Jack Davis (cartoonist)
| Jack Davis | |
|---|---|
Davis in 2015
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| Born |
John Burton Davis, Jr. December 2, 1924 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | July 27, 2016 (aged 91) St. Simons Island, Georgia, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Complications of a stroke |
| Occupation | Cartoonist and illustrator |
| Years active | 1950–2014 |
| Spouse(s) | Dena Roquemore (m. 1950) |
| Children | 2 |
John Burton "Jack" Davis, Jr. (December 2, 1924 – July 27, 2016) was an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories. He was one of the founding cartoonists for Mad in 1952. His cartoon characters are characterized by extremely distorted anatomy, including big heads, skinny legs and extremely large feet.
John Burton "Jack" Davis, Jr. was born December 2, 1924, in Atlanta, Georgia. As a child, he adored listening to Bob Hope on the radio and tried to draw him, despite not knowing what Hope looked like.
Davis saw comic book publication at the age of 12 when he contributed a cartoon to the reader's page of Tip Top Comics No. 9 (December 1936). After drawing for his high school newspaper and yearbook, he spent three years in the U.S. Navy, where he contributed to the daily Navy News.
Attending the University of Georgia on the G.I. Bill, he drew for the campus newspaper and helped launch an off-campus humor publication, Bullsheet, which he described as "not political or anything but just something with risque jokes and cartoons." After graduation, he was a cartoonist intern at The Atlanta Journal, and he worked one summer inking Ed Dodd's Mark Trail comic strip, a strip which he later parodied in Mad as Mark Trade.
In 1949, he illustrated a Coca-Cola training manual, a job that gave him enough money to buy a car and drive to New York. Attending the Art Students League of New York, he found work with the Herald Tribune Syndicate as an inker on Leslie Charteris's The Saint comic strip, drawn by Mike Roy in 1949–1950. His own humor strip, Beauregard, with gags in a Civil War setting, was carried briefly by the McClure Syndicate. After rejections from several comic book publishers, he began freelancing for William Gaines' EC Comics in 1950, contributing to Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, The Vault of Horror, Piracy, Incredible Science Fiction, Crime Suspenstories, Shock Suspenstories and Terror Illustrated.
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