Word: osborn
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Cartoonist Robert Osborn left the Navy in 1946, he paid his respects to the military with a small book of cartoons entitled War Is No Damn Good! Across its pages strutted a wonderful, viciously funny parade of balloon-shaped generals and admirals, gorilla-faced noncoms and forlorn, tortured G.I.s. Last week Osborn finally paid his respects to civilian life with a book called Low & Inside (Farrar, Straus & Young; $3.75). If anything, the sequel is even deadlier and more acidly humorous than the original...
...Osborn's style is faintly reminiscent of Cartoonist William Steig's bitter comments on humanity, and the title of his first postwar collection was obviously inspired by Steig's famed caption, "People Are No Damn Good." But where Steig sometimes turns soft and subtle, Osborn is freer and more frightening. With wild, axlike penstrokes, he carves out vicious children, rich dowagers, tyrants and tycoons. Heads become onions festooned with spikes; eyes are thin slits or insane whirls...
...Osborn draws a fat club member with the tight emptiness of a blown-up sheep bladder, a paranoiac as a jungle of harsh lines straining inside a box. And his captions have the impact of an uppercut. A black Spanish bull glowers from one page with this thought for the matador: "Now the bull is looking at you with intent to kill and all that is required of you is to go in over the horns...
...former member of the Yale Record staff, Osborn drew last year's Life cover of a man with a nail through his head; this ran with the magazine's article on hangovers. His work also appears in Fortune and Harpers, and a spread of his on the income tax was in a recent Look. Osborn first gained prominence with navy recruiting material during World War II, and has since done illustrations for several light books...
...suggesting his Alternate above, Osborn notes that he was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin--11 miles from Senator McCarthy's birthplace...