Comic artist Irwin Hasen, who helped create one of comics’ most famous orphans, Dondi, and created the DC Comics character Wildcat, died Friday morning at the age of 96.
There’s no way to do his history and storied life justice in a fast blog post, so we’ll be providing much fuller remembrances later.
Our condolences to his family and many friends.
Irwin Hasen photo by Luigi Novi.
Legendary comics artist Fred Fredericks died this week.
After attending New York’s School of Visual Arts in the period following the Korean War, Fredericks started drawing historical comics that attracted the attention of comic book editors. Before long, Fred was a regular at Western Publishing (Dell, Gold Key), where he drew such titles as The Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Mighty Mouse, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Mister Ed, Nancy, and Snuffy Smith. After working on several short-lived Civil War newspaper strips, Fredericks created the comics feature Rebel for Scholastic Scope, which ran for 30 years.
In 1965, the year following the start of Rebel, Fred was selected by writer / playwright Lee Falk to take over the art chores on his daily and Sunday Mandrake The Magician newspaper strip. Fred drew Mandrake until the Sundays ended in 2002, but he continued drawing the daily feature until his retirement in 2013. Fredericks took over the writing chores when Falk died in 1999; he already had been lettering the strip. Overall, his stint on Mandrake ran nearly a half-century.
For 10 years Fred also inked George Olesen’s pencils on Lee Falk’s The Phantom Sundays, until Graham Nolan took over following Olesen’s retirement.
Fredericks returned to comic books in 1987, inking Alex Saviuk’s pencils on Marvel’s adaptation of the animated series Defenders of the Earth – a show that featured Mandrake, The Phantom and Flash Gordon. He went on to work on such Marvel titles as Punisher War Journal, Daredevil, Quasar, G.I. Joe, and Nth Man: the Ultimate Ninja. Around this time Fred also did a fair amount of work for DC Comics, including Who’s Who, Secret Origins, Showcase, and Black Lightning.
After his retirement in 2013, King Features put Mandrake The Magician into reruns, reprinting Fred Frederick’s work.
A personal note.
Around the time the Sunday Mandrake was coming to an end, I received a phone call from Lee Falk asking me if I knew where Fred might land some assignments. I gave him a few ideas, and later told Fred of a few more. As a “reward”, Fred sent me a package of original Mandrake art. Quite frankly, his entertaining me for decades was more than enough, but I was greatly moved by his generosity.
A man of great kindness and skill, Fred Fredericks played an important role in the world of post-WWII American comics, both strips and books. He kept Mandrake The Magician alive when all but a small handful of adventure strips fell by the wayside. Fred Fredericks will be missed by his great many fans worldwide.
(Photo above, left to right: Lee Falk, Lothar, Mandrake, Fred Fredericks)
Leonard Nimoy, best know to the world for his role as Mr. Spock in Star Trek, died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 83.
Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family, friends, and fans.
by Mike Gold and Martha Thomases
Ed Summer, the man who opened one of America’s first comic book stores and went on to a varied and significant media career, died Thursday from cancer.
A graduate of the New York University School of the Arts (his classmates included Oliver Stone, Jonathan Kaplan and Alan Arkush), Summer opened the Supersnipe Comic Book Emporium on Manhattan’s upper east side in 1971. The store was named after the Street and Smith comic book character who owned more comic books than anybody else in the world. In the late 1970s he opened a comic art gallery, also one of the first, near his store. His friend George Lucas was an investor.
Moving on to motion pictures, Ed wrote or co-wrote Conan the Barbarian (and also was associate producer), Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons for Disney, and Shinsha (a anime take on Little Nemo). He was marketing and script consultant for Star Wars: A New Hope and advised Lucasfilm Ltd on numerous projects over the years.
Summer also wrote comics for Gold Key, DC and Marvel and he wrote numerous articles for a wide variety of magazines, including Time, Skeptical Inquirer (a science magazine) and Video Watchdog. He also edited and published Walt Disney’s Uncle $crooge McDuck: His Life and Times, one of the first detailed retrospectives on the work of master storyteller Carl Barks, and was an adjunct professor at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
And that just scratches the surface of Ed’s vast media career.
A native of Buffalo New York, In 2005 Ed started the Buffalo International Film Festival, one of his proudest achievements. He told ComicMix’s Martha Thomases he did it not only to bring some tourism to his hometown, but also because there were so many fabulous old movie palaces there. The Festival continues to this day.
Ed truly loved the movies.
Little Orphan Annie writer, newspaper columnist and comics historian Jay Maeder died of cancer this morning.
Jay wrote the Annie strip from 2000 to its demise in 2010, working with artists Andrew Pepoy, Alan Kupperberg and Ted Slampyak. He felt it was the crowning achievement of his long career, which included writing columns and features for both the Miami Herald and the New York Daily News after starting off at the Lorain Ohio Morning Journal. His People column was a page-two staple of the Miami Herald for 15 years. He then moved on to the Daily News, where he edited and often wrote the Big Town NYC / Big Town Biography columns as well as the Lounge Lizard column and the NewsReel feature.
In addition to his work on Annie, Jay is best known to the comics community as the author of Dick Tracy: The Official Biography and a contributor to The Encyclopedia of American Comics and to Dean Mullaney’s Library of American Comics.
Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, Jay successfully pitched a graphic novel concept to ComicMix. Sadly, this book, a collaboration with Rick Burchett, will not come to pass.
I had known Jay for upwards of 30 years. Influenced by the great newspaper writers of the first half of the 20th Century, in Miami he took the spirit and the energy of Walter Winchell and updated it to both the times and to the Miami environment. We both grew up fascinated by the legends of American newspaper history. Jay’s style was contemporary, but no less identifiable than Winchell’s. Jay often wore a white suit and hat and he could get away with it even in a shit storm.
I think my fondest memory of Jay revolves around a summer day at his home in Greenwood Lake, NY, one shared by ComicMix’s Glenn Hauman and Martha Thomases. His library looked frighteningly like my own, and we each coveted the other’s exclusives. The two of us just sat there discussing pop history, sharing stories about legends like Col. McCormick and the great comics creators… as well as the not-so-great.
Jay Maeder is survived by his companion, Amanda Hass, his sons Jordan and Christopher, four grandchildren, and two former wives. He was 67.
Chris “C.J.” Henderson, writer of numerous comics for DC, Marvel, Tekno, Eternity, and Moonstone, as well as a prose writer of hard-boiled mysteries and science fiction and a staple at many conventions, died July 4th at the age of 62 from cancer.
He started writing comics in 1986 for Eternity’s Ninja and Reign Of The Dragonlord, later going on to write the Punisher, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, and Batman. He wrote most notably on Tekno’s Neil Gaiman’s Lady Justice.
His prose works included his own characters such as his hard-boiled detective Jack Hagee series, his supernatural detective Teddy London series, and his Brooklyn Museum curator Piers Knight series. He also worked with William Shatner on his novel Man Of War, and wrote a few novels of Kolchak, the Night Stalker.
He also occasionally collaborated with his artist daughter, Erica Henderson, with our personal favorite collaboration being Baby’s First Mythos, a Cthulhu children’s book. (For the record, CJ was always immensely proud of his daughter.)
A fundraiser has been set up to help his family defray the costs of medical and funeral expenses, along with the book. For those who wish to send condolences, the address is:
CJ Henderson
1944 W. 11th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11223
Our deepest condolences to his wife, Grace, and his daughter, Erica. He will be deeply missed.
It’s easy to define the best part of making it into your geriatric years: you are still alive. The worst part of making it into your geriatric years is also easy to define: people are dying all around you. That sucks, but you’re still alive so maybe when its time to get past your mourning you shouldn’t think the world has taken a crap on you in particular.
But… you know… it really has.
More than thirty years ago, Mike Nesmith, of Monkees fame, said “growing old is a bitch, and our generation is totally not prepared for it.” That’s true; the baby boomers are indeed the first generation to be raised in the luxury of Peter Pan’s shadow. Death has a habit of shouting “It’s time to grow up.”
I don’t believe I ever met Michael Davis’ mother, and that’s a shame. I think the most difficult part of motherhood isn’t childbirth, although that’s hardly a walk in the part. It is taking on and fulfilling the responsibility of raising your child to be a decent human being. After doing just that, Michael’s mom, Jean Harlow Davis Lawrence (and that’s a cool name), passed away Saturday morning.
I owe her… big time.
She raised a great kid – clever, intelligent, funny, and a person who genuinely understands the holiness of friendship. I put that all on Jean. Michael was too young to do it himself. He’s written lovingly about her so much that I feel I really know her. But I think I really know Michael, and that’s about the closest thing.
Michael, you are surrounded by the love of your many, many friends. Your loss makes you feel lonely, and that is fair and proper. But, my friend, you are not alone.
And you are loved.
He brought out dreams to life.
Raymond “Ray” Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) died today at age 92, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering special effects work and a filmography that has deeply influenced writers, artists, and filmmakers for generations.
Dubbed by Starlog as “The Man Who Work Miracles”, he was one of the most influential movie makers who was himself inspired by Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation in King Kong. He took O’Brien’s efforts and improved upon them, branding it as Dynamation.
Although he resided in England for the majority of his adult life, Harryhausen was born in Los Angeles. King Kong was the spark that set him on a course towards a career in film, meticulously creating miniatures that could be photographed a few frames at a time followed by the tiniest of movements, followed by more frames, until the model appeared to move across the screen. This was done with artistry and engineering know-how long before Industrial Light and Magic brought computer-aided technology to the process.
When the legend met the student, they bonded quickly and Harryhausen was given pointers to improve his work through trial, error and art classes. Along the way, he befriended fellow Angelino Ray Bradbury, just at the beginning of his fantastic career. Little wonder they both belonged to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Science Fiction League, linking the trio until their deaths.
Like O’Brien, Harryhausen strove for realistic creatures to confront the live-action performers, drawing inspiration from the myths and legends familiar to people the world over. He began his professional career with George Pal, contributing to his series of Puppetoon shorts. World War II intervened and Harryhausen was assigned to the Special Services Division, continuing to make movies. This proved an invaluable tutorial and lab for experimenting with his animation techniques.
Soon after leaving the service, he embarked on the first of several dream projects that would dot his career. He did some demo footage based on H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds but the project never materialized. Instead, he was hired to work on Mighty Joe Young, letting the master and student work together and earning them earning them the Academy Award in 1949 for best Special Effects. Harryhausen was hired solo to provide the effects to The Monster from Beneath the Sea. When a connection was made to Bradbury’s story “The Fog Horn”, the film was renamed The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the story’s original title and was released to acclaim and box office success in 1953.
By this point, Harryhausen had developed the technique that saw him shoot the actors then animate the creatures, splitting the image between foreground and background, the latter becoming a rear projection with the models before it. With mattes, the images were combined and Dynamation was born, although it was named later.
Harryhausen continued to evolve his work and then made the leap to color with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. By now, he was partnered with producer Charles H. Schneer – beginning with It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) — who helped him perfect the shift to color, experimenting with different stocks until the look was right. Given the requirements of the models, Harryhausen became far more intimately involved in the story than most effects men ever did, ultimately co-directing many features although Director’s Guild rules denied him his proper credits.
The Sinbad series of films found an eager audience in the later 1950s and early 1960s as all things fantastic played well on screen. It offered adults, and their children, a wholesome escape from the Cold War tensions. It wasn’t all fantasy and monsters as Harryhausen and Schneer also produced several science fiction tales, such as 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
They continued to produce works that stretched the imagination until 1963 and what is considered by many his finest outing, Jason and the Argonauts. Here, there was the amazing complex battle with the skeletons and the multi-armed gorgon. Little wonder that Tom Hanks, who first saw it as a kid, proclaimed years later, “Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane…I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!”
Despite this pinnacle of technological achievement, tastes were changing and he endured a series of box office failures. After losing his contract with Columbia Pictures, he wound up in England working for Hammer Films’ One Million Years B.C. (1967). That film’s success allowed him to on to make The Valley of Gwangi (1969), a labor of love considering it was O’Brien’s unrealized dream project.
Harryhausen endured a lean 1970s, kept in the minds of readers thanks to Ackerman’s devoted retrospectives in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Finally, thanks to Star Wars, inspired in part by Harryhausen’s work, the appetite for fantasy was back and he revived Sinbad beginning with The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. This and its sequel Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger were suddenly feeling dated and jokey, not at all what modern day audiences found palatable.
He put everything he had into his Greek myth opus Clash of the Titans (1981), working with protégés Steve Archer Jim Danforth, much as O’Brien mentored him. With a star-studded cast and the addition of the impressive Kraken, the film was a last hurrah but for audiences now used to computer-generated effects, it looked and felt dated. Harryhausen was effectively retired, like it or not.
Thankfully, his work was rediscovered with h advent of magazines like Starlog, the rise of cable television, and a new generation of fans enchanted by his creations. As a result, he released several lovely books about his career: Film Fantasy Scrapbook, An Animated Life, The Art of Ray Harryhausen, and A Century of Model Animation. With the arrival of home video, Harryhausen personally oversaw the restoration and transfer of his films, from VHS to Blu-ray.
Harryhausen relocated to England in 1960 and in 2005, donated his archive, some 50,000 pieces, to the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. His efforts have not gone unrewarded such as being given the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for “technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry” in 1992, handed to him by Bradbury, and a special BAFTA award, delivered by director Peter Jackson.
Hollywood didn’t forget Harryhausen either, with Columbia’s parent, Sony, naming their main screening theater after him and his receipt of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His influence and spirit will live on for generations to come thanks to his films being available to enjoy and the generations of filmmakers he inspired.
Harry Harrison, best known for his character Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (adapted into film as Soylent Green) died yesterday at the age of 87.
Harrison started as a comics illustrator in 1947, notably with EC Comics’ two science fiction comic books, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science, as well as a short stint on Blackhawk for Quality, and various war, western, and romance comics– even western romance comics. Harrison was one of Wally Wood’s early employers and the man who brought Woody to EC.
He also edited comics in the 50s for very small publishers. He used house names such as Wade Kaempfert and Philip St. John to edit magazines, and has published other fiction under the names Felix Boyd, Hank Dempsey, and even as Leslie Charteris on the novel Vendetta For The Saint. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, creating the Rick Random character and writing the Flash Gordon comic strip during the 50s and 60s.
Harrison is now much better known for his writing, particularly his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Ratseries (which was adapted into a comics series by Kelvin Gosnell and Carlos Ezquerra) and the novel Bill, the Galactic Hero (which satirizes Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers). But he may be best known for Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted into film under the title Soylent Green— which (spoiler alert) is delicious.
He is survived by two children, Todd and Moira. Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.
Joe Kubert, one of the greatest masters of the comics art form, died today after a short illness, three weeks short of his 86th birthday.
Best known as the artist of the long-running war feature Sgt. Rock, Joe was almost equally well-known for his work on both the golden age and silver age Hawkman and on such features as Enemy Ace, Tarzan, Firehair, Tor (which he created for St. John’s comics in the 1950s and owned and returned to throughout his life), the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper strip, and numerous other features and countless covers. In his later years he wrote and drew a great many graphic novels, both original creations (Jew Gangster, Fax from Sarajevo, Yossel) and based upon his well-established Tor and Sgt. Rock characters. DC is currently publishing his work as an inker on Before Watchman: Nite Owl, pencilled by his son Andy. He also served as an editor at DC Comics in the 1970s.
Over the years Joe received numerous awards, including the Harvey Awards’ Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. These honors are dwarfed by his legion of respecting collaborators, fans, students, and medium fellows.
Perhaps his greatest and most enduring contribution to the medium was his establishment in 1976 of The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey, which teaches the craft of comics and boasts such graduates as Timothy Truman, “Rags” Morales, Amanda Conner, Shane Davis, Tom Mandrake, Stephen Bissette, Jan Duursema, Rick Veitch, Matt Hollingsworth, Karl Kesel, Scott Kolins, Steve Lieber, Dave Dorman, Eric Shanower, Alex Maleev, and Bart Sears. His sons, Andy and Adam, received special live-long training from their gifted father.
Joe’s wife Muriel had served as a model — intentionally and, one strongly suspects, unintentionally — lending her image to many of Kubert’s female characters. Muriel passed away in 2008. Their marriage ran an incredible 57 years.
In addition to Andy and Adam, the Kubert family also consisted of sons David and Danny and daughter Lisa Zangara, as well as numerous grandchildren.
A man whose broad smile triggered an enormously infectious laugh, Joe Kubert was one of those artists who looked like he had drawn himself into creation. A fast artist, he often amazed convention-goers by producing a fully-formed intricate Hawkman image in ink within minutes after starting with a couple simple lines drawn on paper. Much of his original art reveals he often did not produce finished pencils, relying upon sketchy blue-lined (non-reproducing) layouts before going on to final inks.
Much can — and will — be said about this pillar of American comics history. For now, we report his passing and our most profound condolences to his family, friends, and students.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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