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Early life and career Bill Ward, began his illustrating career at age 17, in the summer of 1936, by drawing "beer jackets" - typically white denim jackets with designs or text printed or drawn on the back and particularly popular with students from Princeton for beer drinking binges. Ward estimates that he drew hundreds that summer and at a dollar per jacket he did very well for himself. Ward attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, and was a classmate of the would-be famous naturist painter Bob Kuhn. Graduating in 1941, Ward obtained an $18 a week job through the university's placement bureau at a Manhattan art-agency where he swept floors, ran errands and served as an art assistant. He was fired after accidentally destroying a completed Ford ad illustration with a matte knife. Pratt found him another job assisting comic artist Jack Binder- a "packager" that provided outsourced comics pages to upstart comic-book publishers. At that time, Binder's studio was relocating from The Bronx to a barn loft in Ridgewood, New Jersey where Binder created layouts for Fawcett Comics stories. Pete Riss penciled and inked the figures and Ward did the backgrounds. Their features included the "Black Owl", "Bulletman", "Captain Battle", "Ibis the Invincible", "Mister Scarlet and Pinky", and adapted pulp magazine features "Doc Savage" and "The Shadow". The studio expanded to some 30 artists under the art direction of Ken Bald. In late 1941 Ward created his first known credited works, writing and drawing an episode each of the two-page humor feature "Private Ward" in Fawcett's Spy Smasher #2 (Winter 1941) and Bulletman #3 (January 14, 1942). His first major job was an issue of Fawcett's Captain Marvel, followed shortly by a C.C. Beck feature in Whiz Comics. Ward was then hired by Quality Comics editor George Brenner to write and pencil the World War II aviator feature "Blackhawk." He also drew some Blackhawk stories in Modern Comics and some issues of the Blackhawk title itself in 1946 and 1947, and then more frequently in the early 1950s. Aside from his four years in the U.S. Army, Ward would remain a freelance artist for the remainder of his career. Shortly after being drafted into the military, Ward created Torchy Todd, the ingénue character for the base newspaper at Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton, where he was stationed. The Torchy Todd comic strip was soon syndicated to other U.S. Army newspapers around the world. Following the peak of his comic career, Ward turned to magazine cartooning , creating humorous spot illustrations, often featuring Torchy, for publications like Abe Goodman's Humorama. His work also frequently appeared in the satirical-humor magazine Cracked, occasionally signing his work "McCartney".] Ward occasionally returned to comic-book humor stories, such as the "Play Pool" in Humor-Vision's satiric Pow Magazine #1 (August 1966). He also did episodes of "The Adventures of Pussycat", an adult feature about a sexy secret agent, which appeared in various men's adventure magazines published under Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. Ward also experimented with underground comics, illustrating the pornographic "Stella Starlet" story in publisher John A. Mozzer's Weird Smut Comics #1 (1985) and a "Sugar Caine" story in issue #2 (1987), both written by Dave Goode. He also illustrated erotic stories that he wrote in such men's magazines as Juggs and Leg Show . One of his features in Juggs that ran for a year was "Quest for a Big Pair", featuring the sexual adventures of Harold Brown, who had sexual encounters with busty women. Ward also drew the comics feature "Debbie" in Club magazine. Contact
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