Woody Gelman

Woodrow Gelman (1915 – February 9, 1978) was a publisher, cartoonist, novelist and an artist-writer for both animation and comic books. As the publisher of Nostalgia Press, he pioneered the reprinting of vintage comic strips in quality hardcovers and trade paperbacks. As an editor and art director for two-and-a-half decades at Topps Chewing Gum, he introduced many innovations in trading cards and humor products.

Gelman was the co-creator of Popsicle Pete and the co-creator of Bazooka Joe for Topps. He was also a co-creator of Mars Attacks, adapted into the 1996 film by Tim Burton.

Born in Brooklyn, Gelman attended City College of New York, Cooper Union and Pratt Institute before signing on as an assistant animator, in-betweener and scripter with Fleischer Studios in 1939, continuing to write for Famous Studios in 1946.

He is the uncle of the psychologist Susan Gelman and the statistician Andrew Gelman.

Gelman was the creator and writer of talking animal feature "The Dodo and the Frog" for DC Comics. His comic book work from 1944 to 1954 included Nutsy Squirrel and other talking animal comic books of the 1940s, including Funny Stuff and Comic Cavalcade. He also wrote and drew the crime story, "The Kid from Brooklyn!", for Heroic Comics #32 (Sept. 1945).

In 1945, Gelman teamed with Ben Solomon to form a New York advertising art service, Solomon & Gelman, to create advertising campaigns involving cartoon characters, such as their Popsicle Pete magazine and ads for the Popsicle company. Topps writer-editor Len Brown recalled how the partnership led to Solomon and Gelman to sign on full-time with Topps:

Woody had a partner in his art business named Ben Solomon who was also out of animation. They both left Paramount about the same time and came back to New York and started the art service, which was called Solomon & Gelman. In fact, they published the boys series books, called Triple Nickel books. They sold for 15¢. Solomon became the art director at Topps, and Woody was the creative director... Actually, he left Paramount after he got involved with trying to unionize the animators and the studio got wind of it and fired whoever was involved. Paramount was down in Florida in those days, so he had moved down there. He came back to New York in 1944 or 1945 and opened a studio, doing art advertising. Popsicles used to feature a kind of Bazooka Joe character in their advertising, Popsicle Pete, and he was in a lot of their ads that were aimed at kids. I think Woody came up with the character. Later he got involved with Bazooka Joe. Through his art service, Woody was approached by various corporations for advertising work. Topps ultimately came to him, and the owner at that time was impressed with Woody and offered him a job. Woody closed down his art studio which he'd operated for seven or eight years... He did a lot of different stuff. Those were just the two that I remember, Bazooka Joe and Popsicle Pete, because they were cartoon characters, but the studio produced a lot of stuff, basic product artwork for advertisements.

In the autumn of 1951, Gelman and Sy Berger, then a 28-year-old World War II veteran, designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set on the kitchen table of Berger's apartment on Alabama Avenue in the Broadway Junction section of Brooklyn.