Basil Wolverton

Basil Wolverton (July 9, 1909 – December 31, 1978) was an American cartoonist and illustrator known for his intricately detailed grotesques of bizarre or misshapen people. Wolverton was described as "Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet." His many publishers included Marvel Comics and Mad magazine.

His drawings have elicited a wide range of reactions. Cartoonist Will Elder said he found Wolverton's technique "outrageously inventive, defying every conventional standard yet upholding a very unusual sense of humor. He was a refreshing original." However, there are some negative responses such as when Jules Feiffer stated, "I don't like his work. I think it's ugly."

He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991.

Born in Central Point, Oregon, he later moved to Vancouver, Washington, and worked as a vaudeville performer and a cartoonist and reporter for the Portland News. At age 16 he sold his first nationally published work and began pitching comic strips to newspaper syndicates. His comic strip, Marco of Mars, was accepted by the Independent Syndicate of New York in 1929 but never distributed because it was deemed too similar to Buck Rogers, which debuted that year.

In 1936, Basil had sent four samples to the Walt Disney Studio to apply for the Mickey Mouse comic strip, but was rejected. The strips would eventually be printed in Graphic Story Magazine #12 in 1970 and later cleaned up and reformatted by Greg Sadowski.

Disk-Eyes the Detective and Spacehawks were published in 1938 in Circus comics. In 1940, Spacehawk (a different and improved feature) made its debut in Target Comics, published by Novelty Press. It ran for 30 episodes (262 pages) until 1942.

Other Wolverton characters include Scoop Scuttle, a newspaperman who ran as a backup feature in Lev Gleason Publications' Daredevil Comics and Silver Streak Comics; and Mystic Moot and his Magic Snoot in Fawcett Publications' Comic Comics and Ibis The Invincible. "Bingbang Buster and his Horse Hedy" was a three-page backup story in Lev Gleason's Black Diamond Western #16–28 (1950–1952).

Wolverton's humor feature Powerhouse Pepper, about a superstrong if none-too-bright boxer, appeared in various comic books published by Timely Comics, the 1930s and 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics, from 1942 through 1952. The strip was characterized by alliterative, rhyming dialogue, screwball comedy and throwaway gags in background. The Timely titles, such as Joker Comics, Gay Comics and Tessie the Typist, debuted a number of his spin-off characters and features, including Flap Flipflop, The Flying Flash (who later appeared in Charlton Comics' Jack in the Box #13), Leanbean Green, "Cartoon Crime Mystery" featuring Inspector Hector the Crime Detector, Doc Rockblock, "Picture Poems about Peculiar People", "Funny Boners", Dauntless Dawson, "Hothead Hotel", "Bedtime Bunk", "Foolish Faces" and more.