Illustrators
Jackie Ormes
Readers of the Pittsburgh Courier received an unexpected treat in the comics section on May 1, 1937. It was the first appearance of Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, a fictional character who left Mississippi to perform in Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. Not content to...
Virginia Krausmann
When Dorothy Urfer ended her run on Annibelle in 1936, the Newspaper Enterprise Association needed another artist to continue their popular title. They turned to staff-artist Virginia Krausmann to carry the torch. Kraussmann did so successfully until its run finally...
Fran Hopper
Somewhere out there, you may stumble across Planet Comics #24 (1943). If you do, there's a story in there called "Norge Benson." That story was penciled and inked by Fran Deitrick. You'll also find the same artist responsible for stories in Rangers Comics ("Glory...
Lily Renée
Imagine being an artist and one day finding your life's adventures captured in a graphic novel almost seventy years later? That's precisely what happened to Lily Renée in 2011 when Graphic Universe published her biography in Lily Renée, Escape Artist: From Holocaust...
Alice Kirkpatrick
It seemed a natural progression to move from work as an artist illustrating pulp magazines to comics. Still, Alice Kirkpatrick didn't know that at the time. In 1937 her time was spent working for Ace Magazines, signing her name "Kirk." Within the next decade, she...
Barbara Hall
After attending art school with aspirations of being a painter, Barbara Fiske Calhoun moved to New York in 1940. It was there that, unable to find much success as a painter, she happened to show her work to the editors of Harvey Comics. They immediately saw potential...
Ray Hermann
There weren’t many women working in comics in the early forties. Those who were often had to write under a male pseudonym as it was felt readers wouldn’t accept a comic either written or illustrated by a woman. In 1938 Audrey “Toni” Blum walked into Eisner &...
Ruth Atkinson
Among the longest-running female characters ever created is Millie the Model and Patsy Walker (who later became Marvel’s “Hellcat”). Both were co-created by writer/artist Ruth Atkinson in the 1940s. Atkinson began her career with Fiction House in the early 40s,...
Violet Barclay
Before there was Marvel Comics, there was Timely comics, and their offices were located at the Empire State Building in New York. It was here, in 1942, that a twenty-year-old named Violet Barclay walked in to start her job as an artist on staff. At the time, Timely’s...
Jill Elgin
Born Kathleen Jo Elgin in 1923, one of the things she loved to do was draw. It was no surprise to friends and family that she turned that love into drawing a comic strip for her school’s newspaper when she was fourteen - which she signed as “Jo Elgin.” Flash forward a...