Vintage glamour girl artist extraordinaire Bill Ward gets the full Fantagraphics Studio Edition treatment featuring Ward’s most polished, fully-realized pinups from the 1950s and 1960s.
Bill Ward’s glamour girls were the staples of countless men’s and humor magazines, where they shared the pages with cult models like Bettie Page, Tina Louise, and Julie Newmar, and cartoons by fellow “good girl” artists such as Archie’s Dan Decarlo and Playboy’s Jack Cole. Imagine if you will, an innocent but stunning young woman boasting wildly exaggeratedly Barbie-like proportions poured into a wisp of lingerie or clingy cocktail dress and adorned in diamond necklaces and opera-length gloves, all perched on top of a pair of dangerously high stiletto heels, and you’ve got the recipe for the quintessential Bill Ward glamour girl.
What set Ward apart—and above—his talented contemporaries in terms of sheer image-making was his use of the conte crayon. When drawn on simple newsprint stock, this potent combination created Ward’s trademark gossamer sheen on his women’s thigh-high stockings.
This Fantagraphics Studio edition showcases the best of Ward’s Humorama work and includes a healthy number of what became known as his “telephone girls.” Tame by today’s standards, Ward’s telephone girls were always caught in candid moments when they just happened to be talking on the phone dressed in gossamer lingerie in innocently provocative poses. And did they ever talk on the phone when they weren’t in bed?
The majority of the images in this volume were drawn between 1955 and 1965 when Ward was at the height of his skill. They have been scanned in super high-solution from original art and reproduced to highlight every sheen and accentuate every curve to its fullest. The book not only reproduces more than 150 of Ward’s most beautifully rendered illustrations, but also serves as a time capsule to a more innocent moment in pop culture when these images were shocking. The Fantagraphics Studio Edition also features an introduction by fashion/style icon and burlesque superstar Dita Von Teese.
- Fantagraphics, January 31, 2024
- ISBN 978-1-68396-872-6
- 19.5″ × 15.1″, 180 pages, hardcover
- $175 USD
- Order online: Amazon, Things From Another World, Walt’s Comic Shop
As with all AE format material (Artist’s Editions, Artifact Editions, Gallery Editions, Art Editions, Studio Editions, etc.), this is a collection of classic comic material and I’ll be reviewing the book and not the story. For a complete list of all current and announced editions, with review links, please visit our Index. Also, see What is an Artist’s Edition and our Artist Index. This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
This volume contains 159 single panel illustrations, with an introduction by Von Teese, a foreword by Chun, the art, and an index of the gags. Chun’s introduction states Ward’s originals often measured 18 inches by 24 inches, so the images in this book are reduced to 10.5 inches by 14.5 inches.
The art presents very well, each scan clean and clear. The art has aged well, the newsprint paper stock now showing tan to yellow. The art appears bordered with tape residue. The gag is written in ballpoint pen below the image, but it’s rarely legible. All images are black Conté crayon with white for accent and detail. There are no gradients from ink here, but texture was created by laying textured items under the newsprint as the crayon was applied.
The design is simply beautiful. It’s the design choices that make this volume stand out, from the fabric cover with silhouettes and the hot stamped silver lettering to the textured paper. Plus, the exceptionally well-done endpapers and the chapter dividers with their mimicking labels. Each element was thought out for an overall presentation of luxury to the reader.
Production is good: a sewn binding of a heavy glossy paper stock, approximately 170 gsm. The book lays flat when the center is smoothed. My copy had issues: several pages had excess glue that eventually opened because of the glossy paper but left a mark each time. As well the cover material wasn’t applied properly so there’s a large excess on the back cover edge. The book comes shrink wrapped in a cardboard case that has all the information printed on it, a nice change from the standard sticker.
The colophon lists the title as Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Bill Ward, but everywhere else has it as I titled it. I don’t say this very often, but this book would have worked just as well at 9″x 12″. It’s a lot of single repeated gags, over and over. And I wish I could enjoy the gag, but because the text under the art is generally illegible, I have to flip back to the index for every page to read what the gag was. And for the life of me, I don’t know what the full-page image of Von Teese adds to a Bill Ward book.
