DALLAS, TX — Ben Denison’s original Playboy #1 cartoon illustration will be offered during Heritage’s upcoming Illustration Art auction, to be held December 12th. Magazine founder Hugh Hefner hand-picked the illustration for the first issue of the magazine and the magazine’s impact on erotic art and sexy cartoons has been huge.”It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Playboy magazine to the modern cartoon field,” says Ed Jaster, Heritage Auctions vice president. “Ben Denison’s was the very first cartoon commissioned and published by Hefner in the pages of Playboy #1, the December 1953 debut often dubbed the ‘Marilyn Monroe issue.’ This was the cartoon that set the stage for all that followed, and as such, it holds a hallowed place both in Playboy lore and cartoon history.”
“In the 50-plus years since this cartoon appeared, Playboy magazine has featured the world’s best and brightest cartoonists,” Jaster went on in a statement. “Its spectacular stable of artists has included such stellar talents as Buck Brown, Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein, Gahan Wilson, and many others. These hip subversives and sly revolutionaries set a new standard of excellence for cartoons, using a sophisticated type of humor missing in other men’s magazines — and it all began right here with this Ben Denison gag.”
The gouache on illustration board drawing has an image area that measures approximately 11″ x 8-1/2″. The somewhat risqué, and yet charmingly innocent, punch line asks, “Jeannie – what’s the past tense of ‘virgin’?” Heritage Auctions is listing the value of the cartoon at being worth a minimum of $12,000.
For more information on the auction, visit HA.com.
