Click on the Table Above To Search The Comic Book Database from Comics.org For Bill Ward as "The Writer of the Series"; Bill Ward as "The Pencilist of the Series"; Bill Ward as "The Inker of the Series"; and The History of Torchy in the Comic Book Database from Comics.org The Bill Ward Publishing Timeline was created by ToonStudios.com. The Bill Ward Publishing Timeline includes Paperbacks such as Bizarre Books, EGP, Tortura Press, Lancaster Publishing. Magazine Timelines from Juggs Magazine and Club Magazine including the Debbie and Sizzle Series. Paperback Cover Illustrations from Wee Hours. Pussycat, Scorchy, Torchy, Sex to Sexty and More!!!

After the war in 1946, Ward was working at Quality Comics (Plastic Man, Phantom Lady), mostly doing Blackhawk Comics, when publisher Busy Arnold asked if Bill ward could come up with a new back-up series for Modern Comics (where Blackhawk was the main feature). Ward dusted off Torchy, and that's how Torchy broke into the civilian press. Torchy first appeared in the back pages of Doll Man Quarterly #8 (Spring, 1946.) Torchy quickly became a big success and Torchy eventually got her own comic book with issues in 1949-50 with no non-reprinted appearances after Modern Comics #102 (October, 1950.) Bill Ward's particular talent for drawing women stood him in good stead in this period when "Romance Comics" became very popular and the rage. Bill Ward was soon so busy doing the covers and lead stories for Quality Comic's "Romance Comics" that he didn't have time for his own creation; and Torchy was turned over to another talented artist, Gil Fox. In response to the success of Young Romance, Quality Comics launched several romance titles. Arnold decided Ward's talents were better used on covers for that line, and wanted to take Ward off Torchy. Ward objected, and they reached a compromise, with Ward at least doing the lead stories in Torchy's comic and Gill Fox (who had done several features at Quality, including The Ray and The Black Condor) on the rest. Quality's Torchy series was cut short by an anti-comics crusade that had been gathering steam during the previous few years. Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who used the medium as a stepping-stone to national fame, put Torchy at the very top of a list of comic books he considered inappropriate for children (whom he presumed to be the only people reading them), despite the fact that the most scandalous thing she'd done up until that time was look pretty — most people didn't see anything in her to object to even then, to say nothing of how the public would respond today. Still, the publisher attempted to appease Wertham by taking her off the schedule as of the sixth issue, dated September 1950. A few years later, Ward, too, left the comic book business. "The demise of Torchy? I shall never forget it. There was a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Wertham who milked publicity from criticizing comic books and the negative effect they were supposedly having on kids. I used to deliver my finished jobs to Quality’s office in Manhattan. One day I was walking along Madison Avenue when I spotted Dick Arnold, Busy’s son and an editor now, ambling along on the other side of the street. "There goes our worst offender!" he screeched to a friend, pointing at me. I ran across the street to find out what the hell he meant and he threw a bombshell. "Dr. Wertham has come out with an ‘unfit’ list, and Torchy is on the list!" I couldn’t believe it. Torchy, that innocent little blonde, the stories equally innocent. Can you imagine that happening today? As it turned out, comics, for me anyway, didn’t last long after that. Television was the culprit. Bit by bit it took the audience away. Pay started going down along with sales. Suddenly, Quality Comics threw in the towel and went out of business."

Bill Ward recalls in a conversation and interview about those days after the War: "I think it was around 1946 that Busy Arnold, Quality Comic’s publisher asked me if I could do another story for Modern Comics; and did I have any ideas? I mentioned the fact that I had drawn a strip about a daffy blonde in the Army call "Torchy." Busy Arnold went for the idea; and I convinced Busy to let me ink it. At long last Torchy was in the comics. The Torchy Strip was very popular, running for about 3 years. Modern and Quality Comics were getting so much mail on Torchy that Busy Arnold decided to do a Torchy Book. I was ecstatic! My creation, that daffy blonde chick, was going to have a book of her own. Then disaster struck, the greatest disappointment of my career. I had finished the Torchy Cover and the lead story for issue No. 1 when George Brenner phoned and told me they were taking me off Torchy! Romance Comics had come on the scene at the same time and they were instant best sellers. None of the other artists, due to the fact they had had no experience doing women, could handle it - it had to be me! Modern had planned on a bunch of books; and I was to do the covers and lead stories. It meant lots more money for me, but I was furious! I phoned Busy and pleaded with him that Torchy was my baby. I just wouldn’t turn her over to another artist. We ended up with a compromise. If I could find the time, he would let me do as many of the covers as I could manage, plus the same with the lead stories. Gil Fox did most of Torchy from then on, although I was able to do half of the covers and several lead stories. Gil, a great guy and a good friend, took over and did a remarkable job following my style. As a matter of fact, it was more than a bit disconcerting to me that he could. I worked day and night to turn the romance penciling out so that I could do Torchy. However, Romance was selling like mad, so more titles were added."

Bill Ward moved into magazine cartooning, particularly for editor Abe Goodman at Humorama Magazine. Humorama Magazine was a divsion of the Martin Goodman publishing empire. Martin Goodman was best known as the publisher of the Timely/Atlas and later even more famous Marvel Comic Books. Martin goodman also published most of the Men's Adventure magazines like Stag and For Men Only. Martin Goodman's relative, Abe Goodman, ran the Humorama Magaine division. Goodman churned out titles like Joker, Romp, and Jest, which featured cheesecake photos and one-panel girlie cartoons. For a 20-year period beginning in 1947, Ward produced 30 cartoons a month for Goodman. That comes to 7,200 cartoons for just one account for Abe Goodman. “Bill’s output rivals Jack Kirby’s,” said Joe Anderko, another long-time Ward friend. Torchy appeared frequently in Humorama in Bill Ward's one-panel gag cartoons, and continued appearing in Humorama for years. Torchy got sexier as time went on, to the point where the later Torchy cartoons, which were aimed at an adult audience, were almost pornographic. Since DC Comics, which acquired Quality Comic's properties in 1956, didn't object to his use of her in a timely manner, presumably, Torchy, unlike the majority of Quality Comics characters, belongs to Torchy's creator now. Eventually, the so-called Torchy "The Blonde Bombshell" got back into comic books. Israel Waldman, whose I.W. Enterprises and its successor, Super Comics, would make unauthorized reprints of anything that wasn't nailed down, put out an issue in 1964. Innovation Press, a 1980s start-up publisher, did several authorized reprints. There was a set of Torchy trading cards, concentrating on the post-Quality cartoons, in the 1990s. While Torchy is remembered by most comic book fans as a character firmly rooted in the distant past, in reality Torchy remained a viable property for creator, Bill Ward for the rest of his life. But Ward's career in comics was nearly finished anyway. It was the early fifties, and Dr. Wertham's campaign to paint comics as bad for kids was having effects. "My main interest is not in comic books or even mass media, but in children and young people. Over the years I have been director of large mental hygiene clinics... And I have done a great deal of work - sometimes with great difficulty - to prevent young people from being sent to reformatories where they are often very badly treated. I have also helped a number of young people so they were not sent to the electric chair. Seeing that so many immature people have troubles and get into trouble, I tried to find out all the sources that contributed to their difficulties. In the course of that work I came across crime comic books. I had nothing whatever to do directly with the comics code. Nor have I ever endorsed it. Nor do I believe in it. My scientific findings had something to do with it only because the crime comic book publishers, some of them multi-millionaires, were afraid laws or statutes would be passed against their worst productions. To guard against that the code was established. Controlling the excess of brutality in crime comic books has nothing to do with censorship. Protecting children is not censorship. I was the first American psychiatrist admitted in a Federal Court in a book censorship case - and I testified against censorship."-Dr. Wertham on Comics Soon the diminished sales caused Quality Comics to go out of business. Ward found other work drawing cartoons for Abe Goodman's Humorama Magazine, Gaze, Gee Whiz, Joker Magazine, and in 1954, at Cracked Magazine where Bill Ward continued for many years.

The Bill Ward Secret Weapon of Choice and Success-The Conte Crayon!!! Ward admits that he paid very little attention in art school, preferring to focus on area coeds. There was, however, one instructor who used the Conte crayon, and that caught Ward’s attention. “This instructor couldn’t draw very well, but he was doing it so rapidly,” Ward recounted in a biographical video entitled “The Wonderful Women of Ward”. That caused a bulb to light up in Ward’s head: “The faster you do a drawing, the better money you could make.” Not only did the crayon allow Ward to work quickly, but it allowed him to create the textures that became his trademark. “The Conte crayon is a stick of crayon that is square, but the sides are sharp and so when you press down, it lets you grade things off so beautifully,” Ward added. “Many art students ask if I use an air brush for my drawing, but I don’t. It’s the Conte crayon that gives the soft effect, especially on the legs. If I do dark stockings, I get that sheen (using the Conte crayon) that I can’t possibly get with a wash.” The only downside to the Conte crayon was that it forced Ward to work on a large scale. As a result, though the pages of Humorama measured a paltry 7 ¼ by 5 ½ inches, his originals often measured two feet tall. In exchange for each cartoon, Ward was paid $30 a cartoon, and in keeping with the custom of the era, Goodman got to keep the originals. Ward, nonetheless, felt fairly compensated; it was an account he could count on, and Goodman also paid Ward a royalty for cartoons sold overseas. “Abe (eventually) got more for the originals than he paid Bill, but in the 1950’s, gas was 22 cents a gallon and Pepsi was a dime, so Bill, who could whip them off, didn’t get a bad deal,” Amsie said.

When his tenure at Humorama came to an end, Ward, whose work crossed genres, began contributing to adult and fetish magazines like Club, Juggs, Screw, Reflections and Fetish Times, as well as the Eros Goldstripe line of adult paperback books. In contrast to his Humorama drawings, which were simultaneously elegant and risque’, Ward’s line drawing for the adult publications was cruder, involving partial and full nudity, and every deviant act imaginable. According to Amsie, “Bill used to say, `They want big pussies and big penises, so what can I do? I have to put food on the table.’” Ward took the adult work partly because, being a freelancer, he was always a bit insecure, noting that the only way he could protect himself was by having lots of accounts. Ironically, Ward probably could have worked less if he had marketed himself better, but he rarely made public appearances, and as a result, had little idea of his popularity. “Bill was so dreadfully shy,” Judy Ward said. “The comic-book conventions would come begging for him to come, but he lived for his family and his work. He lived in his own little world and had a very happy time of it.” For the most part, Ward was a workaholic who got up at 4 a.m. to start drawing and didn’t knock off until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. In his spare time, Ward was a scratch golfer, a collector of civil war photographs and an avid antique hunter, scouring garage sales for bargains. Only later in his career did Ward begin to make public appearances at comic-book conventions, where he was taken aback by the reception he received. Ward told friends he was flabbergasted to see his drawings, which he used to give away, selling for as much as $250.

“Bill loved women, and it came through in his work,” said Ward’s longtime friend, pin-up dealer Art Amsie. “I would, without a doubt, put Bill down as the greatest comic-book portrayer of feminine sexuality.” Imagine a stunning woman boasting Barbie-like proportions – and then some – poured into a shimmery dress, silky gloves, sheer lingerie and thigh-high stockings, all perched atop a pair of stiletto heels, and you have the recipe for the typical Ward drawing. “Bill could’ve been a designer,” Amsie added. “Whereas other cartoonists always had their girls in the same dress, Bill always dressed his girls to the nines in evening gowns with sparkles and sequins. He sometimes spent more time on the dresses than on the girls themselves.” Given the sophisticated and worldly look of his women, it’s hard to believe that Ward never strayed far from his hometown of Ridgewood, NJ.