One day someone will write a book on the relationship between the rudimentary graphics of World War Two and tattoo art, pin up art and the comics. Maybe I will!
Countless cartoonists, illustrators and artists began their careers drawing for their foxhole friends, mostly for duffel bags, helmets and such. Most of the soldiers were barely out of high school, and what should have been drawn in schoolbooks and scratched onto desks were being created as patches for patriotic young cannon fodder.
Death became a game. It had to. We were losing the war, and encouraging a little more war fever with a clever drawn gag didn't hurt. War is ugly and the furthest thing from funny, but gallows humor thrives in the face of atrocity, and many a bomb was decorated with humorous graffiti before being dropped.
The illustrations here come from an enormous collection of circa 1940 paper decals I found. All anonymous. All are on scraps of waxy paper, and I believe they are intended to be applied to uniforms, helmets and footlockers. I cleaned up and isolated the images from the paper backing. Anyone with more information on either the artist or the use of these graphic appliques of doom are encouraged to write.
World War Two decals circa 1940 collection Jim Linderman
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Post "light" today as I'm working on a project. Photographers adopted the "frontal" portrait style from traveling limners I suppose, but once in a while someone knew their better side. A nice example of a young gent who would not face the camera.Tintype Photograph, circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman
Roy Carling captured the family farm right on the cusp of extinction. Roy was born in 1918 and lived to 2009. I purchased some 100 of his original cartoon drawings recently at a flea market and am just getting around to reading them. Roy lived and worked in Howard City, Michigan. Family farm. A term which evokes pleasant memories even if you never worked on one.
You won't see any gags by Roy about Listeria or E. coli outbreaks from somewhere affecting folks ten states over. There are no jokes about recalls or "lot numbers" to watch out for. Back when Roy was doing his farm gags, crops traveled to the market down the road, not across the country. Each cow had an affectionate name, and when she gave birth the calves got names too...(they sometimes even talked!) Property was bought and sold by the acre, not the million hectacres.Monsanto, patent owner of the genetically modified seeds everyone has been forced into relying on today evokes no pleasant memories, nor do any of the other "agri-business" companies now holding us and our elected officials by the turnips. In Roy's work you will see chickens strolling freely and stopping to peck at a feeder. You see they had beaks then, they weren't clipped off to prevent fights in the factory. Today, Roy's chickens would be known as "free-range" as if that is something strange.
You will see a farmer trying to figure out how to use his new combine, or getting his tractor repaired, or discussing the new "hired man". One man...who negotiates his monthly wage while the farm owner rolls in the dirt laughing. Junior is asked to open his piggybank for the next tractor payment. A farmer marvels at his new "six-row" tools. The big day is when the "poultry buyer" drives up while the wife gathers eggs and junior receives his allowance. One farmer here brags that he has doubled his flock size from 40 to 80 birds.
Roy depicted the world he knew, and that world had neighbors loaning their barbwire stretcher to each other. The "milk tank" springs a leak and the barn cats have a feast. A local eccentric stacks his chicken cages in piles of four. FOUR. Have you seen a chicken factory of late? Chicken skyscrapers. In fact they don't WANT you to see them. Long buildings back from the road with no signs...just enormous fans to remove the smell and warnings from a distant conglomerate to keep away. I can remember an elementary school with a visit to a farm. Not anymore.
Roy didn't know he was capturing the death of the family farm. In his work you see the silos getting bigger, the owners worried about being bought out, the first experience with breeders and traveling seed salesmen and putting up a barn sign as it changes ownership. The hardworking family imagines a bright future with "atomic" powered tractors. The availability of "new crop varieties" gives the wife a chance to argue for a new hat. After all, if corn comes in varieties, why shouldn't her wardrobe? 
Roy Carling numbered each cartoon and saved a few of the publications they appeared in. The newsletter of the Central Ohio Breeders Association runs Roy's gag with a farmer holding his hat out for donations while leaving the local IRS office. The New York Breeders Cooperative runs his "cow a minute" gag. Roy saved a letter from Land O Lakes asking for a turkey cartoon for the thanksgiving issue.Farms are not funny anymore.Original, hand-drawn gag cartoons by Roy Carling, circa 1960-1975 Collection Jim Linderman
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Click to EnlargeThe ability to capture motion in sculpture is rare, but seldom does a carver FAIL to display it so well! Let's STAND!Real Photo Postcard "An exhibition of Hand-Carving made by Nat V. Ranney, Rochester" No date collection Jim Linderman
NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN, AND SHE'S LOADED
In this exclusive report, we reveal the secret behind armed pin up girls. Women with weapons and very little clothing. Gals with Gats. The Texas Two-Step Double Armed.
The origin of Pin Ups with a Piece falls directly into Candy Barr's lovely holstered lap. Hailing from the wide open plains of Texas, where a gun was as natural as a spoon to a baby, the baby-faced Candy (one Juanita Slusher) grew up with a grip on the handle. Raped at age 12 and married at age 14 (before she had even bleached her hair) to a safecracker named Billie Joe Debbs. Ahh...pin up glamor.
Texas. Land of Bush and Perry, Ruby and Oswald. The state where Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. The state where liquor stores carry ammo, and frequently sell them to the same customer. "Will you be drinking and shooting now? Or would you like a bag?"
Once Candy had survived her youth, (and in the process making what is generally considered the very first pornographic film at age 16) it appears the busty (now) blond vowed never to be a victim again. Fully armed, she adopted the stance which would influence naked women on paper for ever...fully packed and loaded!
Soon other pin up models were applying for carry permits. But not in Texas..unnecessary! The shops were practically GIVING away weapons!
So the next time you see a camaflogued cutie with her breasts wrapped in a cartridge belt, combat boots and an automatic weapon, let Candy Barr come to mind. The woman who armed the pin ups.
Their theme song? The heavy rap of Al Dexter ( Clarence Albert Poindexter) another Texan, of course, who wrote "Pistol Packin' Mama"
Don't Mess with Candy EVER AGAIN!
Shown here a bevy of pistol packing pin-ups (ALL FROM TEXAS, I CHECKED!) from the 1960 salesman sample catalog titled "Pin-Ups for Advertising" distributed in Dallas.
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Here at Dull Tool Dim Bulb we still take our portraits with machines...and the only "upload' we do is into the truck with burly union helpers when finished with the shoot.
