'The Story of David the Shepherd Boy Who Became King' (1950s).
Joe Tillotson was an American illustrator for pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, who was also known as Robert Fuqua. In 1949, he was the original artist of the 'Our Bible in Pictures' feature that appeared in the Sunday School magazine Sunday Pix.
Early life and education
Joseph Wirt Tillotson was born in 1905 in Greenville, Mississippi, as the younger of two sons. His father, William Wirt Tillotson, ran a small printing shop. As a youngster, Joseph had his first job in his father's shop, helping out with the production of advertising circulars for local businesses and private announcements. In 1923, he graduated from Greenville High School, and then spent two years attending art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Cover paintings by Joe Tillotson for Amazing Stories.
Pulp illustrator
After completing his Art Institute course, Joe Tillotson went to work for a Chicago-based advertising agency. To supplement his income, he sold illustrations to pulp magazines, but to maintain his reputation in the advertising world, he signed them with his maternal grandfather's name, "Robert Fuqua".
During the 1930s and 1940s, Robert Fuqua worked extensively for the Chicago publisher Ziff-Davis, doing both cover paintings and interior illustrations. His art appeared in titles like Air Adventures, Fantastic Adventures, South Sea Stories, Mammoth Adventure, Mammoth Detective, and Mammoth Western, but he was mostly associated with the sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories. Between 1938 and 1951, he painted eighty color covers for this title. In 1949, he joined former Ziff-Davis staff members as story illustrator for their digest sci-fi magazines Other Worlds and Imagination, this time signing with his own name, Tillotson.
Our Bible in Pictures
In 1949, Joe Tillotson was hired by the David C. Cook Publishing Company from Elgin, Illinois, to illustrate picture stories based on the Bible. From 1949 until the late 1950s, Tillotson provided artwork for the 'Our Bible in Pictures' feature, that ran in the Sunday School magazine Sunday Pix. The texts were written by Reverend David S. Piper, a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary. Segments of this feature were collected in the comic book 'The Story of David the Shepherd Boy Who Became King'. By 1958, plans for a full Bible comic adaptation came about. Editor Iva Hoth was chosen to write the text to go with the pictures, while André LeBlanc was hired as illustrator. LeBlanc drew the feature until 1964, and his version was eventually used for the often reprinted 'The Picture Bible' (1978) book collection.
Death
Joseph Wirt Tillotson died of liver cancer in Illinois in 1959, at age 54. He was buried beside his mother's grave in the family plot in Greenville, Mississippi.
Page from 'Our Bible in Pictures' printed as a promotion in the Culver Citizen of 22 December 1954.