Vincent T. Hamlin was born in 1900 and grew up during tumultuous times—he enlisted in the Army at age 17 and served in France during World War I. After returning home, he studied journalism and art at the University of Missouri, but was kicked out of art class because his teacher told him he was…
Born in 1947, Barbara Slate started out in greeting cards before moving to comics. In 1974, she met with a greeting card buyer from Bloomingdales and showed him 24 feminist greeting cards she had designed. Thus, the "Ms. Liz" line was born. Ms. Liz then became a comic strip in Cosmopolitan, and then an animated…
Jack Ryder’s parentage certainly predicted his future—his father was the publisher of a successful union dispatch, while his mother suffered paranoid schizophrenia and died in an institution while Jack was still a child. Growing up, Ryder followed in his father’s footsteps and became a television news reporter. Unfortunately, Ryder had a big mouth. Normally that…
Frederic Christopher “Freddy” Freeman was born and raised in a small New England fishing village. His parents drowned in a storm, however, and Freddy was sent to live with his maternal grandfather Jacob in Fawcett City in the American Midwest. Freddy was smart, friendly and a natural athlete, and by high school he was not…
Born in 1948, David Michelinie loved comic books from early on and knew he wanted to write them. So he took a chance, and in the early 1970s he moved to New York to work for DC Comics. He started out writing backup stories on House of Mystery and House of Secrets, then wrote seven…
Pieter Anton Cross started his association with superheroes while still in the womb—his pregnant mother was attacked one night in their native Norway by vagrants one night but was rescued by the original Dr. Mid-Nite. The incident caused her to go into labor, and the superhero delivered Pieter before dashing off into the night. Pieter…
Born in Elkhart, Indiana in 1955, Jerry Scott initially went into advertising. He got his start in comics by submitting gag strips to magazines in the mid-1970s—and sold one of his first ones to the Saturday Evening Post. In 1983, he was asked to take over the Nancy comic strip, which he worked on for…
Born in Mount Vernon, NY in 1956, Phil Foglio moved to Hartsdale, NY, while still a young boy and lived there until he went off to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago when he was only 17. While at school, Foglio worked on the science-fiction club’s fanzine, Effen Essef, and was nominated for…
Born in 1965, Nat Gertler started in comics as a translation writer, working on the English language adaptation of Speed Racer for Now Comics back in 1988. He wrote contributions to Warp Graphics’ ElfQuest and to Calibur Comics’ Negative Burn in the 1990s, and then founded About Comics, a small comic book publishing company whose…
Born in Swansea, Wales in 1963, Russell T. Davies was immediately entered in academia—his father Vivian taught Classics and his mother Barbara taught French. Davies attended Olchfa Comprehensive School in Swansea and was a member of the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre. He graduated Worcester College, Oxford in 1984 with a degree in English literature and…
Donna Hinckley Stacey Troy has had as many different origins as any other DC hero, but unlike the rest she currently remembers all of them. In her original origin, Donna was an orphan (her parents were killed in a fire) who had been saved by Wonder Woman and taken to Paradise Island, where the Amazons…
Born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1952, Peter John Sanderson, Jr. is proof that an obsession for comic books and consistency can be made into a viable career. Sanderson is a comic book critic and historian, as well as a teacher at New York University (NYU). He is best known for his work with both Marvel…
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