Virgil Partch - WWII

WWII

Partch was drafted into the US Army in 1944, and by the end of his two-year stint had been transferred from the infantry to become art director and cartoonist of the Army's weekly newspaper, the Fort Ord Panorama.

Out of the Army, Partch freelanced for ERA Productions with great success. He published a number of books of single-panel cartoons, some previously published, others done specifically for the books. His 1950 bestseller, Bottle Fatigue, focused on alcohol-themed humor, selling nearly 95,000 hardcover copies by the decade's end. Many of VIP's cartoons depicted a suave, urban sophisticate or trendy suburbanite, revealing him to be a dipsomaniac obsessed with sex, power, prestige and money. In VIP Throws a Party, one of his cartoons shows a depressed man sitting over his drink in a dark corner table, all alone, saying, "Sometimes I get so tired of me, I make myself sick." On the cover of Cartoon Fun a surfer holds the loose bikini-top straps of a woman who says, "I hope you know how to steer this thing, Sam."

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