Comic Book Art - Harvey Comics

Harvey Comics (also known as Harvey World Famous Comics, Harvey Publications, Harvey Comics Entertainment, Harvey Hits, Harvey Illustrated Humor, and Harvey Picture Magazines) was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B. Harvey and Leon Harvey joined soon after. The company soon got into licensed characters, which by the 1950s, became the bulk of their output. Their most prolific artist was Warren Kremer. Harvey's mascot is "Joker," a harlequin jack-in-the-box character reminiscent of the mascot/logo for Paramount Pictures/Famous Studios' Noveltoons series of animated cartoons of the 1940s-1960s. Harvey Comics started out as a conventional comic book publisher. It published comic books that featured a combination of characters it inherited from Brookwood Publications, licensed characters such as the Green Hornet and Joe Palooka and its own original characters. But the company ultimately became best-known for characters it published from 1960s onward, characters are Casper the Friendly Ghost, Baby Huey, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, Tommy Tortoise and Moe Hare, and characters from Modern Madcaps. These characters originated as licensed properties, having been created by the Famous Studios animation studio, a division of Paramount Pictures, in the late-1940s and early 1950s. Harvey published several successful comic books based upon the Famous characters, and also developed original properties such as Richie Rich and Little Dot. Harvey also licensed popular characters from newspaper comic strips, such as Mutt and Jeff and Sad Sack. While the company tried to diversify the comics it published (with brief forays in the 50s and 60s into superhero, suspense, horror, western and the like under their Thrill Adventure and Harvey Thriller line), kid comics were the bulk of their output. In 1959, Harvey purchased the entire Famous line (including character rights and rights to the cartoon shorts). The Famous cartoons were repackaged and distributed to television as Harveytoons, and Harvey continued production on new comics and a handful of new cartoons produced for television. Casper the Friendly Ghost, who had been Famous' most popular original character, now became Harvey's top draw. Associated characters such as Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, The Ghostly Trio, Casper's horse Nightmare, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, and Wendy the Good Little Witch were added to the Harvey line.