1940 Superman Published Greeting Card Pinup (FRED RAY PURPORTED AS DRAWING SUPERMAN HERE!)

check this beautiful INCRE$DIBLY EARLY 1940 Joe Shuster Studio Superman Greeting Card Original Art (DC Comics and Quality Art Novelty Company). The weirdest Superman images in all creation must belong to a line of dime-store greeting cards combining on-model images of the character with cute-kid illustrations in an entirely different style. This weirdest-of-the-weird composition depicts a nursery scene, with Superman playing nursemaid. Such product-licensing campaigns had begun in 1939 with a Superman fan-club button, followed promptly by a Superman blimp for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a Daisy-brand Superman Krypto-Ray projector-gun, and any number of coloring books, picture-puzzles, chewing-gum wrappers, knick-knacks, gimcracks, and doo-dads. The primary illustrator, Joe Shuster, and National (DC) Comics enlisted ghost-artists to manage the increasing workload. A likely ghost here would be Fred Ray or Wayne Boring, key stand-ins for Shuster. Superman's triangular "S" emblem is a throwback to the earliest Shuster-style drawings; the comic books at the time were still waffling between the triangle and a more contoured breastplate. The entirely different artist (unknown) on the infant figure manages a persuasive imitation of Grace Drayton (originator of the Campbell's Soup Kids), who had died in 1936. Ink and grayscale watercolors on lightly toned 15.2" x 8.3" Bristol board.

$5,000.00