leaving me to suspect at one time that he might be an H.E. Chambers. He did sign some material H.R. Chambers. He drew mostly humor comics from 1945 to 1951.
The only thing we know about him is what we know from a Howard Post interview. One, he was a he. Two, he could draw fast -really fast. Three, he wasn't that ethical. Four, he was a heroin and marijuana user. Five, Post knew him as Holly Chambers.
Everything else is even worse speculation. So let's get worse.
There's a Holly Chambers Apartments in Greenwich Village on Washington Square in NYC.
This 16 floors apartments was built in 1931. Up to 1947, it was easy to jam and play in the park.
There's an Ellis Chambers who was a professional musician in the 1940s.
Connection between those three facts? Not necessarily.
Milton Knight says that Post told him that he was "E. Holly Chambers" and that he dropped out of sight in the mid 1950s.
There is a Holly Ellis Chambers living in Texas in the 1950s-1960s, but he was living in Texas from 193o on. Another one recently in Brooklyn, but born way too late.
3 comments:
Nicely concise on what very little we know about the man.
The only thing i could add is that he used a few other signatures. Beyond "EC" and "Holly Chambers", he also used "HC", "Holly", "Chambers", "Ellis Chambers", "HO", and just "C". He also seems to have signed a few with an odd sort of "L" shaped block that looks like an unused caption box with a short vertical bar for the L.
I don't know of Chambers doing a comic that was anything BUT humor-more specifically funny animals, except for the cover of this issue of Gangsters Can't Win: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=41257 It would be interesting to see him do a story in a more realistic style simply to see how it'd look like, but this cover is all I know of him doing anything but his distinctive, trippy funny animal style.
Yeah, around 1951 or 1950 he started doing a lot less comics, it seems. From 1946 or 47 to about 50 he was doing a TON of comics, but then afterwards he slowed down and several years later seemed to stop, although his works began to look a LOT better to the point where the drawing quality was up there with Carl Barks and Walt Kelly, look at Two-Bit Wacky Woodpecker #1 where he did two stories, both of them absolutely gorgeous-looking. Also gotta love the rabbits eating locoweed and getting "loco" (a blatant inside marijuana joke on Chamber's part, how did he slip all this drug stuff into comics marketed towards children?!)
I didn't read in the Howie Post interview Chambers drawing really fast, but based on Howie's account and how many comics Chambers drew in a period of several years, makes sense. I do have to wonder though why did he end up doing a lot less comics and then stopped? Milton Knight said that Post suspected that Chambers was "rubbed out" due to his drug connections, but while that may have happened, why did Chambers end up doing less comics before he stopped? What else was he doing when he lessened on the comics? I suspect maybe he lessened on the drugs and being tied to him doing comics drawing comics lost the appeal to him, or he ended up getting into drug dealing or something maybe to support his habits or make money and eventually got killed by someone else by it. I do hope that Chambers eventually recovered from that comics and dope frenzy and didn't succumb to his habits to the point where he got so into drugs he couldn't even do comics anymore, but if so why were his late works beautifully illustrated? Luckily it's more likely he just lessened his drug habits but still, why did he end up stopping doing comics (as far as we know what he signed) and what did he end up doing afterwards? A lot of interesting questions that'll likely never be answered, but still interesting to wonder about.
Hope you learned something new about Chambers in my post!
i wonder about this guy all the time. wish Post had said more in his TwoMorrows interview about him
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