During their last three years of comics production, cover dates 1950-54, Fawcett continued their Marvel Family titles, but otherwise relied more on licensed properties such as western movie stars, western and other kinds of film adaptations, and TV shows. They also tried out other genres popular at the time in addition to romance such as horror, science fiction, crime, and war. Perhaps the endless lawsuits with National (DC) were wearing them down, there didn’t seem to be any clear winners among all the new titles. Here are more logos probably designed by Al Allard, I’ve skipped some that are essentially repeats of ones I’ve already shown, or likely done with type, and movie adaptations are also tricky, as the logos might come from the movie studio, so I’m skipping those too. While Fawcett already had a successful Hopalong Cassidy comic, the actor starring in that role got his own title with an Allard logo, above. The large B’s help it stand out.
After World War Two, Fawcett began to again increase their roster and output both of magazines and comics, but the comics market was changing. Superheroes were no longer selling as well as they had during the war, and while some continued, like National’s Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, all the comics publishers were trying out other genres to see if they might increase sales. But first, now that paper was easier to get, Fawcett decided to add to their Marvel family of titles. Al Allard was still the Art Director of the Fawcett operation. In the 1950 census, he and his wife Garnett and son Peter were living on Hendric Lane in Greenwich, Connecticut. For more details on Allard’s life, see Alex Jay’s article HERE.
Mary Marvel was a female counterpart to Captain Marvel Jr., and she first appeared in 1942. In a new series with the first issue dated December 1945, Mary got her own title with an Allard logo in familiar block letters angled to add interest. It ran for 28 issues.
Having launched a very successful character, Captain Marvel, and a line of five titles, Fawcett continued in 1941 with more. Al Allard was the art director, and his duties included logo design. He liked thick, open block letters, and as this one shows, he was creative in tying into themes, a patriotic flag theme in this case. The stars might have been a little bigger, the outlines a little thicker, but the black telescoping adds depth, and the subtitle in type adds interest. (Jack Kirby used almost the same tagline for his OMAC character in 1974). When Allard filled out his draft card in 1942, he was living in Old Greenwich Connecticut, not far from one of the Fawcett offices in Greenwich. As his employer, he lists both Fawcett offices in Greenwich and New York City, but it’s likely he usually worked in Greenwich. Allard was 39, and so probably not called up to serve. This book went on sale in May of 1941, but only lasted three issues, so not everything they put out was a success. For a more detailed biography of Al Allard, see Alex Jay’s article HERE.
Fawcett Comics is one of many comics publishers whose logo origins I knew nothing about, until recently when fellow logo designer and comics historian Alex Jay told me:
I received an email from P.C. Hamerlinck who writes about Fawcett Comics. He said, “In the past I had asked a few Fawcett comics creators who was responsible for designing the outstanding title logos for Fawcett’s comics and magazines, and everyone said it was Allard who created them.”
Alex had already published a profile of Al Allard on his blog, the link is HERE. I was delighted to hear this, filling in a designer’s name for the Fawcett comics logos, and I decided to look at them more closely.
After finishing the final alphabetical post, I went through all the posts to count up the logos. Not feeling confident, I did it again, and got a different number. Then I realized I hadn’t been consistent about counting similar logos as individual items, as with the 2000 A.D. ones in the Introduction. So this morning I counted them AGAIN, this time counting every logo as an individual entry, even when they are just very similar versions of the same thing. If I showed it, that means it was used somewhere, or at least paid for in most cases, so I counted it. That brought me to 1,188 logos.
I also kept a separate count of non-comics logos: book logos, websites, toys that were not comics, logos for businesses, things like that. Some in that count were judgement calls. For instance the logos done for Entertainment Weekly, some of those are for non-comics articles, some are for comics articles, at least as far as I can tell. The logo for The Comics Journal and similar ones count as comics-related. A few logos I did on spec for no assignment and did not sell are not counted as comics related. So, dividing them that way I tallied 55 non-comics logos and 1,133 comics logos, a lot no matter how you figure it. I did more in my first 25 years in the business, 1977-2002, than I did in the rest of my career to today, and I see a few reasons for that.
One: at first my rates were low, and I was an inexpensive choice. In 1977 my lettering page rate was $5, my cover lettering rate was $16, and my logo rate was $30. At the time, I was a bargain, and probably cost much less than Gaspar Saladino or anyone else they had hired before for logos.
Two: I was on staff from 1977-1987, so handy for assignments that were needed in a hurry, or simply quickly available to talk something over and accept. That’s how I ended up with all the Who’s Who logos, and plenty more. In those ten years I made many friends on staff and among freelancers, and if they liked what I did, which was usually (but not always) the case, they’d ask for me.
Three: I was a relatively early adapter of digital logo design. I got my first Mac computer in 1994, and right away saw the advantages for logo design. Once I had a basic idea sketched out and traced in Adobe Illustrator, making a number of variations there to show clients was quick and pretty easy. Other letterers caught up, and by the early 2000s, DC had staff letterers who began doing some logos in-house, so requests for me fell off, but I was still in demand as a logo designer by other publishers for another decade or so. The same process happened with cover lettering. I was always as busy as I wanted to be, and that was plenty busy, with page lettering.
I’m not really into comparing myself to other designers, but now that I have these numbers, I guess it makes sense to see how I do compare, at least where I know enough about the output of others. The two long-time designers for DC that I’ve researched best are Ira Schnapp (working there from 1940 to 1968) and Gaspar Saladino (at DC from 1949 to 2014).
I tallied 334 logos for Schnapp, but keep in mind that for most of his career the number of titles published by DC was small, and he did almost no work for other publishers. It’s likely Ira did what we would consider logos before he began working at DC, especially for pulp magazines, but I can only guess about that.
For Saladino I found 415 logos, and that includes some for Marvel and a few other publishers, but the bulk is for DC. Both Gaspar and Ira were always very busy lettering pages, covers, and house ads too, they are both well ahead of me on house ads.
Other letterers I’ve studied: Al Feldstein did all the EC Comics logos when he was there, but that was less than 100. I don’t think he did any comics work after that. Artie Simek did lots of logos for Marvel from about 1947 to the mid 1960s, about 115-120 on his own and about 20 more with Sol Brodsky. He might be next behind Schnapp, of the people I’ve studied. Charles Biro did all the logos for Lev Gleason and maybe some for MLJ before that, but we’re talking a few dozen at most, and I have no information about what he did after that. Will Eisner did wonderfully creative logos for The Spirit, probably less than 100. Ed Hamilton did all the ACG logos for decades, but their title output was low, about 50. Gus Arriola did lots of creative logos for his strip Gordo, probably over 100, maybe over 200. Otto Pirkola did most of the Harvey logos for a few decades, I would guess over 100. I’ve just learned that art director Al Allard designed the Fawcett logos, about 100. I think Alex Jay designed about 100 comics logos for DC, Marvel and others. I don’t have good knowledge of Rian Hughes’ logo output, but he’s filled at least one book with them, so probably well over 100, maybe several hundred. The other letterers/designers I’ve studied I think are all well under 100 logos total each. Some prolific letterers like Ben Oda and John Costanza rarely did logos.
There are plenty of unknowns in comics logo credits, particularly before the 1970s. Western/Dell put out hundreds, maybe thousands of comics with different logos, their Four Color series is the best example, and I don’t think anyone knows who designed them. If they were all done by one person, he or she would likely be the logo tally leader. There might well be other cases like that where nothing is known about logo designers that had busy and productive careers.
At least from what I’ve discovered, I have the lead with my 1,133 comics-related logos. Even if you want to discount those 165 Who’s Who logos as not being at the same level (an opinion I’d understand), my comics logo title would still be at 968. I’d be happy to learn of anyone potentially taking that lead. Rian Hughes could still do it. Meanwhile, I’m mostly retired now, and not really anxious to do more logos, so I expect that number for me will stand.
It’s been an interesting journey for me looking at and researching all these logos, hope you’ve enjoyed it too, and thanks for reading.
