Jay Lynch 1945-2017

Some of the readers here may have seen this already in the news or online but Jay Lynch passed away on March 5th, age 72.  In addition to being a renowned underground comix artist, Jay freelanced on many Topps projects over almost fifty years and worked closely with Woody Gelman on the creation of Wacky Packages. He was also one of the main artists and gag men on Garbage Pail Kids and the longtime writer of Bazooka Joe comics among many other projects.  He was a founder of Bijou Funnies to boot and can be seen below in a picture from the first issue holding the artwork from Nard 'N Pat, his most famous strip. Quite the assemblage, no?

(library.osu.edu)

I was put in touch with Jay by Jeff Shepherd and he was quite helpful when I was researching my book, The Modern Guide To Topps Chewing Gum: 1938-56. From what I have seen, he was like this with everybody.  I'm slowly working on a Topps artists project and while I won't be able to hit him up for information, he will be a focal point nonetheless. I'm also sorry I didn't get a chance to get into longer discussions with him about Woody and folks like Len Brown and Ben Solomon. He was around the place for such a long time, through the IPO in 1972 and the ceding of control by the Shorin's later on, through the sale to Michael Eisner in 2007 and beyond.

His papers (which are voluminous) are being donated to Ohio State University. They include documents and artwork from his entire career; he apparently saved everything he could over his 72 years. Considering the circles he worked in, this will be a valuable resource to a number of disparate folks.

Topps has put out a commemorative set to help his family defray his medical expenses, it's available here if you are interested.

RIP Jay.

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.