Mort Leav

Mortimer Leav (July 9, 1916, New York City, New York – September 21, 2005) was an American artist best known as co-creator of the influential comic-book character the Heap, and for his advertising art, which included some of the earliest TV commercial storyboards — among them, for Procter & Gamble's venerable Charmin bathroom-tissue character, the grocer Mr. Whipple.

Biography

Early life and career

Mort Leav began his professional career in 1936 with New York City's Editors Press Service, supplying illustrations for articles syndicated to South American newspapers. Five years later, he entered the field of comic books at the Jerry Iger Studio, one of a handful of "packagers" that supplied outsourced comics to publishers entering the new medium. Earning $30 a week — a marked improvement on the $78 monthly he'd earned his first year at EPS — Leav penciled and inked the feature "Jungleman" in Harvey Comics' Champ Comics (under the pseudonym Stanley Maxwell); "ZX-5, Spies in Action" in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics (under the pen name Major Thorpe); "The Hangman" for MLJ; and, for Quality Comics, "Sally O'Neil, Policewoman" in National Comics, and "Hell Diver" in Hit Comics, among others.