The Pin-Up Art Of Bill Ward
(2006 - Fantagraphics Books)

(edited by Alex Chun & Jacob Covey) There are 235 impressive full-page reproductions out of the 264 pages of this thick digest-sized book. Almost all were saucy cartoons and most have the captions that accompanied them. There have been other books where the double-entendre captions made the image too adult to leave laying around for children, but the humor here is more on the 'innocent' level of MAD magazine, though the publications were considered racy in their time - gags such as "I never give my phone number to strangers - what's your name ?". A number of fetishes are exercised thoroughly here: heels, stockings, lingerie, stripping and spanking. Though of good quality, the paper here is colored off-white, re-creating the pulp of the originals. The foreward is written by Coop, who gets a great presentation of one his own pieces, not to mention that of a Gil Elvgren-created portrait* that is part of the editor's dedication. Nudity ? It's hard to imagine having this many exaggeratedly busty ladies without somebody falling out . . .