A popular monthly magazine for young boys during the 1930s and 1940s was “Open Road for Boys.” One of its regular features was a cartoon contest, where a house cartoonist would draw a set-up cartoon, and readers were then asked to send in their own cartoon submissions depicting what they thought would happen next. Later, the editor would judge the entries, and the top three cartoons selected would win a nominal amount of cash, and the top dozen or so cartoonists would have their cartoons published in a subsequent issue.

In the June 1940 issue of “Open Road for Boys,” the winner of the cartoon contest was a 16-year-old cartoonist named Mort Walker, who would later go on to become a newspaper comic strip legend, creating such strips as “Beetle Bailey,” “Hi and Lois,” “Boner’s Ark,” and others.

Interestingly enough, one of the honorable mentions in that same issue was a young cartoonist named Warren Tufts, who also broke into the tough-to-crack newspaper comic strip market with the cult classic western strip “Casey Ruggles” in 1949. Tufts also did a large body of work in the comic book and animation fields.

Below are images of the issue’s cover, the page featuring the published winning cartoon entries, and the page featuring a list of all the boys who placed in the contest or received honorable mention.