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…
Born in 1952, Mike W. Barr’s first comic book story was an eight-page backup in Detective Comics #444 in 1974. In 1980, he started doing semi-regular backup stories in both Detective Comics and House of Mystery. He also wrote an issue of Captain America, which led to regular work with Marvel as well. The following…
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. His illustration career was just beginning when he was called up to the Army in 1942. After World War…
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. She drew her first book, David We’re Pregnant…
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. Wheatley…
Born in Canada in 1951, George Freeman didn’t start out in comic books. He was actually designing tombstones in 1975 when he encountered the first issue of a new Canadian comic book, Captain Canuck. Intrigued, Freeman went to see series artist and co-creator Richard Comely in Winnipeg. Comely was impressed by Freeman’s art samples and…
Born in Waymore, Nebraska, Randolph William “Ralph” Dibny grew up admiring escape artists and contortionists. He desperately wished he could emulate their agility and flexibility. When he learned that many of his idols favored a soda called Gingold, which contained the juice of the rare Gingold fruit, Ralph’s natural skill at deduction kicked in. He…
The Burrs were vacationing in India despite Mrs. Burr’s advanced pregnancy. Her condition attracted the attention of the Cobra Cult because the timing coincided with a prophecy about a man who would lead them into the Kali Yuga, the fourth age of the world. He would be one of a pair of Siamese twins, and…
Flash Fact: Born in 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, Carmine Infantino might have been expected to go into music—his father was a musician, though he also worked as a plumber—but turned to art instead. While still in high school Infantino started working for Harry Chesler’s comic-book packager. Next he became an art assistant at Quality…
“Mike” Deodato Taumaturgo Borges Filho was born in 1963 in Campina Grande, Brazil. His father, also an artist, first introduced him to the work of people like Will Eisner and Alex Raymond, and taught young Deodato how to draw. They worked together on several Brazilian small-press projects in the 1980s, and in 1991 an agency…
Georges Prosper Remi was born in Etterbeek, Brussels, Belgium in 1907. He was still in school during World War I, when Brussels was occupied by the Germans, and doodled images of the invaders in his notebooks. In 1920 he attended the collège Saint-Boniface and joined the Boy Scouts troop there. His first published drawings were…
Some people hope to take after their parents—others hope they don’t. For Beautia Sivana the latter seems more likely. Her father, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, is a crazed scientist bent on world conquest and the utter destruction of his nemesis, Captain Marvel. Beautia’s two younger siblings take after their father in their immorality but Beautia herself—who…
