'Batty Baseball', from Tip Top Comics #15 (July 1937).
Alan Maver was an American newspaper cartoonist/reporter, known for his informative fun fact features about sports from the 1930s through the 1970s. During the late 1940s, he drew 'Hector Droopy' and 'Flatfoot Floogle' in Prize Comics, while assisting Ernie Bushmiller on 'Nancy'.
Early career
Not much is known about the cartoonist's early life. Alan B. Maver was born in 1909 into a family of Scottish immigrants in Manhattan, New York City. His father was a carpenter, and he had four older siblings. In the second half of the 1920s, Maver began his cartooning career assisting Feg Murray, a sports cartoonist for the New York Sun. When Murray left the paper six years later, Maver took over completely.
Sports cartoons
By the 1930s, Maver's sports cartoons were distributed by the United Features Syndicate, until in 1948 he moved over to King Features Syndicate. Active until the early 1980s, his feature appeared under many different titles, including 'Sport Spots', 'Review of the Year', 'For the Buck-Eyed' and 'Hall of Fans'. In his panels, Maver delved into specific accomplishments of the sports stars of the day, usually presented as a drawn portrait picture surrounded by spot cartoons and accompanying text.
'Hector Droopy' (Frankenstein #6, 1947).
Further cartooning career
In the late 1930s, United Feature also included Maver's cartoons in its comic book title Tip Top Comics. In 1947, the cartoonist also had a short-lived direct excursion into comic books, when he drew stories with characters like Hector Droopy and Flatfoot Floogle in the 'Frankenstein' comic book by Prize Comics. At some point in his career, he is believed to have assisted Ernie Bushmiller on the newspaper comic strip 'Nancy'.
Later life and death
Later in life, Maver lived in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, before settling in Southbury, a town in western New Haven County, Connecticut. There, he picked up watercolor painting in his spare time, while exhibiting his work in the local library. He died in Southbury on 22 May 1984, at the age of 74.
Sports cartoons by Alan Maver from 2 January 1957 and 7 March 1981.