From Mad's Dave Berg -- Meet Merton

Though Dave Berg will always be remembered for The Lighter Side, most fans have forgotten that he was already a prominent comic book artist as early as the mid-Forties.

From 1953

RESTRICTED 1949 Navy recruiting cartoon from Famous Studios

Another Frazetta PSA

With a most unexpected theme.

From Airboy vol. 9 n. 7 via Just a Pile of Old Comics

WWII PSAs

The thing that always strikes me about these Wartime public service announcements is the sense that everyone had a role to play and everyone was expected to do their part. It seems completely alien to the America I grew up in.

Higher-quality versions of these images can be found in the "Puzzles Go to War" section of Classic Puzzles for the Classroom.

Another early effort from a very young Alex Toth

And by very young we mean early teens. It's understandably crude in places but there are still clear indicators of the talent  that was about to emerge.

Courtesy of the Four Color War.

From Heroic 33

An interesting breakdown of Golden Age comics readership

From Jungle Frolics

A 1944 report by the Market Research Company of America showed that 95% of boys and 91% of girls aged 6-11 read comics; 87% of boys and 81% of girls aged 12-17; 41% of males and 28% of females aged 18-30; and 16% of males and 12% of females over the age of thirty.  The younger girls and boys were reading a dozen comics a month on average.  These statistics don't include the daily newspaper strips or Sunday funnies.

An early one-pager from a very young Alex Toth

From Heroic #33 via The Four Color War: