Who drew the comics on the back of Topps baseball cards?

Princeton University’s Dr. Eric White has used a canny eye to solve a decades-long mystery

Dr. Eric White is the Scheide Librarian and Assistant University Librarian for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at Princeton University, where he writes about, amongst many other topics, the Gutenberg Bible. In his free time, he has been studying one of baseball’s biggest mysteries –  Who are the unnamed artists behind the classic Topps baseball cartoons?

White’s interest in the tiny comics that used to be found on the back of Topps baseball cards started early. “As a little kid, I wanted to draw cartoons like that. I wanted to be the Topps bubblegum official artist,” White shares. “My collecting of baseball cards, which still goes on, is very nostalgic. It’s not about mint condition, it’s not about clean corners and rookies. It’s always about baseball history and what’s on the back of these cards. And the cartoons are a huge part of that.”

The question behind the Topps cartoons’ authorship has been a long-unanswered one. Topps never allowed cartoonists to sign or initial their work. Over time, artists Jack Kirby (of Marvel and DC fame), Jack Davis (of MAD Magazine fame), Murray Olderman, Irwin Hasen, and Bhob Stewart have been listed as some of the cartoonists behind these comics. For those who are not familiar with these names - they’re big ones in the world of comics. As White describes, “They’re not obscure little freelance artists who came and were gone. They are from the Mount Rushmore of comic history in the 1950s and 60s.”

But though progress has been made, there are still artists who remain unnamed, and White’s recent publications at Sports Collectors Daily have both identified which card sets those previously listed cartoonists worked on and unveiled a few previously unidentified cartoonists including Bazooka Joe’s Wesley C. Morse, Mr. Mystic and Blackhawk artist Bob Powell, and horror comics artist Tom Sutton, who was the first story-artist on Vampirella.

As for how White was able to make these discoveries, his background in art history helped, as did his eye for distinguishing an artist’s signature style. White’s original plan was to simply categorize the cards by unknown artists, though the project has expanded alongside his discoveries. “I thought I was simply going to sort out the cards in a nerdy way and say – that guy that reminds me of Fred Flintstone did these and the guy I call Babyface did these, and then I started finding smoking gun traces in published signed work for other purposes.” While most of his discoveries have come through those “smoking gun” traces, when identifying Tom Sutton’s work, White actually stumbled across some physical proof - a literal stamp featuring Sutton’s name and address on original Topps cartoon art that was being auctioned off.

As for what specifically he’s looking for when he’s categorizing these baseball cartoons by artists, White shares, “Their little habits in the peripheries of the subject matter give them away. How do they draw a trophy? How do they do home run explosions? It’s these little details that they’re not even thinking about doing.”

So far, White believes he has newly identified six contributors to the Topps baseball card cartoons, and he’s still going. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of Dr. Eric White’s series to catch up on his work so far.