The Erotic Art of Bob Oksner -- Part I

A few months ago we lost comic book artist Bob Oksner, who was a mainstay at DC Comics from 1947 till his retirement in the late 1980s. Oksner began his career in comic books in either 1939 or 1940 and by 1942 was working directly for Timely (Marvel) drawing The Destroyer and Marvel Boy. In 1945, he began drawing a syndicated newspaper strip, Miss Cairo Jones, which lasted until 1947.

After that he was invited to work for DC and never left. He started on the Black Canary and other strips featuring pretty ladies, something Bob was a master at drawing, and soon moved on to the DC humor features, especially ones based on licensed properties. Oksner did great caricatures and that made him the perfect choice for books like The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and the book it eventually became, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. He also drew Sgt. Bilko, Doberman, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Pat Boone and The Adventures of Bob Hope. Oksner also worked on many of the DC humor titles, like Leave it to Binky, Miss Beverly Hills, A Date With Judy and Arnold Drake's Stanley and His Monster. Bob was the artist and co-creator of the short-lived, but much loved, The Angel and the Ape series in the late sixties. Oksner received the National Cartoonists Society Award in its Comic Book Division for 1960 and 1961 and won the Shazam Award in 1970 for Best Pencil Artist (Humor Division).

When DC didn't have humor work for him, he did romance tales for Girl's Love Stories and other such comics. Later, when both the humor and the romance comics died, Oksner worked on Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Lois Lane and other adventure-type strips, especially those featuring heroines. He also worked as Curt Swan's inker on Superman and drew a number of Superman stories on his own and illustrated many classic covers.

It is a couple of these covers that I want to direct your attention to. Oksner drew a couple of classic Supergirl covers that drew heavily on his years in the humor line.

These two Oksner Supergirl covers are infamous. The first is from Adventure Comics #420 and it was published 35 years ago. Now some people look at this cover and see Supergirl tossing a cannon, others see something else entirely. You might call this one "Walk Softly and Carry a Big Dick." It even has testicles and something white shooting out of the head. The real genius of Bob Oksner is that he not only got this thing past the editor, he got it past the prissy Comics Code Authority.

Next time we will look at a much more subtle cover by Bob, but one that he said he waited years to get past the editors and the CCA. Look for The Erotic Art of Bob Oksner -- Part II tomorrow.