Eugene "Gene" Bilbrew was an American cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 and fetish artist. In addition to signing his work with his own name, he drew under a range of pseudonyms, including ENEG ("Gene" spelled backwards), Van Rod, and Bondy.

He began his career at the Los Angeles Sentinel

Los Angeles Sentinel

The Los Angeles Sentinel is a weekly African American-owned newspaper published in Los Angeles, California. The paper boasts of reaching 125,000 readers , making it the oldest, largest and most influential African-American newspaper in the Western United States.The Sentinel was founded and first...

, an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 newspaper, where he illustrated the comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 series The Bronze Bomber — coauthored by Bill Alexander. He also wrote the series Hercules in Health Magazine. Throughout his life, he took freelance assignments within the African American community, for instance producing modernized cover art for Victorian-era lottery

Lottery

A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...

 numbers books such as the Gypsy Witch Dream Book and Old Aunt Dinah's Dream Book for the Wholesale Sales Corp.

Around 1950 Bilbrew became an assistant to the hugely influential comics artist

Comics artist

A comics artist is an artist working within the comics medium on comic strips, comic books or graphic novels. The term may refer to any number of artists who contribute to produce a work in the comics form, from those who oversee all aspects of the work to those who contribute only a part.-Comic...

 Will Eisner

Will Eisner

William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...

, on The Spirit

The Spirit

The Spirit is a crime-fighting fictional character created by writer-artist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940 in "The Spirit Section", the colloquial name given to a 16-page Sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and reaching five million...

, where Bilbrew took over the back-up series Clifford — a little-kid humour page — after its originator Jules Feiffer

Jules Feiffer

Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...

 was drafted into the army.

Bilbrew's later notability came when he became a fetish artist at Irving Klaw

Irving Klaw

Irving Klaw was an American photographer and filmmaker.Klaw is best-known for operating a mail-order business selling photographs and film of attractive women from the 1940s to the 1960s...

's Movie Star News/Nutrix company. He also had many illustrations published in Exotique magazine between 1956 and 1959.

External links

• GeneBilbrew.com
• http://www.rebsart.com/Bios/bilbrew.asp
• http://fetish.pornparks.com/bilbrew/
• http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2009/03/eugene-bilbrew-african-american-artist.html