Many readers will recall my post about advertising comic strip studio, Johnstone & Cushing - but there were other players in that field, as I've discovered from flipping through these old issues of Art Director & Studio News. The most prominent ads I found are from Don Komisarow Studios, but as with all mysteries, one clue seems to open the door to more questions than answers. Was Don Komisarow an artist? How many people actually worked at Don Komisarow Studios?
Based on the art in these ads, can anyone identify the style(s) as being that of any known comic book artist(s) of the day?
What must have been particularly galling for DKS at that time was that Johnstone and Cushing was running only tiny spot ads like those shown at left, peppered throughout each issue of AD&SN, yet they were not only getting tons of high-profile advertising clients, they were even getting mentioned in articles like this one for the redesign of Boys' Life magazine.
A distant third-runner was Vic Herman Studios, which ran the occassional (and by comparison, rather dull) small space ad in the back pages of AD&SN.
You know the top one posted looks a bit like Lou Fine who did a lot of that type of work, but I'm not sure, leonard Starr aslo started then as did John Prentice before he took over Rip Kirby after raymonds death.
ReplyDeleteThere were also guys like Bruno Premiani who worked in teams with one guy like him doing the pencils and another like Star doing the inks. I have a set of photocopies of a job they did together for an book touting nuclear energy in the late 50's.
Thanks for your insight into this, Mike - I would dearly love to see some scans from that nuclear power comic!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you might know: did Starr, Prentice, Premiani et al work for Don Komisarow Studios as well? I seem to remember reading they were at Johnstone & Cushing, but if they were friends of Lou Fine's, perhaps they did work for DKS as well?