How Peck Did It

What’s that old adage by the late, great Wally Wood...? “Never draw what you can swipe, never swipe what you can trace, never trace what you can cut out and paste-in, and never do any of that if you can hire somebody to do it for you.” John Peck, a.k.a. The Mad Peck, often lived by Woody’s axiom, particularly during the 1970s and ’80s, when the Providence-based cartoonist was at his most prolific, whether producing comic strips for Fusion magazine, The Village Voice, Creem, or local alternative publications.

As an example of his “appropriation approach,” here’s an ad for a Providence pizza/sandwich eatery from 1980 where the artist used Matt Baker’s artwork from various romance comics of the mid- to late 1940s that inspired him to emulate for the illustrations. Peck was a man who kept meticulous records of his endeavors, so we found in his files reference to the source material which he used for this comic strip ad starring his signature character, The Masked Marvel, a curvaceous charmer (obviously inspired by the Harvey Comics super-hero, The Black Cat), as well as his alter ego, Dr. Oldie, a persona he used as a disk jockey.