This will be of special interest for folks who are into "funny animal" comic books and the indexing and/or collecting, thereof. One of the frustrating things about caring about this stuff (or amassing it) is that so much of the fine work that's been done in the genre has been uncredited and unsigned. There were no artists' names on comics published for years by Dell Publishing, Gold Key, Archie, Harvey and a few other companies. Many of the artists have been identified…but some have not and many of the identifications are just plain wrong. (The writers are even more difficult to identify.)
My unscientific survey suggests that the most mis-identified artist is probably Pete Alvarado. Pete, who passed away in 2004 (obit here) was one of the most prolific comic illustrators who ever lived. He drew thousands and thousands of pages for Western Publishing Company which were printed in comics bearing the Dell or Gold Key insignias. But — news flash! — he didn't draw everything they published.
Over and over again, I see comics — especially of the Disney or Warner Brothers varieties — wrongly credited to Pete Alvarado. It seems that every time an indexer or art dealer has to list the artist of an issue of one of those books and doesn't know who dunnit, they say it was Pete. Sometimes, since the man drew so many books, they're right, if only by pure luck. But often, they're wrong. And if, as usual, they say Pete penciled and inked the art in question, they're almost certainly at least half-wrong. Pete hated to ink and wasn't that skilled at it…so at least 95% of his work was inked by others…and if anything, that number's low.
A lot of great artists worked on those comics — men like Harvey Eisenberg, Phil DeLara, Kay Wright, Roger Armstrong, Bob Gregory, John Carey, Gil Turner, Joe Messerli, Cliff Voorhees, Paul Murry, Jack Bradbury, Jack Manning and so many more. I've seen art by most of these gents wrongly listed as being by Pete Alvarado. And by the way, the question of "who drew this?" is not always answerable. Though I am one of the more knowledgeable "experts" on these comics, there are a number of artists whose work I can't identify at all. Some guys did a few stories, then stopped and their names were lost to history. It's frustrating but it's one of those sad facts we have to face.
And there's one other thing I should mention about Pete's work: A number of pieces of original art from comics he drew have turned up on the original market lately. It may be of interest to either the buyers or sellers to know that it's highly unlikely that the hands of Mr. Peter Alvarado ever touched the physical piece of art being sold.
Pete, like many of those who've drawn animation-style comics, worked on tissues. He would draw a page on whatever kind of paper he liked, working in a rough, sketchy manner. Then he'd put a piece of tracing paper over his rough drawings and trace a clean, tight rendering of the art. The sketchy page would be discarded and he'd hand in the pencil art on tracing paper.
The letterer would take a clean piece of art paper and tape Pete's tissue to the back of the page. Then he would letter in the captions and balloons on the front of the paper. Then the page would go to the inker who would work on a light table. The inker would trace, in ink, Pete's pencil drawings onto the front of the paper. Then Pete's sheets of tracing paper would be discarded…except that when I worked with Pete, I always tried to get hold of 'em. The illustration above was scanned from one of his tissues for a comic I wrote and edited.
So for original art collectors and dealers, this raises an interesting question: Is it Pete Alvarado original artwork if Pete never worked on that piece o' paper? A similar imponderable exists with original art to the comic strip Doonesbury, which is drawn much the same way, inked on a light table by someone other than Garry Trudeau, and there are other comics where this has been the modus operandi. I'm not sure how to answer this question but I thought somebody ought to ask it. And also point out that Pete Alvarado, as wonderful as he was, didn't draw a lot of the stuff that gets credited to him.
