Friday, November 21, 2014

Some Judge Magazine Covers

This post is part of an occasional series dealing with magazine cover illustration. Here we feature Judge, an American humor magazine published 1881-1947 (Wikipedia entry here). To me, its most interesting covers appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Judge was not a major magazine; circulation was well under that of Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and other general-interest magazine. Nevertheless, Judge did feature cover art by some talented illustrators and cartoonists -- and others who were less so. Here are some examples.

Gallery

By Lou May - 17 May, 1924
I think that's the artist's name; the signature is a little hard to read.

By John Held, Jr. - 3 January 1925
Held is considered the archetypical 1920s cartoonist. His highly stylized flappers and friends helped to define that era for many Americans then and later, including me.

By David Robinson - 16 October 1926
A lesser effort.

By an unknown artist
Well, I'd know the artist's name if I could decipher that squiggly little signature. Reader suggestions are appreciated, because it's a cute cartoon, though a bad pun.

By Enoch Bolles - 13 August 1927
Bolles did a lot of cover illustrations in those days. Most of them don't appeal to me, but this is better than most.

By George Eggleston - 28 September 1929
What would cartoonists do without desert islands?

By Ruth Eastman - 21 December 1929

By John Holmgren - 24 January 1931
Nice drawing. I wrote about Holmgren here.

By Gilbert Bundy - August 1933
Bundy's career peaked from the late 1930s into the early 50s, before his suicide.

By Gregor Duncan - June 1937
Could this over-stretched analogy cover be symbolic of Judge's decline?

1 comment:

  1. Nice covers.

    The January 1, 1927 edition of Judge (Turning Over a New Leaf) appears to be the early work of Gardner Rea.

    He was later known for his 'nervous' line work in New Yorker.

    He signed his work "Rea'

    -Larry

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