Happy Birthday: George Freeman
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.
I've been a huge fan of George's since first seeing his work in the issue after the one shown here, CC #12, which my parents brought back for me from their vacation in Canada. It was a real thrill to get to ink him on one of my earliest pro jobs, on West Coast Avengers (still wishing I'd called the editor 15 minutes earlier one day and been able to snag another 8 pages of it), even though my skills sure weren't up to doing his work justice. I was also lucky to work with him more recently when he colored some of my Katy Keene work at Archie. The colors on Katy in Archie & Friends #102 were just perfect. I still show them around as an example of great coloring.
Happy Bday!