Monday, January 3, 2022

A Harvey Gh-gh-ghost on Bunny

Bunny_Lemoine The only attribution at the moment for the art on Harvey's Sixties teen-type title Bunny is Hy Eisman. His sneak signature is in a number of early stories in the form of the license plate "Hy 27 E" on four different cars in "Discarteque" (#1), "The Ultrazaric Decodifier," "Guests from England," and "Poetic Justice" (#2); the "27" (Eisman's birthday) is on photographer Elmer Snapple's door in "The Playpen Contest" (#1) and it continues on his door in, for instance, "The 'Zoople' Contest" (#2).

Bunny 1 O. O. Heaven, Playpen Contest

And since Eisman is the main artist, when there are figures (of secondary characters) in another artist's style, I'm going to say that artist was assisting Eisman unknown to the Harvey editors and thus a ghost. The artist I see is Gus Lemoine from Archie (most notably Madhouse). These pages are from "O. O. Heaven" and "The Playpen Contest."

Upon my first look I went along with the GCD, wondering if there were unknown artists on a few early stories, but I think it's the inconsistency in inking styles among different stories before one style is settled upon with issue #3. (Eisman himself or other inkers? I can't tell.) I'd give the main pencilling credit on all "Bunny family" stories to Eisman.

Bunny pencil assists by Gus Lemoine

Dec/66 Rookie Secret Agent O. O. Heaven
    Discarteque
    The Mush Meal Caper
    Tiger Bunny
    The Playpen Contest
Apr/67 The Ultrazaric Decodifier

No comments:

Post a Comment