Author: Aaron Rosenberg

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 hired him on—Freeman colored the second issue, inked the third issue, and penciled and inked the fourth issue. When Comely moved to Cardston, Alberta in fall 1976 to run the local weekly newspaper, Freeman and colorist/inker/French translator Jean-Claude St. Aubin moved with him and got jobs on the paper while continuing the comic.

A few months later, they left Cardston for Calgary, which was less to Freeman’s liking—he returned to Winnipeg instead. He rejoined the Captain Canuck team in early 1979.

Captain Canuck ended with issue #14 in 1981 and Freeman moved on to other comic book work. He drew Green Lantern, Aquaman, Jack of Hearts, and The Avengers, drew a story in Batman Annual #11, and was one of the artists on the horror comic anthology Wasteland.

He also worked on the Elric series for First Comics, the Black Orchid series for Vertigo, and more recently, the Albion series for Wildstorm, among others. In 1996 Freeman was nominated for an Eisner for Best Colorist on The X-Files.

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 taught himself chemistry and developed a concentrated Gingo fruit extract which, when he drank it, transformed him, giving his entire body super-elasticity.

Delighted with his new prowess, Ralph moved to Central City, donned a colorful costume, and became the superhero Elongated Man. He joined the Justice League of America a short time later. R

alph later revealed his true identity and married his sweetheart Sue Dearbon. They lived happily for many years, and though Ralph’s powers were never a match for the more powerful heroes, his cheerful demeanor and his sharp mind—he is usually considered the finest superhero detective after Batman—made him a respected, admired, and loved member of the superhero community.

Sadly, Sue was brutally murdered by a deranged friend, and her death and later events drove Ralph mad. He recovered, however, and sacrificed his own life to trap the villain Felix Faust and the demon Neron, who had tried to trick him into surrendering his soul. Happily, Ralph and Sue are now reunited, and have a new existence as ghost detectives.

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 in the school’s Scout paper and in the monthly Boy Scouts magazine Le Boy-Scout Belge. In 1924 he began signing his illustrations “Hergé,” the French pronunciation of his first and last initials reversed. He would keep the pseudonym for the rest of his life.

After finishing school, Hergé worked at the Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle. In 1926 he published his first cartoon series, Totor, in Le Boy-Scout Belge. In 1928 Hergé was given responsibility for Le XXe Siècle’s weekly children’s supplement, Le Petit Vingtième.

In 1929 he debuted a new strip of his own creation there, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Tintin became an immediate success, and Hergé produced new Tintin adventures right up to his death in 1983—the 24th and last one, Tintin and Alph-Art, was published unfinished.

Hergé received many awards during his lifetime, including the Harvey, the Eisner, the Adamson, and the Grand Prix Saint Michel. He was posthumously inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003.

George “Digger” Harkness was born to an American soldier and an Australian woman. An illegitimate child, Harkness grew up in poverty but quickly discovered a talent for both crafting and using boomerangs.

As a young man, he got a job working for a toy company, demonstrating the use of their boomerangs. When audiences ridiculed him, Harkness turned to crime instead, keeping his costume and creating specialized boomerangs to become Captain Boomerang.

He became a member of the Flash’s Rogues Gallery, though years later he joined the Suicide Squad in order to be pardoned for his crimes. Harkness later returned to his criminal ways but was increasingly outclassed by both heroes and other villains.

He eventually became so desperate he accepted small jobs working for other crooks. His last act was an assignment to kill Jack Drake, the father of current Robin, Tim Drake. Harkness succeeded, but Drake managed to shoot and kill him as well.