'Smokey Stover'.
Bill Holman was born in 1903 in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In 1919, he started studying in Chicago under Carl Ed, and soon found a job with the Chicago Tribune. Holman's first comic was 'Billville Birds', in 1922, which ran only for a short period. Bill Holman moved to New York to try his luck, and ended up drawing 'G. Whizz Jr.' for the Herald Tribune Syndicate. This strip was not a success either, and Holman earned his living mostly selling cartoons and illustrations to various magazines, such as Collier's, Life and Judge.
'Spooky', 1945.
Holman's luck changed when he created 'Smokey Stover' in 1935, a strip about firemen. In the Second World war, the figure of Smokey Stover appeared as paintings on several American bomber planes. The strip ran until 1973, and had a great, funny style with witty punchlines. A catchphrase often featured in the series, "1506 nix nix", was actually an inside joke between Holman and his colleague Al Posen, referring to a hotel where Posen once stayed.
In the same style, Holman also drew 'Spooky', about a cat. Holman also ghosted on Vic Forsythe's newspaper comic 'Joe Jinks' and Otto Messmer's 'Felix the Cat'.
In the mid-1940s, when Holman worked for the New York Daily News, he shared an office with Martin Landau. In 1961, Bill Holman became president of the National Cartoonists Society. He died on 27 February, 1987.
'Smokey Stover'.
Bill Holman was an influence on Bob Clampett, Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin and Jim Scancarelli.
'Smokey Stover'.