WWII James F. Brown Comic Art
GUEST: I brought in some drawings. My great uncle was a World War II cartoonist. He came from a little town in Missouri, Gower, Missouri. And so these are some of his original drawings
APPRAISER: I did a little research. He enlisted in 1942 in the Army. He'd been a cartoonist previously. He'd worked for a couple of newspapers in the hometown that he came from. He was a PFC but he ended up with General Patton's Third Army. So throughout the war he's incredibly talented, really well developed for a young kid. Here's the picture of him. He doesn't seem to be that old at the time. What I like about it, it's as good as it gets artistically and with the cartoon narrative. And yet, going forward into the war, he goes through engagements, and I see that he was killed in 1945 in action in Germany.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And so you look at that, and you wonder about the undeveloped youth. Where would he have gone if he hadn't been at a dangerous place at the wrong time in 1945? If you look here, this is a great cartoon. There's a callow-faced GI, a little bit of his age, who's bragging to one of the village kids in France about how he scared the Nazis away and yet they're right above him. Very well drawn, it's got good tonality. Crisp. Clear. A lot of these were shown actually throughout the war in Stars and Stripes magazine and Yank magazine. When you look at the artwork, there's a little bit of a dark edge to it. He's making light of incredible tragedy around him day by day.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Have you had them appraised, or have you had them looked at?
GUEST: No, they were just handed down through family and ended up with us. And really no attention was ever drawn to them. They were just in a box. We got them and then I just... I appreciated them because I thought it was a real honor to have it on his behalf.
APPRAISER: I don't know how many of the correspondents and cartoonists were killed in the war. There were not many who had risen to the level of Yank and Stars and Stripes magazine. So he's kind of in a select group of famous people who were killed in that capacity. In a way, because he was killed during the war, there's an undeveloped market for his work. However, you look at the caliber of the artistry, and I would say that most likely that at auction the group with the entire notebook, with his photos, et cetera would probably sell between $2,000 and $3,000.
GUEST: Great.
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Understanding Our Appraisals
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