RIP Jack Davis

On July 27, Jack Davis passed away. He was yet another artist featured by Atlas in the 1950s. My favourite Davis work at Atlas were his westerns - he did a few Rawhide Kid stories and drew the adventures of a lesser-known character the Gunsmoke Kid, who had an interesting backstory (I wrote up the Gunsmoke Kid's biography for Marvel Westerns: Outlaw Files). His loose, jangly style gave his western comics a little more jive than most. When his characters leapt into action, you felt the thrill.

But Davis isn't remembered mainly for his Atlas work, but rather his EC stories. Personally, I don't feel he entirely fits in with the other horror artists of the day - there's something a little too upbeat about his lines versus those of Graham Ingels or Bernie Krigstein. Still, he did produce one of the most notorious horror stories of the 50s - "Foul Play" - which, come to think of it, is probably more acceptable under his pen than most of the other EC artists ("Foul Play" is the story where a baseball player is torn up and his body parts used to decorate the ball field).

EC's Mad Magazine turned out to be the perfect place for him; in fact, even before I knew his name I associated his art with Mad (ditto Sergio Aragones). Whether it was a Davis-drawn commercial advertisement or motion picture poster, to me Davis was Mad. He was one of the first to join the Usual Gang of Idiots and he shall be missed.