Topps Baseball Card Cartoonists – A Wayback Whensday Edition
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None of the many cartoonists who worked on Topps baseball cards from the 1950s into the 1980s was credited on the cards, in the packaging, or in the marketing materials.
Part I of this multi-part article surveys the cartoons of five artists whose names have been mentioned in conjunction with Topps baseball cards in the past.
In “Who Drew the Classic Topps Baseball Cartoons? Part I” Eric White for Sports Collectors Daily showcases the Topp Baseball Card cartooning of Jack Davis, Murray Olderman, Jack Kirby, Irwin Hasen, and Bhob Stewart.
All in all, the Jack Davis cartoons are widely acclaimed to be the best art ever to appear on baseball cards.
In his 2017 book The Draw of Sports, [Olderman] elaborated that “Topps Chewing Gum commissioned me to do the little action cartoons on the backs of their baseball bubble gum cards. I received only a few bucks for each, but when you put together an assembly line of several hundred cards, you’ve got a pay-day.
Easy to spot, these cartoons are not Kirby’s best work, but they highlight a preference for dynamic design and dramatic poses over realistic action. They are characterized by long strides, billowing pants, large feet, dislocated knees, and impossibly awkward throws and swings…
Jack Davis, Murray Olderman, Jack Kirby, and Irwin Hasen were all very famous comic artists, and Bhob Stewart was an inner-circle figure both in the comic world and at Topps. In stark contrast, all other Topps baseball cartoons have remained anonymous – at least until our next installment [emphasis added].
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