at some classic Topps sets and the people that produced them. I am finishing up my guide to Topps from 1938-56 and starting to slowly extract myself from a years-long immersion in the era.  My next port of call is going to be the mid 60's and what better way than to give some well deserved props to the early Topps artists than by directing you all to some key websites.

The artists sometimes get short shrift as their Topps work is not signed; indeed they were paid very little for their efforts and would have been "advised" by Topps not to talk openly about their work for the firm. Make no mistake though-it was the artwork that made a Topps card, especially the non-sports ones, a Topps card.

I'll not delve into Woody Gelman's output right now as there does not seem to be a dedicated site for him (yet) but he was quite instrumental, of course, in creating the "Topps style" of illustration. There is enough information scattered throughout the blog to get a feel for his influence though.

This site gets into the work of Wesley Morse, the first Bazooka Joe artist and soon to be looked at in a little more depth in a new book (with research being provided by BFF o'the archive Jeff Shepherd) that looks at his Topps work.  Morse had a very interesting early career illustrating Tijuana Bibles and early newspaper strips.

Probably the most intriguing site is one run by the family of Norm Saunders. There are oodles of illustrations there and you can spend hours poking around. Saunders had a long career in the pulps before he did work for Topps.

Wally Wood is another Topps artist who is justly celebrated for his comic book work and is one of the giants of the field. He is perhaps best known for his early MAD comics work.

Another MAD alumni, Jack Davis, was an early artist for Topps.

And no roundup would be complete without invoking Basil Wolverton, the tormented genius.

Jay Lynch made his name in underground comix before doing yeoman's work for Topps starting in the late 60's and is forever associated with Wacky Packages.  His website, sadly, looks pretty bare.

Lynch worked a lot with Art Spiegelman at Topps; Spiegelman is world renowned as the Pulitzer Prize creator and illustrator of Maus.

I am just scratching the surface here; there are so many artists that will never be identified and others who I am researching that will have their work discussed in future posts. I'll still be ping-ponging all over the timescape and dissecting the output of the Shorin-Topps era (1938-71 mostly) but want to get a discussion started on the artists since a lot of good information, tips and the like have been generated by the readers of this humble blog over the last four years.

Magic Men

The first modern inserts in baseball packs came not from Topps but rather from their arch rival Fleer, in 1960, although the Fleer issue that contained them was not contemporary but consisted of all time greats and the like. Topps did follow suit later that year by including a series of metallic looking football stickers in the fall's football card packs (see also the the Fleer Sticker Project's overview here) but it wasn't until 1961 that they issued their first baseball insert sets.

The 1960 Fleer effort (cards and inserts both) was somewhat austere and only included team logos for the sixteen extant teams that year. A year later Topps had two different inserts: an elaborate series of 208 drab stamps and a fun, colorful 36 subject ruboff insert. The stamps will be addressed here at a later date; today's quarry is the fun one.

Since they were ruboffs, the image on the paper thin, serrated insert was reversed:



Here is a mirrored image of Banks:



You can see the nickname of Bingo, which illustrates the main theme of the set: amusing nicknames. Of the 18 players included (one per team), all but one had a nickname inserted between his first and last name. The odd man out was Yogi Berra, who apparently was so well known by this time that his given name of Lawrence was ignored. I'll bet they could have ignored his last name too!

Those little black blocks I believe were used by an optical, semi-automated cutting machine. The machine was imperfect, sometimes wildly so.

The instructions on the reverse were to the point:



The ruboffs also had 18 team-themes. Interestingly, the set is alphabetized by the first letter of the team's city and the first letter of the player's last name. Bizarre to say the least.

The team ruboffs had stylized designs, as you can see here despite the out-of-register blue process dye:



The player backgrounds were also pretty snazzy:



As you can see above, miscuts were common. I see however, the graceful hand of Jack Davis in some of the artwork. He did some projects for Topps in the 60's and the illustrations mostly look like his work to my eyes.

The wrapper in 1961 came two ways, one type advertised the stamps:



(courtesy of www.obaks.com)

The other flavor of wrapper was non-specific about the ruboff that lurked within:



Penny packs were immune from inserts and it appears not even the cellos had an insert inside in '61. I believe the stamps were issued first based upon such a timeline in 1962, when another stamp set was issued. The ruboffs likely started around series four.

They are a neat little set that, based upon what is happening to my little pieces of paper, look like they might disintegrate someday, alas!