Jack Davis (cartoonist)

Jack Davis (born December 2, 1924) is an American cartoonist and illustrator.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Davis drew for his high school paper and then spent three years in the Navy, where he contributed to the daily Navy News. Attending the University of Georgia on the GI Bill, he did drawings 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." He worked one summer inking Ed Dodd's Mark Trail comic strip.

Attending the Art Students League of New York, he found work with the Herald Tribune Syndicate as an inker on Mike Roy's The Saint comic strip. After rejections from several comic book publishers, he began freelancing for William Gaines' EC Comics in 1950, contributing to Tales from the Crypt, Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales and The Vault of Horror.

His style of wild, free-flowing brushwork and wacky characters made him a perfect choice when Harvey Kurtzman launched Mad as a zany, satirical EC comic book in 1952. Davis contributed to other Kurtzman magazines - Trump, Humbug and Help! - eventually expanding into illustrations for record jackets, movie posters, books and magazines like TIME and TV Guide. His publishing and advertising client list includes AOL, Arista Records, AT&T, Bell South, Capital Cities/ABC, Ciba-Geigy, Columbia Records, DreamWorks, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN, Ford, Golf Digest, Indianapolis Speedway, Kraft, MCI, Mennen, Michelob, NBC, Nestles, Newsweek, Paramount Pictures, Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble, Purina, Reader's Digest, Spalding, Sports Illustrated, Topps, Toyota, U.S. Postal Service, USA Networks, Warner Books and Warner Bros.

Because Davis could create cartoon illustrations in a matter of minutes, he was sometimes called upon to save ad campaigns which had gone awry. This combination of speed and top clients at one time made Davis the highest paid illustrator in the world. Davis once explained that many of his assignments came from art directors who had grown up reading Mad.

In a curious event of synchronicity, when Mad moved to 1700 Broadway, the magazine's fifth-floor production department was next to a wall that had previously been the location, only three feet away, of an immense Davis cartoon for a bank advertisement that towered six stories over 53rd Street. The National Cartoonists Society honored Davis with a Reuben Award during their 55th annual ceremony (May 25-27, 2001, in Boca Raton, Florida).

Jack Davis (cartoonist)

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