"I really liked him."

Those were Vic Dowd's concluding words about his long-lost friend, illustrator Jack Hearne, when Dowd was being interviewed for issue #55 of Alter Ego magazine by Jim Amash.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had really liked Jack Hearne's art as a 10-year old kid back in 1974. It was only after I started researching the illustrator on-line that I discovered Hearne had taken over the art chores on what was then my favourite book series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, with volume 18, "The Mystery of the Shrinking House".

Hearne was the third artist to do cover and interior art for the series, following Ed Vebell and Harry Kane .
I had been devouring the series from the first volume and at that age was completely unaware that the art chores had changed hands - infact, I was completely oblivious to the concept that someone had the job of illustrating (or writing, for that matter), the books just "were" - and I just loved 'em!

Its nice to know that one of the first "real" illustrators I was ever exposed to and who's work I admired was also someone Vic Dowd describes as "a very good illustrator" and "a very nice guy."

*All of this week's images can be seen at full size in my Jack Hearne Flickr set.

"You remember Argosy?"

In his Alter Ego interview, Vic Dowd, speaking of his friend Jack Hearne, asks Jim Amash, "You remember Argosy? Well he [Jack Hearne] was working for the Argosy knock-offs, though I don't remember the names of them."

Dowd is talking about the period shortly after WW II and eventually lost track of his friend when Hearne moved away. Though Hearne must have done work for what Dowd calls "the cheaper men's magazines" around that time he did in fact graduate to being an Argosy contributor by the late 50's.

Yesterday a reader commented that Hearne's style had a powerful macho quality to it and no doubt that quality earned him the assignments first from the Argosy imitators and ultimately from the magazine itself.

No Listing for Jack Hearne

Yesterday evening I went downtown to the library. I had hoped Who's Who in American Art might have a listing for Jack Hearne, but no such luck. He's not listed in Illustrator in America or on AskART.com. At this point it seems that if not for Jim Amash's interview with Vic Dowd in Alter Ego, there'd simply be no clue to who Jack Hearne was.

Another detail from Dowd: Jack Hearne "was partially deaf in one ear, which probably kept him out of the service." Kind of ironic that the most extensive example I've found of Hearne's advertising art is this series of military illustrations for Douglas Aviation.

"Jack could draw anything.."

So far, the best source of info on Jack Hearne continues to be from his friend, illustrator Vic Dowd, in his December 2005 interview conducted by Jim Amash for Alter Ego magazine:

"Jack could draw anything without research," says Dowd. "The rest of us where using models and photographs, but not Jack. He then went on to do high-powered commercial illustrations for major companies, for which he was handsomely paid."

Dowd tells us that Jack Hearne had worked at the Binder shop, an independent studio that produced and packaged comic book art for publishers during the 1940's. My research on the net turned up this comic book cover from 1945 attributed to Jack Hearne.

Other details about Hearne that Dowd shares in his interview: Hearne attended the Pratt Institute and married a woman he met there. He lived for a time in Westport, Connecticut, "but then he got divorced and moved away, and I lost all contact with him," laments Dowd.

"I'd love to know if he's alive and where he lives if he's alive."

"Jack was the total package"

I'm a huge fan of Jim Amash's interviews with golden-age comics creators in Alter-Ego.
In a recent issue (#55) Amash spoke with Vic Dowd, an artist who worked in comics in the early part of his career before moving into illustration. During the interview Dowd asks, "Have you ever come across the name Jack Hearne?" As I read that it occurred to me that in fact I had come across that name - in this series of ads from Collier's magazine that Hearne painted in 1956.

But that's not the first time I ever saw Jack Hearne's work. Though information on the artist is sparse, we'll learn at least a little about the man Vic Dowd called "the total package."