Editorial Cartoonists of the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) :: BOOKS

WWII Cartoon Sketchbook & Postwar Career - Master Sergeant Ralph Duzan Pollard (1911–1992)

Artist: RALPH D POLLARD (Penciller)

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WWII Cartoon Sketchbook & Postwar Career - Master Sergeant Ralph Duzan Pollard (1911–1992) Comic Art

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WWII Cartoon Sketchbook & Postwar Career - Ralph Duzan Pollard (1911–1992) (BACK COVER)

Master Sergeant Ralph D Pollard

Ralph D Pollard_Darft Card

Fraternity University of Cincinnati 1934

Ralph D Pollard_Back to civilian life (clipping)

1950 Census

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Artwork Details

Title:	WWII Cartoon Sketchbook & Postwar Career - Master Sergeant Ralph Duzan Pollard (1911–1992)
Artist:	RALPH D POLLARD (Penciller)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Sketchbook
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	18
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	1
Added to Site:	8/25/2025
Comic Art Archive:

Description

When I first opened this scrapbook, it looked like a curiosity: 93 pencil cartoons by an Army Master Sergeant, lampooning stew, mud, and military life. But page by page, it revealed much more.

Pollard wasn’t just a soldier with a sense of humor. He was a trained artist, educated in applied arts, who later became an art director at Procter & Gamble and President of the Cincinnati Art Directors Club. In the mud of Europe, his sophistication went unrecognized — so he turned it into satire. His cartoons exaggerate himself as a pipe-smoking, stew-obsessed, overfed sergeant, yet behind the buffoonery lies quiet protest: the indifference of a cultivated man whose refinement was going to waste.

The themes repeat with deliberate rhythm:

Food & Drink as obsession and survival.

Authority & Bureaucracy made absurd.

Music & Performance turned into parody.

Enemy Mockery deflating Nazi pomp.

Dice & Gambling as vice and identity.

Some pages strike at grand moments — victory parades, V-Day speeches, heaven inspections — only to deflate them with irony. Others, unusually, reference his civilian world: the University Club, even Procter & Gamble by name. That makes the scrapbook not only wartime satire but also a bridge to his postwar advertising career.

Seen in hindsight, Pollard’s figure anticipates later comic archetypes like Beetle Bailey’s Sarge Snorkel. What Mauldin was to the infantryman, Pollard was to the NCO — but with the polish of a commercial artist and the wit of a man who would shape mid-century American visual culture.

Today, this scrapbook stands as one of the few complete, attributed sets of WWII soldier-cartoon art. It is at once personal coping mechanism, cultural critique, and professional seedbed. To hold it is to hear a voice bridging foxholes and boardrooms — a GI’s laughter carrying forward into postwar America.

— Collector’s Note, 2025

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About the Owner

	Alan E Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	May 2025
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	UNITED STATES
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Marcus Wai
Member Since 2005

1 - Posted on 8/26/2025

A touching moment with Pollard in tears. When you get a soldier to cry back then, it's usually because of a meaningful loss of a fellow soldier.

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