Courtesy of Mark Newgarden, it’s Crockett Johnson advising you to get a check-up so that you don’t get cancer. Johnson created this 1958 pamphlet for the American Cancer Society, and I strongly suspect that he designed it, too. (Clicking on each image will produce a larger version.)
Unfold to the left, and see:
Next, unfold to the right, for:
When you click on the above (for a larger image), you’ll see the Crockett Johnson aesthetic at work – a clear line, with small changes from panel to panel (recalling his Little Man with the Eyes in this respect).
When the pamphlet advises, “Know these warning signals may mean cancer,” I can’t help but think of Crockett Johnson’s death from lung cancer, 17 years later. Which signals prompted him to go to the doctor in early 1975? And, as a lifelong smoker, did he already suspect what was wrong with him?
In my Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (coming this fall), I reproduce a full-page magazine ad Johnson did for the American Cancer Society. But I’d never seen this pamphlet until Mark sent it to me. Had we time and were there interest, it’d be fun to collect all of Johnson’s advertising work and publish it in a small book. I doubt there’d be much of a market for such an item, but it’s a nice idea to imagine.
