Jay Scott Pike died September 13 after a brief illness. He was 91 and since the mid-forties, he had been a painter and a comic book artist specializing in beautiful women. Between 1949 and 1973 (both dates approximate), he drew around a thousand comic book stories. Probably around 800 of those were assigned to him because they needed an artist who could draw good-looking ladies.
Pike's earliest comic book work appears to have been for Hillman Comics in 1949. He did westerns and romance for them, then worked for Atlas (now Marvel) for most of the fifties on war, horror, westerns and romance comics — romance, especially. He was also their go-to guy for female versions of Tarzan. He drew Jann of the Jungle and Lorna the Jungle Girl. He eventually found his way to DC Comics where he spent most of the sixties drawing (mostly) romance comics.
One interesting exception was a 1968 issue of Showcase featuring a Pike creation, Dolphin. It was a unique, haunting combination of a super-hero comic and a romance title and while DC then did not allow the project to go beyond the one issue, the book — which Pike wrote and drew — made a lasting impression. Later writers could not resist reviving the character and fans of that one issue often commissioned Pike to do paintings of the lovely Dolphin. The photo above shows the artist with one of them.
When he wasn't doing comics, Pike did paintings for men's magazines and advertising — usually, though not exclusively glamour girl stuff. He was real, real good at everything he did but especially at drawing and painting pretty women. His work will doubtlessly be exhibited and reprinted as long as folks want to see pretty women. I figure that's going to be a long, long time.