Author: Aaron Rosenberg

Happy Birthday: Graham Ingels

Happy Birthday: Graham Ingels

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1915, Graham Ingels began work early, joining the work force at 14, shortly after his father died. At 16 he began doing art jobs. He married at 20 and entered the Navy at 27 in 1943. After WWII, Ingels worked for Fiction House, Magazine Enterprises, and several other comic book and pulp magazine publishers.

In 1948, he began drawing Western and romance stories at EC Comics. He switched to the horror line—Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear—as soon as they began and was quickly dubbed “Ghastly Graham Ingels” for his facility with the genre. By 1952, Ingels was even signing his work as “Ghastly.”

After the horror line was canceled in the early 1950s, Ingels contributed to other EC lines, and then did some work for Classics Illustrated after EC folded in the mid-1950s.

He later taught art in Westport, Connecticut, and then became an art instructor in Florida. Ingels died in 1991.

 

Happy Birthday: Weather Wizard

Happy Birthday: Weather Wizard

Mark Mardon was a petty career criminal whose capture was, ironically, the best thing that ever happened to him.

On his way to prison, Mardon escaped and fled to the home of his brother Clyde. Clyde was a scientist and had just created a wand that could control weather in its immediate vicinity.

The brothers fought over the device and Mark killed Clyde using the wand itself. With the device, Mardon became the Weather Wizard, a member of Flash’s Rogues Gallery. In later years Mardon died, went to Hell, came back as a soulless demon, and then was restored to full life.

He also internalized the wand’s powers, and can now control weather without any devices.

Happy Birthday: Shrinking Violet

Happy Birthday: Shrinking Violet

Salu Digby was born in the 30th century—though she was born on Earth, her parents are actually from the planet Imsk.

Like all her people, Salu had the power to shrink herself to microscopic size. As a teenager she heard about the Legion of Super-Heroes and decided to seek them out. She applied for membership and was initially rejected but applied again and was accepted, adopting the name Shrinking Violet.

The name is only partially due to her powers—Salu was one of the quieter, shyer members of the Legion. She is a stalwart heroine, however, and has been one of the Legion’s most steadfast members.

Over the years, she grew in confidence, particularly after begin kidnapped and held captive by Imskian freedom fighters. After that incident, Salu became considerably more aggressive and more outgoing. She also became one of the Legion’s most skilled hand-to-hand combatants.

Happy Birthday: Scott Rosema

Happy Birthday: Scott Rosema

Born in 1958, Scott Rosema started scribbling when he was only four years old. By his teens he knew he wanted to get into comic books and set himself to developing his art skills.

He began freelancing in 1979, right after graduating from the Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, and worked in commercial art for the first few years.

In 1982 Rosema started working for various newspapers, including a seven-year stint at The Muskegon Chronicle. Since then he has worked for Warner Bros. (Tiny Toons and Looney Tunes), Archie Comics (Space Ghost), Marvel (X-Men), Arrow Comics (August), Golden Books (Batman), Valiant Comics (Solar, Man of the Atom), Dragon Magazine, and many others.

Rosema and his wife own and operate Temujin Studios.

Happy Birthday: Carter Hall

Happy Birthday: Carter Hall

Carter Hall was an American archaeologist with a particular interest in Egyptian history and relics. He was on a dig in 1940 when he discovered an ancient knife that the priest Hath-Set had used to murder Prince Khufu and his royal consort Chay-ara. Upon touching the knife Hall gained the memories of Khufu, discovering that he was the ancient prince reincarnated. Hall used the rare Nth metal to create a belt that allowed him to fly, and then crafted a winged costume so that he could confront Hath-Set’s reincarnation, Anton Hastor, as Hawkman.

Hall also encountered a woman named Shiera Saunders and recognized her as his reincarnated love Chay-ara. Hall became a member of the Justice Society of America and later its chairman. Shiera joined the team as well, using an Nth metal belt and wings of her own and adopting the guise of Hawkgirl. They put away their costumes for much of the 1950s after refusing to divulge their true identities to the Join Congressional Un-American Activities Committee, but returned in the early 1960s and restore the JSA to active duty. Hall and Saunders married and had a son, Hector Hall, who would become a hero in his own right years later. Ultimately Hall’s soul and consciousness merged with that of Shiera, his successor Katar Hol, and the hawk god, but the merge caused Hall to lose his sanity and his friends were forced to banish him to limbo. Years later he was restored to life by Thanagarian priests, and eventually returned to Earth and to the JSA.

Happy Birthday: Dean Haspiel

Happy Birthday: Dean Haspiel

Born in 1967 in New York City, Dean Edmund Haspiel started in the comics industry as an assistant to such luminaries as Howard Chaykin, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Walter Simonson. In 1987 Haspiel created The Verdict with Martin Powell. He also created the two-man comics anthology Keyhole with Josh Neufeld. In 2006 Haspiel created the online comics studio ACT-I-VATE with several others, and began serializing the Billy Dogma Trilogy there. He was also a founding member of DEEP6 Studios. Haspiel worked on The Escapist with Michael Chabon, Brawl with Michel Fiffe in 2007 and The Alcoholic with Jonathan Ames in 2008 but is probably best known for his work on The Quitter and American Splendor with Harvey Pekar.

Currently he edits the comix anthology Next-Door Neighbor at Smithmag.net, produces more Billy Dogma stories at ACT-I-VATE, and has a new wecomic, Street Code, coming soon from Zudacomics.com.  Haspiel was nominated for an Eisner in 2002 and an Ignatz in 2003.

Happy Birthday: Mike W. Barr

Happy Birthday: Mike W. Barr

Born in 1952, Mike W. Barr’s first comic book story was an eight-page backup in Detective Comics #444 in 1974.

In 1980, he started doing semi-regular backup stories in both Detective Comics and House of Mystery. He also wrote an issue of Captain America, which led to regular work with Marvel as well.

The following year, Barr picked up some editorial duties at DC and also started writing Star Trek for Marvel. In 1982, he wrote Camelot 3000, one of the first so-called “maxi-series.”

August 1983 saw the debut of Batman and the Outsiders, probably Barr’s best-known creation, and in 1987 he wrote Batman: Son of the Demon, which is often credited as singlehandedly restoring DC’s fortunes.

Since then Barr has done many more comic book projects, including more Batman stories, a two-parter for JLA: Classified, a relaunch of his Maze Agency series, and a piece for Star Trek: The Manga.

He also wrote a Star Trek novel, Gemini, which included some of the characters he created in the Star Trek comic book series.

Happy Birthday: Jack Kamen

Happy Birthday: Jack Kamen

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1920, Jack Kamen studied at the Art Students League and the Grand Central Art School and actually got his start in sculpture—his first professional job was on the Texas Centenniel.

His illustration career was just beginning when he was called up to the Army in 1942. After World War II, Kamen began drawing comics for Fiction House and Iger Associates, then started working for EC Comics in 1950. He quickly became one of their most prolific artists, particularly on their horror lines though he also worked on crime/suspense and weird science/fantasy books.

Kamen left comics in 1954 and did advertising art and supplemental illustrations for a wide variety of other clients—when Stephen King and George Romero created the horror anthology film Creepshow, an homage to EC’s horror comics, they tapped Kamen to do the artwork. He also illustrated the cover of the graphic novel adaptation.

 

Happy Birthday: Lynn Johnston

Happy Birthday: Lynn Johnston

Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1947, Lynn Ridgway was raised in North Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She worked at an animation studio after college but married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist for several years.

She drew her first book, David We’re Pregnant while expecting her first child in the early 1970s—it was published in 1973. She divorced a short while later and quit her job to do freelance commercial and medical art—her second book, Hi Mom! Hi Dad! came out in 1975, just before she met and married dental student Rod Johnston.

In 1978, the Johnstons moved to Lynn Lake, Manitoba and Universal Press Syndicate asked if she would do a regular comic strip for them. Six months later, For Better or For Worse appeared. It now appears in over 2000 papers and more than 20 countries. Johnston has won many awards, including The Reuben in 1985—the first woman, first Canadian, and youngest artist ever to win it—as well as the Gemini in 1987, and the National Cartoonist Society award for Newspaper Comic Strip in 1991.

In 1993, she was nominated for a Pulitzer and in 2007 she received the Order of Manitoba. Johnston is still producing For Better or For Worse, but she announced in January that starting no later than September the strip would become a hybrid of earlier strips and new material—or reworked older material—about the younger versions of her beloved characters.

Happy Birthday: Mark Wheatley

Happy Birthday: Mark Wheatley

Born in 1954, Mark Wheatley has made a career of creating clever and innovative comic books. He is probably  best known for his 1984 First Comics series Mars, the 1994 Vertigo mini-series Breathtaker, and his Insight Studios series Radical Dreamer and Frankenstein Mobster, but his list of titles extends far beyond that impressive handful.

Wheatley founded Insight in 1978 as an illustration and photography source, but in 1980 Marc Hempel joined him and they expanded the studio to include comic books and comic book production work.

Wheatley has won numerous awards, including the Inkpot, the Speakeasy, the Gem, and the Mucker. In 2008 he was a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress. Wheatley currently runs Insight and writes and illustrates the series EZ Street for ComicMix.