How Boobs Changed My Life.

Bill Ward
Mar. 6, 1919 - Nov. 17, 1998
While "growing up", for lack of a better term, there were few high points in my life. I lived for Marvel comic books, I snuck a look at HBO to see naked breasts when I could, and I always bought Cracked magazine. Not Mad, that didn't do it for me. It had to be Cracked. And why? Because, frankly, it was funnier. And the art was better. In the late 1970s, the main artists in the mag I dug were John Severin and Bill Ward. Severin did the wacky TV parodies up front, and Bill Ward did the Nanny Dickering features at the back. I was just developing an appreciation for the female form, and Ward's women were big, busty, and trashy, with giant hips and enormous hair. But mostly busty. He had a long career of drawing women for men's magazines as far back as the 1940s and was the king of so-called "good girl art". His most famous creation was Torchy, a sexually suggestive (but not lewd) World War II-era comic strip. I really loved his work, even though in his later years he did a lot of highly-sexualized bondage work to pay the bills. I forgive ya, Bill...you're the best.