The celebrated Mr. K pays a birthday tribute… By PAUL KUPPERBERG Ramona Fradon (October 2, 1926 – February 24, 2024) grew up in Westchester County, New York, in a household where art was very much part of the family business. Her father, Peter Dom, was a commercial lettering artist whose clients included Elizabeth Arden, Camel cigarettes, and Lord & Taylor. He also designed the typeface Dom Casual, and his work provided Fradon with an early introduction to professional illustration and graphic design. Although she never read comic books as a child, she was an enthusiastic reader of newspaper comic strips, and her father encouraged her interest in art, eventually steering her toward the Art Students’ League in New York. After graduation, Ramona married Dana Fradon, a cartoonist whose work would become a familiar feature of The New Yorker. Dana’s experience in cartooning and his encouragement helped her consider a career in the field. A friend of her husband’s, comic book letterer George Ward, suggested she submit samples of her work to publishers, which led to an opportunity at DC Comics in 1950, marking the beginning of a career that would span more than seven decades, during most of which she would be one of the few working women artists, along with Marie Severin, in the business. I never had the professional pleasure of working with Ramona myself, but I grew up on her art and long before I knew her name, I was a fan of her work on the Aquaman feature in Adventure Comics, a character she will forever be associated with from that 1951-61 run. But Ramona wasn’t just some one-trick fish! Except for a hiatus from 1965 to 1972 to raise her daughter, she followed her stint on Aquaman with several other fondly remembered features that demonstrated her artistic versatility. From superheroes and science fiction to humor and newspaper comics, she brought her distinctive combination of expressive characters, clean lines, and storytelling sensibility to everything she drew. Before her leave in the ’60s, she famously teamed with writer Bob Haney to create Metamorpho, a character whose constantly changing body gave her an opportunity to stretch her cartooning in ways the more conventional superheroes hadn’t. In an interview in Back issue #71, Ramona said, “I never had an experience like I had working with Bob Haney on Metamorpho....
One of the all-time greats was born 117 years ago… — UPDATED 10/2/26: The late, great Alex Raymond was born 117 years ago. Perfect time to reprint this birthday piece from 2023! Dig it. — Dan — By PETER BOSCH It’s not saying anything new to state that the three most important comic strip artists of the 1930s were Hal Foster, Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond. Each was a master of his own style of art, but probably none was more influential to those who came after him than Alex Raymond (Oct. 2, 1909-Sept. 6, 1956). Among the very many who held him in high esteem were Murphy Anderson, Gene Colan, Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Jim Aparo, Al McWilliams, John Prentice, Syd Shores, Joe Sinnott and, of course, Al Williamson. Raymond got his start as an artist ghosting the Blondie and Tim Tyler’s Luck newspaper comic strips and creating illustrations for magazines and other media. Below is his title lobby card of the 1935 Warner Bros. movie, Captain Blood. Obviously, his greatest achievement was his stunning artwork on the Flash Gordon Sunday newspaper strip from 1934 to 1944. What many may not know is that during the earliest years of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim (the topper of the Flash Gordon page) he was also drawing the daily newspaper strip of Secret Agent X-9 (from 1934 to 1935). The trifecta of comic strips! (All three will be having their 80th anniversary in January 2024.) Raymond received the bulk of the public’s admiration because of his art on the different strips, but the writing was usually handled by others. Mystery author Dashiell Hammett wrote the majority of Secret Agent X-9 during Raymond’s time on the strip and Leslie Charteris (creator of Simon Templar, aka The Saint) took over after that. However, when it came to the writing of Flash Gordon, Don Moore is acknowledged to be the scribe (though he did not receive a credit on the page) for most, if not all, of the Raymond run. Raymond drew Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim until 1944, when he gave up the strips to enlist in the Marines during World War II. When he returned to civilian life in 1946, he co-created a new daily comic strip, Rip Kirby, about a cultured gentleman returning to civilian life from the Marines. Kirby...
