Early life and career Born in
Brooklyn,
New York, Ward grew up in
Ridgewood, New Jersey, where his father was an executive with the
United Fruit Company. At age 17, Ward, already an art hobbyist, began his professional career by illustrating "beer jackets", a type of white denim jacket with text or design printed or drawn on the back; Ward charged one dollar a jacket, and by his own count drew hundreds during that summer. Still rooming at his college
fraternity house, he received a call from Pratt regarding another job, assisting
comic book artist
Jack Binder. He joined Binder's small art studio, a "packager" that supplied outsourced comics pages to fledgling comic book publishers, where Pete Riss was his assistant. The studio was relocating from
The Bronx to, coincidentally, Ward's hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey, to the upstairs loft of a barn. There, Binder drew layouts for
Fawcett Comics stories, for which Riss
penciled and
inked figures and Ward drew the backgrounds. Features included
Mister Scarlet and Pinky,
Bulletman,
Ibis the Invincible,
Captain Battle, the
Black Owl, and the adapted
pulp magazine features
Doc Savage and
The Shadow. The studio grew to about 30 artists, with
Ken Bald as the
art director. Shortly thereafter,
Quality Comics editor
George Brenner hired Ward to write and pencil the hit
aviator feature
Blackhawk of
World War II. Ward artwork for
Military Comics #30-31 (July–August 1944), with the next several issues generally but unconfirmably credited to Al Bryant.
Torchy Torchy made her comic-book debut as star of a backup feature in
Quality Comics'
Doll Man #8 (Spring 1946), and continued in all but three issues through #28 (May 1950), as well as in
Modern Comics #53-89 (Sept. 1946 - Sept. 1949). A solo series,
Torchy, ran six issues (Nov. 1949 - Sept. 1950). Several Torchy stories, including some Fort Hamilton strips, were reprinted in
Innovation Comics' 100-page, squarebound comic book ''Bill Ward's Torchy, The Blonde Bombshell
#1 (Jan. 1992). Others have been reprinted in fy Pages #1 (1987); AC Comics anthology Good Girl Art Quarterly'' #1 (Summer 1990), #10 (Fall 1992), #11 (Winter 1993), and #14 (Winter 1994), and in AC's ''America's Greatest Comics'' #5 (circa 2003). Ward drew an original cover featuring Torchy for Robert M. Overstreet's
annual book
The Comic Book Price Guide (#8, 1978).
Later career " Ward's last confirmed American comic-book work is at least one
Blackhawk story in
Blackhawk #63 (
cover-dated April 1953; another story in that issue is unconfirmed but generally credited to Ward). His last unconfirmed but generally accepted comic-book works both appeared two months later: a Blackhawk story in
Blackhawk #65 and a
Captain Marvel Jr. tale in
Fawcett Comics'
The Marvel Family #84 (both June 1953). During this period he also did cover and interior illustrations for various paperback publishers of softcore and hardcore pornography, especially those owned by
William Hamling; and illustrations (primarily covers) for
Screw. In a rare turn doing a mainstream comics character, Ward drew the four-page part one of a
Judge Dredd story, "The Mega-City 5000," in the weekly British comic book
2000 AD #40 (November 26, 1977), reprinted in
Judge Dredd: The Early Cases #3 by Eagle Comics (April 1986). ==References==