Doc Rankin

[2] He is also widely believed by comic collectors to be the anonymous artist who produced nearly 200 "Tijuana bibles" for New York printers during a two-year period around 1935,[3] based on an identification by sexologist, folklorist and bibliographer Gershon Legman.

Legman claimed to have met Doc Rankin in a Scranton, Pennsylvania novelty shop[4] and learned from him that he was one of the artists behind the popular, ribald 8-page cartoon booklets which were some of the earliest underground comics, drawn in a style resembling the later work of Robert Crumb.

[5] The son of Dr. James B. Rankin, a Scottish physician,[6] and his wife Louise, a daughter of the controversial Belfast preacher Rev.

He enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1916 and served on the Mexican border with the 27th Division for ten months.

He returned to active duty for the First World War in the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, serving in the same unit as Martin Branner, who would later go on to create the popular comic strip Winnie Winkle.