Basil Wolverton Teacher Tamer

Illustration of a man's head with his mouth wide open and tongue sticking out with yellow text on a blue background. 

This button is from the 1965 series of LEAF "Fink Buttons" illustrated by popular Mid-Century artist Basil Wolverton. Perhaps best known for his work at MAD Magazine, Basil Wolverton (July 9, 1909 – December 31, 1978) was an American cartoonist and illustrator famous for his humorously grotesque drawings. Wolverton worked in the "Golden Age" of comic books doing features like "Powerhouse Pepper" and "Spacehawk" in the 1940s. A 2009 New York Times article states that Wolverton’s drawings embodied the “sick-and-proud humor” of MAD magazine and were considered a “virtuoso exercise in bad taste, made all the weirder for being so meticulously executed.”