April 27 was International Sculpture Day!

This magazine cover from 1935 gives a whole new meaning to how 'modeling clay' got its name. Enoch's sly sense of humor is evident here. Many of his magazine covers, particularly the smooshes, were chock full of visual puns or double entendres. Our Bolles girl is rightly proud of her well-sculpted figurine, but she's not the only one who took notice. 
As you can plainly see, to label this cover from New York Knights a swipe is to give stealing a bad name. The artist here, as many of you will recognize, is George Quintana. I think you could make a strong case that he owes his career as a cover artist to Bolles. He swiped so often and so thoroughly that his work is often misattributed to Bolles. Some of you may also know that I've written about the theory that George Quintana was a nom de plume of the artist, George Quaintance, famous for his muscle man magazine covers that predated Tom of Finland. I've shifted back and forth on my theory since then, and so for now I'll reserve judgement about who's who, but you can't ignore some similarities in their the styles and between their signatures (granted, Quintana played around with his more). Anyway if you are interested in making your own comparisons or learning more, here's a great web site on Quaintance by his biographer, Ken Furtado, who definitely comes down against the Quintana-Quaintance connection.  

But back to the swiping. Bolles was definitely aware of Quintana's covers, and so were the editors of Film Fun, who brought a law suit against Quintana's most visible publication

vehicle, Movie Humor. While the lawsuit was ongoing, Movie Humor went so far as to print disclaimers on the covers to allay any confusion in the weak-eyed reader.  The judge acknowledged similarities between the magazines he rejected the lawsuit. But Quintana wasn't the only artist who 'borrowed' from Enoch, and from time to time I've posted examples. I thought the theme was worth revisiting so I'll soon be starting a new series called "Cases from the Swipe Files".  So stay posted, my friends.