About this ebook
The character was ranked 97th of the 2011 Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.
After Bill Ward's drafting into the World War II military, the artist created the tall, blond, busty ingenue Torchy Todd for the base newspaper of Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton, where Ward was deployed. The comic strip in which she featured soon became syndicated to other Army newspapers worldwide.
Torchy made her comic-book debut as main character of a backup feature of Quality Comics' Doll Man #8 (Spring 1946). Her feature was later published in all but two issues through #30 (September 1950), resuming in #35 (August 1951) through #47 (October 1953), as well as in Modern Comics #53–102 (Sept. 1946 – Oct. 1950). A solo series, Torchy, had six issues (Nov. 1949 – Sept. 1950), some with art by Gill Fox.
Several Torchy stories, including some Fort Hamilton comic strips, were reprinted in Innovation Comics' 100-page, squarebound trade paperback Bill Ward's Torchy, The Blonde Bombshell #1 (Jan. 1992). Others have been reprinted in The Betty Pages #1 (1987); AC Comics anthology Good Girl Art Quarterly #1 (Summer 1990), #10 (Fall 1992), #11 (Winter 1993), and #14 (Winter 1994), and in AC's America's Greatest Comics #5 (circa 2003). Comic Images released a set of Torchy trading cards in 1994.
Ward drew an original cover featuring Torchy for Robert M. Overstreet's annual book The Comic Book Price Guide (#8, 1978).
Torchy Todd is a ditsy but goodhearted young blond woman who frequently finds herself in humorous, mildly risqué encounters with lustful men.
Featuring the Good Girl Art of Bill Ward!
The_Complete_Torchy feature from Quality's Modern Comics, Doll Man and Torchy Comics between September 1946 and October 1953.
Torchy stories are from Doll Man #8, 9, 11, 12, 14-30, 35, 37; Modern Comics #53-102, Torchy Comics #1-6.
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About the author
William Hess Ward (March 6, 1919 – November 17, 1998), was an American cartoonist notable as a good girl artist and creator of the risqué comics characterTorchy.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Ward grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where his father was an executive with the United Fruit Company.
At age 17 Ward, already an art hobbyist, began his professional career by illustrating "beer jackets", a type of white denim jacket with text or design printed or drawn on the back; Ward charged one dollar a jacket, and by his own count drew hundreds during that summer. He went on to attend Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, where one classmate was future naturist painter Bob Kuhn. Ward graduated in 1941, and through the university's placement bureau obtained a Manhattan art-agency job at $18 a week, sweeping floors, running errands and serving as an art assistant. He was fired after accidentally cutting in half a finished Ford automobile illustration with a matte knife.
Still rooming at his college fraternity house, he received a call from Pratt regarding another job, assisting comic book artist Jack Binder. He joined Binder's small art studio, a "packager" that supplied outsourced comics pages to fledgling comic book publishers, where Pete Riss was his assistant. The studio was relocating from The Bronx to, coincidentally, Ward's hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey, to the upstairs loft of a barn. There, Binder drew layouts for Fawcett Comics stories, for which Riss penciled and inked figures and Ward drew the backgrounds. Features included Mister Scarlet and Pinky, Bulletman, Ibis the Invincible, Captain Battle, the Black Owl, and the adapted pulp magazine features Doc Savage and The Shadow. The studio grew to about 30 artists, with Ken Bald as the art director.
Ward's first credited works are writing and drawing an episode each of the two-page humor features Private Ward in Fawcett's Spy Smasher #2 (cover-dated Winter 1941) and Bulletman #3 (January 14, 1942), published closely with each other.
Shortly thereafter, Quality Comics editor George Brenner hired Ward to write and pencil the hit aviator feature Blackhawk of World War II. Ward artwork for Military Comics #30-31 (July–August 1944), with the next several issues generally but unconfirmably credited to Al Bryant. Ward stated that he succeeded Reed Crandall, the preeminent Blackhawk artist, when Crandall was drafted into the U.S. Army, but Crandall first drew the feature in Military Comics #12-22, and he was succeeded primarily by the team of the penciler John Cassone and the inker Alex Kotzky before Ward took over
