Whatever happened to Arne Starr?
In the 80’s and 90’s, one of the busiest inkers in the comics business was Arne Starr. A protege of Dick Giordano, Arne’s work graced the pages of The Legion of Super-Heroes, Nexus, Star Trek, and Sachs & Violens (who are now showing up in Fallen Angel), even doing uncredited work on Crisis On Infinite Earths, and he was a mainstay of a lot of east coast conventions, usually running the movie previews. Then he left the business in the mid-nineties recession.
So how come you haven’t seen him lately?
Well, you probably have seen him– just not in places where you expected.
Arne Starr packed up his bags and moved to Beverly (Hills, that is) and has been doing lots of work as an actor, finding himself doing tremendous amounts of background work all over TV and movies. Some of his more recognizable appearances are as an Attending Physician on Grey’s Anatomy, and an artist at the Sterling Cooper agency on Mad Men, in a clear case of typecasting.
If you keep your eyes open, you can also spot him in episodes of CSI, Medium, Jericho, Sleeper Cell, Bones and as a semi-regular at the Crab Shack in My Name Is Earl. In movies, he shows up in Bedtime Stories, Frost/Nixon, as the Citizen Kane cinematographer Gregg Toland inMan In The Chair, and in a nod to his comic book roots, Iron Man.
Here’s a shot from an appearnce on Grey’s Anatomy:
It’s great to see Arne doing well. But more than anything else, I’m just amazed I got to a Hollywood comic book story before Mark Evanier did.
It's good to know Arne's doing well for himself — I remember he always did have a deep interest in the movie & TV business, and had a fair few connections to the Florida end of it in the 1980s and 1990s (wasn't he one of the people involved with the Superboy TV show at some point?) He and I had a vague notion of working together on something for a while — he would have been penciling rather than inking; he's a very talented artist whose work got overlooked because of his inking skills — but I don't think we ever did get a grip on *what* we could do. One of the nicest people I've ever known, too, and I'm sorry I lost touch with him…!
It's really a sad state of affairs, when such a talent artist/inker such as Arnie goes the way of Hollywood.But, hey, what can you do? If the stars calls, you gotta go! ;-)
Arne's a great guy and a terrific talent. You know, if I suddenly had a few million dollars on hand, and given all the unemployed and under-employed great comics talents of the past, I could publish two dozen great comic books a month without breaking a sweat.
Sadly, it takes more than just a few million dollars nowadays. Trust me on this.