Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.27: Basil Wolverton

No.27: Basil Wolverton

Basil Wolverton’s place in comic history is characterised for the most part by his pushing the envelope with hideous, bizarre, and often controversial art and stories that, despite being as loathed as much as loved, proved to be unique, instantly recognisable and highly influential. Despite his position in the medium, Wolverton could often produce measured features that blended horror and science fiction that were as surreal and weird as they were visceral or grotesque. Words: Andrew Colman…

Wolverton’s early years were certainly out of the ordinary. Working initially as a vaudeville performer, he enjoyed drawing for his own amusement (Wolverton never had any formal art training) and by his late teens in the 1920s had already sold his first cartoons. After being rejected by Walt Disney in 1937, Wolverton found his calling in comics, in 1938. By 1940, his artistic footprint had more or less coalesced with his first comic series, Spacehawk, which ran for two years in Novelty Press’s Target Comics. The strip’s off-kilter science-fiction adventures, starring the eponymous interstellar lawman, brimmed with weird worlds and gaudy aliens, and was highly inventive. Reminiscent as it was of E.C. Segar and Fletcher Hanks (only even more outré), it proved to be the template of much of his output thereon. He would continue in a similar vein with other early golden age publishers, such as Gleason, Fawcett and Centaur, providing pages with knockabout, slapstick humour and ersatz, cartoonish art that was clearly an influence on Robert Crumb, and later Mad artist Don Martin.

When Wolverton moved to Timely in 1942, he created the long-running series Powerhouse Pepper, a strip which had similar elements as before, featuring a dim-witted, super-strong protagonist who basically fought other goons and punched his way out of his problems. It was a considerable hit, its tone once again pure mayhem and lightweight fun. In 1946, Al Capp, cartoonist for Lil Abner, organized a competition for readers to send in drawings of his offstage character Lena the Hyena, who he referred to as the “ugliest woman in the world”. Despite countless entries, it was Wolverton who was the winner. This led to more work at publishers such as Atlas (Timely’s 1950s iteration) and Morse, where he would produce his key works.

His work for Morse and Atlas was a sci-fi and horror hybrid that was perfect for the pre-code era (1950-1955). With outrageously surreal covers for Weird Tales of the Future 2 and 3, as well as tales such as The Devil Birds and The Eye of Doom for Mystic, Planet of Terror, One of our Graveyards Is Missing and They Crawl by Night for Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Flight to the Future, The Monster on Mars, Nightmare World, The Man From The Moon for Weird Tales of the Future, and most importantly The Brain Bats of Venus for Mister Mystery and Robot Man for Weird Mysteries, Wolverton’s stories of creeping doom, monstrously evil aliens and unspeakably nightmarish transformation were restrained (by his standards) vignettes that were ahead of their time, evoking the terror of isolation, helplessness of deep space and grotesque, malign creatures ready to harvest your brain (not exactly Casper the Friendly Ghost, then). Such well-crafted, gothic yarns prefigured so much of what was to come later on in horror and science fiction in general, both in television and film, not to mention the work of just about every underground artist from the 1960s onwards, from Art Spiegelman and Dan Clowes to Peter Bagge and Drew Friedman.

In 1952 he also worked on the original Mad comic, drawing the cover of issue 11, along with parody features about the book’s readership, which allowed him to ratchet up his contorted, exaggerated illustrations that at times went too far. Although he was disliked by publisher Bill Gaines, he was popular with his colleagues, such as Jack Davis, Will Elder and above all editor and Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman, who considered him to be a true original and borderline genius. For many future artists, this was their first experience of Wolverton’s work.

Wolverton would continue with work for other E.C. titles, such as Al Feldstein’s Panic, before moving into biblical illustration for most of the rest of his career, a period that had little in common with his key comic efforts. He did return to the medium in the 1970s, drawing classically skewed covers for DC’s humour title Plop! and a couple of stories for Marvel’s very brief foray into underground comics, Comix Book, his art published alongside many of the illustrators who he had influenced many years earlier. Honoured after his passing in 1978 by the Eisner and Jack Kirby halls of fame, Wolverton was an underrated artist who is feted by so many industry veterans and of course his burgeoning fan base.

Here’s links through to the other entries in our 101 Greatest so far as well

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.28: Howard Chaykin

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.29: Moebius

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.30: Dave Gibbons

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.31: Creig Flessel

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.32: Milt Caniff

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.34: Burne Hogarth

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.35: LB Cole

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.37: Bill Everett

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.38: Robert Crumb

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.39: Mac Raboy

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.41: Jim Starlin

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.42: Mike Zeck

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.43: Adam Hughes

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.44: Daniel Clowes

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.45: Gene Colan

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.46: George Perez

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.47: Michael William Kaluta

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.48: Cary Nord

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.49: Frank Quitely

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.50: Mike Ploog

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.51: Johnny Craig

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.52: Darwyn Cooke

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.53: Steve Dillon

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.54: Gil Kane

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.55: Michael Zulli

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.56: John Romita

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.57: Joe Maneely

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.58: Marshall Rogers

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.59: John Severin

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.60: Alex Toth

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.61: Brian Bolland

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.62: David Mazzuchelli

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.63 Reed Crandall

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.64 Harry Anderson

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.65 Nick Cardy

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.66 Matt Wagner

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.67 Bryan Hitch

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.68 Shawn Martinbrough

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.69 Al Feldstein

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.70 Nestor Redondo

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.71 Tarpe Mills

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.72 Eduardo Risso

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.73 JH Williams III

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.74 Irv Novick

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.75 Dan Zolnerowich

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.76 Gilbert Shelton

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.77 Tommy Lee Edwards

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.78: Sean Phillips

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.79: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.80: Dan DeCarlo

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.81: Marie Severin

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.82: John Paul Leon

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.83: Jim Lee

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.84: Denys Cowan

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.85: Ross Andru

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.86: Paul Gustavson

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.87: George Evans

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.88: Michael Golden

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.89: Matt Baker

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.90: Todd McFarlane

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.91: Fiona Staples

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.92: Carl Barks

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.93: Carmine Infantino

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.94: Alan Davis

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.95: CC Beck

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.96: Syd Shores

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.97: Bob Fujitani

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.98: Tim Sale

Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.99: Jim Aparo

https://tripwiremagazine.co.uk/headlines/tripwires-101-greatest-comic-artists-of-all-time-no-100/

https://tripwiremagazine.co.uk/headlines/tripwires-101-greatest-comic-artists-of-all-time-no-101/