Doc Rankin

Who was Doc Rankin?

Ainsworth H. "Doc" Rankin was an American army officer and freelance cartoonist. He was an editorial page cartoonist for the Brooklyn Eagle for a number of years and is best known for producing the touring show This is the Army with Irving Berlin, which toured military camps during World War II. He is also widely believed by comic collectors to be the anonymous artist nicknamed "Mr. Prolific" who produced nearly 200 "Tijuana bibles" in the 1930s, based on an identification by sexologist, folklorist and bibliographer Gershon Legman. Legman claimed to have met Doc Rankin in a Scranton, PA bookstore and learned from him that he was one of the artists behind the ribald 8-page cartoon booklets which were some of the earliest underground comics, resembling the later work of Robert Crumb.

After failing to see action during World War I due to an injury, Rankin served as a reserve cavalry officer between the wars, while maintaining a freelance cartooning studio in Manhattan where he produced commercial art and cartoons. For many years he regularly drew editorial page cartoons for the daily Brooklyn Eagle in a dramatic conté crayon style similar to the work of Robert Minor, and very unlike his humorous pen and ink gag cartooning work. Never well known as a cartoonist, he retired from cartooning after his military call-up in 1940. He served during the war as a Special Services officer with responsibilities for entertainment and camp morale, first at Camp Upton on Long Island, then overseas in Europe. He remained in the military after the war, rising to the rank of Lt. Colonel, and died of heart failure at Fort Bragg in 1954. He is buried in Fayetteville, NC.