Joe Buresch
Joe Buresch was a teenager of the great depression. The cheaply affordable new medium of the comic book proved alluring to an adolescent growing up in a time of economic hardship. All of his comic book output is from the experimental pre World War II years. First appearing in titles published by Centaur in 1936, Buresch’s short stories boldly show their debt to the great adventure strips. The mix of pulp realism mixed with cartoon stylization owes itself to the influence of Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy. A bit of the hard edged jaws/ distinctive profiles ala Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy are also on display. Both were already popular at the time. Joe, an auteur in his own right, had a more abstract influence on the future of picture storytelling. Published in the comic book industry’s infancy, his stories are boldly signed and completed without assistants. These are naive strips by a young man with an obvious talent that rivaled peers. Other artists who were employed by Centaur were Joe Schuster (Superman) and Bill Everett (Sub-Mariner).
Buresch’s handful of short stories (in the 8 page range) feel raw but there is an economy and stylishness to his artwork that make them a pleasure to read. Like Gould or Crane, the humor in Buresch’s stories makes these vignettes feel somewhat breezy. Light, even when the characters themselves are getting a wallop. Stars appear when a character is socked. The lettering is stylish, consistent; the color is often of a limited palette. There is a pared down simplicity and roundness to the figures. Minimal backgrounds set the stage but don’t interfere with the human drama.
Sexism is a topic that interests Buresch for nearly his whole career. From the 1940’s through the 1980s he was primarily a gag cartoonist. Often these were published in tame men’s pin-up magazines. The focus of the male/female dynamic is also on display in these early works. For Buresch there is a violent physical battle between men. A mental battle between men and women. This tension is what drives the pictures he makes. His stories are often about lone figures in a distrustful world who pine for the romantically unattainable. Typical of the depression era his endings rely more on absurdism than in tying up all the loose ends. It was as if Buresch was trying to consolidate his interpretation of popular media he enjoyed like backwoods pulp tales and westerns into something more personal, easily accessible, and... in color for a dime.
Funny Picture Stories
Mountain Murder was published in Funny Picture Stories #1 in 1936. The story centers on two rival families that have been living in the hills of Tennessee for generations. Jed, the son of the family, is in love with the daughter of the Barclay’s. His father takes him on an expedition to murder her father and brother. Jane pleads with him to run away. When Jane’s pa sees Jed talking to her, he tries to fight Jed off. This leads to a silent page (page 6 of the story) and it’s the most powerful of the bunch delineated in black, white and a single spot color: red. Right before he is to bludgeon Jed, he is shot by Jed’s father. The story ends on this shocking and sullen note.
Swamp Rat was published in Funny Picture Stories #4 in 1937. A man out exploring a marsh randomly gets shot at. While looking for the culprit, he spies the eccentric criminal trying to bury another young man in quicksand. He approaches them but the bad guy runs off. On his way out of the swamp he spots an attractive young woman but she is frightened by him as well.
The next day, he can’t get her out of his mind and decides to return to the swamp. When he finds her, she warns him to leave. Soon, the “swamp rat” appears and tries to drown the man in quicksand. It turns out that the strange criminal is the girl’s father. The girl saves him and he ends up killing the swamp rat and escaping with the girl.
Both stories feature naive young protagonists who find themselves in trouble due to the violence of men. Their escape is through their admiration of a young woman whose beauty proves their only salvation.
Western Picture Stories
Buck Bush and Caveman Cowboy are two stories both published in Western Picture Stories #4 in 1937. The cover of the comic was also drawn by Buresch and is adapted from a panel in the Caveman Cowboy story. It boasts a striking composition of a cowboy carrying a woman on a runaway horse. These stories highlight Joe’s more humorous side.
Buck Bush is the story a sheriff challenged when Calaboose Kid makes his way into cactus county. Before they meet various rumors begin to spread. The two men toughen up in preparation for a showdown. When the two finally confront each other face-to-face, they surprise the townspeople. Turns out they are old friends. As a result, they end up getting charged out of town by the bored townspeople who would rather see a fight.
Caveman Cowboy is another story set in Cactus County and is the more interesting of the two. The story features a tough cowgirl who came west in hopes of finding romance. She states, “I came west to see real he-men! Hard tough men of the west, cavemen, but what do i find - sissies - dressed up, that can’t even stay on a horse a minute!”. When she sees the handsome sheriff, Buck Bush, ride, she changes her mind and pursues him. Quickly after he blows her off, two desperadoes gallop into town, shooting guns. One grabs the girl and the sheriff pursues them. He finally rescues her, tying the men up. As the sheriff holds her close, while crossing a stream, she admits that she has hired the criminals in order to get his attention. Feeling tricked, he throws her in the water and she yells in disgust as he rides off.
Again, the subject here is masculinity being challenged. In the first story, the men are motivated to be more masculine. When they can not prove their toughness, they are exiled. In the second story, a tough woman seeks to find a man who can rival her fierceness. She does so through trickery and ends up getting played. The name “Buck Bush” seems like raunchy symbolism. Tame here, but direct references to sexuality will not be uncommon in Buresch’s future - especially when he ends up drawing for “adult magazines” like Sex to Sexty.
The tension and humor in these short stories provide the groundwork for Joe’s latter magazine work. He is probably more recognizable as a gag cartoonist as he moved away from sequential comics almost entirely. This was just as Superman and The Sub-Mariner were poised to take comics in an altogether different direction. Joe followed the path of cartoonists like Jack Markow or Frank Beaven instead.
His line remained loose throughout his career, making his work always appeal natural and perhaps easier to achieve than it actually was. Joe’s biggest career success was probably in his syndicated cartoon panels. The first was Dinah Mite, which ran from 1952 through 1987. The strip featured a young girl who was based on his daughter Linda Jean. A second children's cartoon, Fletch the 4-H'R ran throughout the 1970s.
Although Buresch’s work wasn’t in many of the major publications, it often appeared in the humor digests and mini-magazines aimed at servicemen such as Hello Buddies! or the many digests created by the New York based Humorama. It would not surprise me if his style was an influence on his more well-known predecessors like Dan DeCarlo. Buresch’s girls lie somewhere between Carl Barks’ flappers in the Calgary Eye Opener (1934) and DeCarlo’s bombshells in Cartoon Parade (1950s). And he was one of the first to draw those pouty lips in profile along with the big wide eyes that DeCarlo would make so iconic at Archie comics. Also look closely at the frumpy big nosed characters Fred Flinstone or George Jetson that the Hanna-Barbera studio created in the 1960s. These too appear to be a direct descendent of Joe’s style. But perhaps Joe had more in common with the Ross brothers. Al Ross and Salo started out drawing adventure and crime comics in the golden age. Later, like Joe, they became exclusively gag artists, sharing the pages of many of the magazines his work appeared in. Joe’s interest in cartooning was lifelong. Starting in 1978, he returned to the comic strip format, doing a monthly comic strip entitled Cy's Super Service for Electrical Apparatus magazine. He continued work on this until his death in 2004 at the age of 88.
I’ve compiled a sample of Joe Buresch’s cartoons and comics mentioned in this article. The PDF can be downloaded below.