{"id":9944,"date":"2026-10-10T00:41:50","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T04:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/?p=9944"},"modified":"2026-10-10T00:41:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T04:41:50","slug":"vic-vacs-halloween-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/vic-vacs-halloween-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"Vic Vac’s Halloween Cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi Readers! Here’s the first of a small series of Halloween cartoons by the great St. Louis cartoonist “Vic Vac” or Victor Vacarezza”, who worked for the St. Louis Globe Democrat for many years. I loved his colorful and crowded covers such as this one from Oct. 29th, 1962. Vic could cartoon anything, but usually illustrated Globe Democrat Sunday Magazine covers with Holiday themes. I’ll be posting some more of his terrifying and terrific paintings as we get closer to Halloween. I don’t know if Vic worked in Gouache, watercolor or poster paint. I hope some of you got to see my nearly four hour appearance on “Stu’s Show”. If you missed it, go to stusshow.com and open the “Archives” page. Scan to the show labelled “Mark Kausler” and fork over two dollars to download the program. Let me know what you thought of my featured appearance on Stu Shostak’s show. Stu really worked hard on our show, and did a lot of research on my life and career.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Here’s a little article on Vic Vac’s career from a St. Louis History website:<\/p>\n

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Victor \u201cVic Vac\u201d Vacarezza began his career in art and cartooning while still a student at Washington University working part time at the St. Louis Republic. One of his first duties was providing sketches of murder victims, which required him to work at the city morgue. A stint in the Navy in WWI provided his first real break, as he did a regular strip for the newspaper at Great Lakes Training Station titled \u201cSalty Steve.\u201d When Vaccarezza returned to St. Louis, his former newspaper had been absorbed by the Globe-Democrat, so he went to work for the Globe, beginning a 50-year career there.<\/p>\n

At the Globe, he rose to the position of chief art director, retiring at age 76. He produced a Sunday comic strip, \u201cShanty Lane,\u201d drew thumbnail sketches that graced the white space between letters on the paper\u2019s \u201cMail Bag\u201d page, and created the chaotic cartoon art for which he became famous that graced the paper\u2019s Sunday magazine covers. He also drew a nationally syndicated strip, \u201cJune Bride,\u201d for four years beginning in 1946. Vic Vac, as he signed his work, confessed to an interviewer that the strip\u2019s title character was modeled after his wife Rose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Here’s a little article on Vic Vac’s career from a St. Louis History website:   Victor \u201cVic Vac\u201d Vacarezza began his career in art and cartooning while still a student at Washington University working part time at the St. Louis Republic. One of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childhood-nostalgia","category-st-louis-comics-history","category-stus-show-podcast","comment-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9944"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9948,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9944\/revisions\/9948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsthecat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}