| Russ Heath |
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| american comics artists | |
| heath, russ | |
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| 1926 births | |
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Heath's drawing of a fighter jet being blown up, in DC Comics ' ''All American Men of War'' #89 (Feb. 1962), was the basis for Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein 's 1962 oil painting ''Blam''. BIOGRAPHY Early life and career Raised in , Inking the naval feature "Hammerhead Hawley", drawn by Penciler Charles Quinlan in Holyoke Publications ' ''Captain Aero Comics''. It is unclear if Heath, anxious to fight in World War II , graduated high school; in a 2004 interview, he recalls going "into the Air Force in my senior year of high school, in 1945," after having been "put in an accelerated class so I could get through with high school. I almost made it, but then the Air Force called me and in I went". He served stateside for nine months, drawing cartoons for his camp newspaper, but due to a clerical error, he recalled, he was on neither the military payroll nor any official duty roster for a significant portion of his time. Upon his discharge, he lived at home on a one-year military stipend of $20 a week before working as a lifegard at a swim club, where he met his future wife. While spending several weeks arranging appointments with artists, seeking an assistant's job, Heath was hired as an office "gofer" for the large Manhattan Advertising Agency Benton and Bowles, earning $35 weekly. He continued looking for artistic work on his lunch hour, and in 1947, his persistence paid off with a $75 a week staff-artist position at Timely Comics , the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics . While initially working in the Timely offices, Heath, like some of the other staffers, soon found it more efficient to work at home. He and his new wife had been living at his parents' home, and continued to do so for two more years while saving money for their own house; by the mid-1960s, however, they'd had children and were divorced. The artist said in 2004 he believed his initial work for Timely was a Western story featuring the Two-Gun Kid . Historians have tentatively identified a Kid Colt story in the Omnibus series ''Wild Western'' #4 (Nov. 1948); the second Two-Gun Kid story in ''Two-Gun Kid'' #5 (Dec. 1948), "Guns Blast in Thunder Pass"; and the Two-Gun Kid story in ''Wild Western'' #5 (Dec. 1948), while confirming Heath art on the Kid Colt story that same issue. Heath's first Superhero story is believed to be the seven-page Witness story, "Fate Fixed a Fight", in ''Captain America Comics'' #71 (March 1949). By the end of the decade, Heath had gone freelance, doing art both for Timely and for ad agencies. The 1950s Heath drew a corral-full of Western stories for such Timely comics as ''Wild Western'', ''All Western Winners'', ''Arizona Kid'', '' Black Rider '', ''Western Outlaws'', and ''Reno Browne, Hollywood's Greatest Cowgirl''. As Timely evolved into Marvel's 1950s iteration, generally known as Atlas Comics, Heath expanded into other genres. He drew the December 1950 premiere of the two-issue superhero series '' Marvel Boy '', as well as scattered Science Fiction anthology stories (in ''Venus'', '' Journey Into Unknown Worlds'', and ''Men's Adventures''), Crime Drama (''Justice''), Horror stories and covers (''Adventures into Terror'', ''Marvel Tales'', ''Menace'', ''Mystic'', ''Spellbound'', '' Strange Tales '', '' Uncanny Tales '', the cover of '' Journey Into Mystery '' #1), Satiric Humor (''Wild''), and — ironically given his short stateside military service — the genre that would become his speciality, war stories. Heath produced a plethora of combat stories both for the wide line of Timely war titles but also for the first issue (Aug. 1951) of EC Comics ' celebrated ''Frontline Combat''. Heath later did the first of many decades' worth of war work for DC Comics , with ''Our Army At War'' #23 and ''Star Spangled War Stories'' #22, both cover-dated June 1954. Other notable 1950s work includes an issue of '' 3-D Comics'' from St. John Publications , and the story "The Return of the Human Torch" (minus the Carl Burgos splash page) in ''Young Men'' #24 (Dec. 1953), the flagship of Atlas' ill-fated effort to revive superheroes, which had fallen out of fashion soon after the war. Haunted tanks and sea devils TK Animation and advertising TK AWARDS Russ Heath was among the recipients of Comic-Con International 's Inkpot Award in 1997. QUOTES Howard Chaykin on Heath {Link without Title} : "...one of the gods of comics." FOOTNOTES
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