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Volume 4855

BOB LUBBERS
Tarzan Artist
Part I: ERBzine 4855-4898

Bob (Robert Bartow) Lubbers
Born: January 10, 1922 - Brooklyn, Long Island, NY
Died: July 8, 2017 - Manhasset, New York
Bob Lubbers began as an illustrator for his school newspaper. In his teens, he played trombone in a big band five nights a week while studying during the day with George Bridgman and other instructors at the Art Students League. He entered the comic book field when he was 18 years old, as he recalled:

"My pal Stan Drake and I left Bridgman's life class one day and marched down to Centaur and sold the comic mag features we'd created. Before long I was doing features at Fiction House until the War."

For Centaur (aka the Comics Corporation of America), Lubbers drew such features as the Arrow, Reef Kincaid, Red Riley and the Liberty Scouts. After Centaur folded in 1942, he signed on as art director at Fiction House, where he drew Firehair in Rangers Comics, Camilla in Jungle Comics, Señorita Rio in Fight Comics, Captain Wings in Wings, plus such features as Space Rangers, Rip Carson, Flint Baker and Captain Terry Thunder.

Remembering his first, pre-WWII employment at Fiction House, Lubbers recalled "a young teenager who'd come in now and then to show a little sample book he'd made up called Panther Lady. We could see this kid had the right stuff. He had no luck selling it to Fiction House, but it was just as well. Frank Frazetta has become a glittering star in the world of fine art."

In 1943 he married his childhood sweetheart, Grace. That same week he got his draft notice and was posted to the Pacific theater as a second radio/waist gunner on a B-17 bomber. He took his sketchbook with him and chronicled his service experience. In 1945, when Bob was discharged he returned to life with Grace and his art job at Fiction House who In February 1943, he gave up the band job and decided to settle down as a fulltime artist, and married his childhood sweetheart, Grace. That same week he got his draft notice and was soon off to the Pacific theater as a second radio/waist gunner on a B-17 bomber. He took his sketchbook with him and chronicled his service experience. In 1945, when Bob was discharged he returned to life with Grace and his art job at Fiction House. Features and covers poured out until 1950, when his mentor Ray Van Buren led him to UFS and Tarzan and NCS membership."

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Comic strips

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In 1950, he was offered the job of drawing the Tarzan Sunday and daily strips and signed on for a three-year contract. Of that experience Bob remembered:

The dream of a lifetime come true…the big time. But to me Tarzan was only Foster and Weissmuller. I’d never read a Burroughs book, had no real insight into Tarzan’s character. I was not fully prepared for this massive step, but did know I wanted to get the feel of Foster. Plenty of action, interplay with jungle animals, colorful backgrounds and as many exotic girls as the scripts would allow. So off went the roof of my detached garage and up went a little studio with a potbelly coal stove for heat. I dug in full bore, charged with inspiration. Seven-day weeks were not uncommon in the beginning, but only nine to five. What fun it was using the (George) Bridgeman tricks…twisting the figures and animals into dynamic action drawings. For the first time in my career it was serious illustration. Some of the vignette panels, sans copy, seem to tell more of the character of Tarzan I was after than the main frames.

Dick Van Buren got the scripts to me on time and we were rolling. When he wrote exotic females into the scripts, it was fun to reprise some of the fun of those Fiction House cover girls. modified slightly. The stories could never be truly topical, but played in an amorphous, Burroughsian time period." "Plenty of action, interplay with jungle animals, colorful backgrounds and as many exotic girls as Dick’s scripts would allow.

In 1954, he first did work at the Al Capp studio and entered, as he put it, Capp's "star-studded world of movers and shakers".

He began drawing The Saint in 1959, and he also worked on Big Ben Bolt. Frank Godwin's Rusty Riley was running in more than 150 newspapers when Godwin died of a heart attack in 1959 at his home in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The final Rusty Riley strips were drawn by Lubbers, who recalled,
"In 1959, Frank Godwin, the artist who did Rusty Riley, died. Sylvan Byck at King Features asked if I'd do the last two weeks in Godwin's style to end the series. I admired his book illustrations and was honored to have the privilege to do it."
In 1960, he drew Secret Agent X-9 (as "Bob Lewis"), and he contributed to Li'l Abner during the 1970s.

Lubber's own strips were Robin Malone (for NEA in the late 1960s) and Long Sam, created by Al Capp and syndicated by United Feature Syndicate from 1954 to 1962. Initially written by Capp, who soon turned the duties over to his brother, Elliot Caplin; Lubbers eventually assumed the writing duties himself in the strip's final phase. Long Sam was, like Li'l Abner, a hillbilly strip, though based on a female character. The title character, Sam, was a tall, voluptuous, naive mountain girl who had been raised in a hidden valley away from civilization by her Maw, who hates men and wishes to protect her daughter from them. The stories deal with Sam's inevitable discovery of the world and its discovery of her.

When Capp asked who he would most like to model for their new strip about a backwoods knockout, Long Sam, a sort of female Li’I Abner which Capp was scripting, Lubbers dared to ask for Betty Allen, a favourite beauty from the Jackie Gleason Show. Capp merely had to make a phone call and a few days later Bob was back at Capp’s Waldorf Hotel suite, posing Betty for his Polaroid camera.

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Comic books

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In addition to DC Comics's The Vigilante, he drew Westerns for Pines (Standard/Nedor) comics in the 1950s. He drew for comic books in the late 1970s, working for Marvel Comics. Lubbers is sometimes mistakenly said to have drawn for DC Comics during the 1980s. A young inker named Bob Lewis did work for DC during that period. but he was not Lubbers using a pseudonym.

In 2001, when his work was collected in the 100-page Glamour International: The Good Girl Art of Bob Lubbers, comics historian Paul Gravett reviewed:

Bob Lubbers is not the celebrated cartoonist he should be, but thanks to a legion of Italian admirers, he is now getting his day in the sunshine in his 80th year. The latest edition of the long-running Italian magazine Glamour International No. 26 (2001, $34.95) pays tribute to his Good Girl Art in a deluxe, bi-lingual 100-page, 12" x 12" inch square showcase, edited by the respected authority Alberto Beccattini. Lubbers himself writes the commentary tracing his fascinating life and 40-year career in comics, accompanied by photos, sketches, a host of brand new colour illustrations and covers, plus some specially colored panels of his Firehair, Camilla and Captain Wings comic books from his Fiction House days in the Forties and from his string of newspaper strips, Tarzan... Long Sam, The Saint, Secret Agent X9, Robin Malone and L'il Abner. Bob credits being in the right place at the right time for keeping him busy, jumping from one series to the next or juggling several at once. But this modesty overlooks his constantly fresh and lively draughtsmanship, his crisp storytelling skills and his particular lifelong love affair with the female form, qualities that have kept him in constant demand... Writing about his experiences in the comics industry, his encounters with stars, presidents and models, his passions for playing music and golf, and his current success at devising crossword puzzles, Lubbers comes across as a genial, big-hearted man, who has always enjoyed his life and developing a variety of talents. This book concludes with the most thorough checklist of his work to date, 11 pages meticulously compiled by Beccattini with help from many experts.

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Awards and exhibitions

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In 1998, Lubbers was honored with the prestigious Yellow Kid prize at Rome's Expo Cartoon Festival. Sunday strips by Lubbers were displayed in 2003 at the Tarzan! exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Writing about his experiences in the comics industry, his encounters with stars, presidents and models, his passions for playing music and golf, and his  success at devising crossword puzzles, Lubbers comes across as a genial, big-hearted man, who has always enjoyed his life and developing a variety of talents.

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Ref: ERB Artists Encyclopedia and Wikipedia