Smilin’ Jack

[1] Smilin’ Jack No. 8, Dell Comics, 1949.

by John Adcock

“We have found in our business that our techniques are very effective for bringing about certain moral lessons and giving information and making education more widespread (…) I would say right offhand that cartoonists are not forced by editors or publishers to draw any certain way. If they don’t want to draw the way the publisher or editor wants them to, they can get out of that business.

[2] Smilin’ Jack No. 4, Dell Comics, 1948.

We have about 300 members of our society, each one of whom is very proud of the traditions and I think small nobility of our craft. We would hesitate, any one of us, to draw anything we would not bring into our home.” — Walt Kelly, President of the National Cartoonists Society, in Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency [Comic Books], April 21, 22, and June 4, 1954.

[3] Vancouver Sun supplement, September 17, 1960.

“We believe good material outsells bad. We believe people, even juveniles, are fundamentally decent. We believe, as parents and as onetime children ourselves, that most young people are instinctively attracted to that which is wholesome.” — Statement of the National Cartoonists Society read before Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency [Comic Books], April 21, 22, and June 4, 1954.

[4] Smilin’ Jack No. 8.

Someone forgot to read the rules to Zack Mosley who “was way before his time in drawing provocative females. The women in ‘Smilin’ Jack’s’ life tended to be well-endowed beauties who were obviously braless” (“Smilin’ Jack” Lives – But In Retirement, June 9, 1981).

[5] Smilin’ Jack No. 2, Dell Comics, 1949.

ZACH MOSLEY was born in Hickory, Oklahoma in December 1906 and moved to Chicago when he was 19. He studied under Casey Orr, editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, while taking courses at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1929 Mosley was an assistant on the Buck Rogers and Skyroads strips. He submitted his own comic, On the Wing, to Captain Joe Patterson of the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate. The strip was accepted and the name changed to The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack, running from October 1, 1933, until April 1, 1973. Smilin’ Jack was very popular from the start, eventually running to 300 subscribers, millions of readers, in the United States, Canada and Australia.

[6] Smilin’ Jack No. 8.

The drawing was crude but the characters were memorable and the women, referred to as “l’il de-icers” regularly lost their skirts and dignity throughout the run. Spanking scenes were so commonplace that they were hotly anticipated by male readers. Smilin’ Jack believed women belonged in the kitchen and regularly slapped them around. The women were violent as well, blacking the eyes of men and cat-fighting with their rivals. Mosley once judged a “Miss De-Icer of 1949” beauty contest which was open to “any unmarried girl between 18 and 30 years.”

[7] Smilin’ Jack No. 8, Dell Comics, 1949.

“Nearly everyone knows that Mosley’s daughter and wife are the basis for Jack’s daughter, Jill, and wife, Sable, but when I asked him if either one of them ever complained about things that Jill or Sable did in the comics, he replied, “Sometimes they look at me funny.”” — Cartoonist Mosley Draws Characters He Admires, December 1, 1969

[8] Zach Mosley and his first wife Betty Adcock flying a Cessna 170, 1953.

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