Early Modern

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Jack Betts drew the Neddy Nestlé ads for Nesté for over ten years. A couple of months ago I found a very early sample of his ads for Nestlé from 1942, not yet featuring the Neddy Nestlé character. This week, I came across an even earlier one, from 1940. I also found one from the same year by another Johnstone and Cushing regular, Creig Flessel. So it seems Betts was handling the Nestlé account from 1940 onwards. It is fun to see so many of his stylistic traits already in place; the lively inking, the kids faces, the open lines on the paper hat in the first panel. The lettering in the first panel is remarkably smilar to the sort of lettering Noel Sickles and Milt Caniff used for their Postum ad series.

I am starting with the (signed) Flessel ad:

Then we have Jack Betts':

Here is another early Nestlé ad by Betts, which I showed before. Here we see his personal style alreay in full bloom.

Here is another ad series Jack Betts tributed to. It is in a more serieus style, but his traits are undoubtebly there. But he probably idn't do all of them. In some I even think I see Lou Fine's hand. Which is doubtful, because I think h had already Johnstone and Cushing in 1947 (or was just about to). The last few may even be by neither of them.

Nice Clean Material

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Here's a nice set of washpowder ads, that baffle me. Usually these ads were assigned to one illustrator, but here we have a very eclectic mix. Some of them have clearly been drawn by Jack Betts. Others look as if they might be by Elmer Wexler, but unfortunately I have only one signed sample of his work. The last one here, looks as if it could have been done by one of those illustrators, whoc usually work in watercolors from models and now try their hand at a line drawing, such as the ones Gunnar Peterson did. The bottom strips I forgot to clip are by someone like Ken Bald, but again my knowledge of artists doing this sort of stuff in the forties falls short.