Torchy

Torchy Todd and her air-headed adventures started out as a morale-boosting comic strip for the base paper at Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, NY for the U. S. Army where Bill Ward was stations at the time.

Just like other cartoon characters drawn by soldiers such as Sad Sack, that started in the Army’s paper Stars & Strips, Will Eisner’s Pvt. Joe Dope in Army Motors, and Milton Caniff’s Miss Lace, notice was taken of Ward’s Torchy and she started to be syndicated in other base papers around the world.

After the war Eisner contacted Ward and Torchy appeared first in the back pages of Doll Man Quarterly, then moved over to Modern Comics (formerly Military Comics) home of Blackhawk, where she stayed until issue 102.

Eventually she gained her own title with Torchy # 1 in November of 1949.

The title was going well mainly, appropriately enough, on Army bases, however the comic was named by Dr. Fredrick Fredric Wertham as one of the worst comics in the corrupting of the morals of children, that the stories were really quite innocent, and even so most where sold to adults, was not something that Wertham took into consideration.

As an appeasement to the hue and cry that was being raised Quality dropped Torchy with # 6.

Bill Ward however still owned the rights to the character and continued to draw her in other media until his death.