Not everything Is Black and White

Sunday Surprise Day.

In the late forties Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles did a series of newspaper comic strips ads together under the pseudonymn Paul Arthur. They had two clients: Mr. Coffee Nerves and Fels-Naptha. I have shown most (if not all of those, if you follow the links). Hre are two ads that are never mentioned, but I think they (or either of them) are involved with it as well. I have seen a lot of ads from this period and there are a lot of similarities between all of them. But these have that modern look of Caniff and Sickles in more than one place. I am putting them up here, so I can refer to them elsewhere, There done before the Paul Arthur ones, so I don't think it is someone aping them.

Additional Material

Saturday Leftover Day.

For me the forties and early fifties were the prime period for comic style advertising in newspapers, magazines and Sunday sections. I have show many samples on my blog, wwhich you can find if you follow the links. They go way back to when I started the blog, so keep scrolling and clicking. Here is a random selection of new ones I found, with some commentary.

Jack Betts' long running Ben-Gay series is one of the two features that made his name. I don't know how much he earned doing them, but for most of his career he did very little else than his two-weekly Ben-Gay and Neddy Nestlé ads. In the early fifties he did some illustrating for ThisWeek and Pictorial Review, but not for very lond and never anything big. In the late fifties his disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The Camels ad series was one of the longest running ad series in Sunday papers. They had varous approaches, but one of the most popular (and most collected) are the ones using celebrities. They seem to have had one artist for the most, but I have never been eble to find his name. I would love to do a book on the influence of the cigarette industry on American culture and be able to look through the archives of those companies, but I have been told there would not be a market for such a book.

In the late thirsties the power duo Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles produced a series of Sunday newspaper ads for several companies, including Fels-Naptha. It seems they did not all of the Fels-Napta ads, because this one (from the same period) is not by them.

Colgate was one of the more frequent user of the Sunday newspapers for their ads. They were often quite dull and drawn by one of the regular illustrators at the Johnstone and Cushing ad company, working in a comic strip style. It is said later The Heart of Juliet Jones artist Stan Drake drew some of them as well. This might be one of them.

Lou Fine's Philip Morris ads are among the best ever made, in my opinion. Although some people prefer his early forties comic book work, his clean, slick style of the late forties and fifties remains a perfect exmple of mid twentieth century comic art realism. He was at his best in the last few, which features Lucille Ball, whose show (I Love Lucy) was also sponsored by Philip Morris.

Another long running favorite of collectors, Craig Fleissel's Eveready series.

Would You Buy a Piece of Soap From a Cartoon Figure?

Wednesday Advertising Day.

In IDW's wondeful artbook about Milton Caniff, editor Dean Mulhany showed a magazine ad for Fels-Naptha soap vy Caniff and Noel Sickles from 1936 under their joint pseudonym Paul Arthur. I had a look to see if they did more than just this one of ad, but couldn't find any. What I did find was a comic strip ad series which ran from early 1937 to somwhere late in 1938. Although the lay-out and look of that ad series is very similar to the ones Caniff and Sickles did for their Postum Coffee ads (most of which I have shown earlier), these seem to be by a different artist. Since the Postum ads were done for the Johnstone and Cushing ad agency, one can assume these come from the same outfit and are probably by one of the illustrators turned comics artists they used.