Happy Birthday: Graham Ingels
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915, Graham Ingels began work early, joining the work force at 14, shortly after his father died. At 16 he began doing art jobs. He married at 20 and entered the Navy at 27 in 1943. After WWII, Ingels worked for Fiction House, Magazine Enterprises, and several other comic book and pulp magazine publishers.
In 1948, he began drawing Western and romance stories at EC Comics. He switched to the horror line—Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear—as soon as they began and was quickly dubbed “Ghastly Graham Ingels” for his facility with the genre. By 1952, Ingels was even signing his work as “Ghastly.”
After the horror line was canceled in the early 1950s, Ingels contributed to other EC lines, and then did some work for Classics Illustrated after EC folded in the mid-1950s.
He later taught art in Westport, Connecticut, and then became an art instructor in Florida. Ingels died in 1991.
Mark Mardon was a petty career criminal whose capture was, ironically, the best thing that ever happened to him.
Salu Digby was born in the 30th century—though she was born on Earth, her parents are actually from the planet Imsk.
Carter Hall was an American archaeologist with a particular interest in Egyptian history and relics. He was on a dig in 1940 when he discovered an ancient knife that the priest Hath-Set had used to murder Prince Khufu and his royal consort Chay-ara. Upon touching the knife Hall gained the memories of Khufu, discovering that he was the ancient prince reincarnated. Hall used the rare Nth metal to create a belt that allowed him to fly, and then crafted a winged costume so that he could confront Hath-Set’s reincarnation, Anton Hastor, as Hawkman.
Born in 1967 in New York City, Dean Edmund Haspiel started in the comics industry as an assistant to such luminaries as Howard Chaykin, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Walter Simonson. In 1987 Haspiel created The Verdict with Martin Powell. He also created the two-man comics anthology Keyhole with Josh Neufeld. In 2006 Haspiel created the online comics studio ACT-I-VATE with several others, and began serializing the Billy Dogma Trilogy there. He was also a founding member of DEEP6 Studios. Haspiel worked on The Escapist with Michael Chabon, Brawl with Michel Fiffe in 2007 and The Alcoholic with Jonathan Ames in 2008 but is probably best known for his work on The Quitter and American Splendor with Harvey Pekar.
Born in 1952, Mike W. Barr’s first comic book story was an eight-page backup in Detective Comics #444 in 1974.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1920, Jack Kamen studied at the Art Students League and the Grand Central Art School and actually got his start in sculpture—his first professional job was on the Texas Centenniel. 
Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1947, Lynn Ridgway was raised in North Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She worked at an animation studio after college but married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist for several years. 
Born in 1954, Mark Wheatley has made a career of creating clever and innovative comic books. He is probably best known for his 1984 First Comics series Mars, the 1994 Vertigo mini-series Breathtaker, and his Insight Studios series Radical Dreamer and Frankenstein Mobster, but his list of titles extends far beyond that impressive handful.
