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.
2021
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. It was like our minds were in perfect synch… It was one of those wonderful collaborations that doesn’t happen very often.”
Metamorpho’s first appearance: 1964’s The Brave and the Bold #57. Cover: Ramona Fradon pencils, Charles Paris inks.
She also drew Plastic Man, Freedom Fighters, Super Friends, and stories for House of Mystery and House of Secrets, and even a couple for Marvel in 1973.
In 1980, Ramona was able to indulge her childhood love of newspaper comics when she took over the art on the syndicated strip Brenda Starr, Reporter, succeeding its creator, Dale Messick, and continued drawing it for 15 years.
Ramona Fradon brought a cartoonist’s sensibility to superhero comics, an approach that worked equally well on eccentric and humorous series like Metamorpho and Plastic Man as it did on straight superheroes and even horror stories, one of the reasons that, aside from being one of the pioneering women artists in the field, Ramona deserves her place in any industry hall of fame.
Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE RAMONA FRADON SPLASH PAGES THAT AREN’T SOLO AQUAMAN:
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Adventure Comics #165 (June 1951). An early professional job, you can see the young artist learning her craft in this Shining Knight feature, “Gadget Boom in Camelot,” scripted by Don C. Cameron.
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Gang Busters #28 (June/July 1952). By “I Drive a Black Maria,” a story in a comic based on a popular radio program, she’s already showing her distinctive style.
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Western Comics #40 (June/July 1953). Almost any artist will tell you they hate to have to draw horses, but Ramona shows she knows how to ride in “The Petticoat Puncher,” written by Gardner Fox.
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The Brave and the Bold #55 (August/September 1964). After lots and lots of Aquaman, Ramona is assigned “Revenge of the Robot Reject,” an early The Brave and the Bold team-up story, written by Bob Haney and inked by Charles Paris.
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The Brave and the Bold #57 (December 1964/January 1965). “The Origin of Metamorpho.” A classic, again with writer Haney and inker Paris.
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Fantastic Four #133 (April 1973). By her own admission, Ramona wasn’t comfortable working in the “Marvel Method” of drawing from a plot, but you would never know it from “Thundra at Dawn,” scripted by Gerry Conway and inked by Joe Sinnott.
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Plop! #8 (November/December 1974). Humor! “Vacation,” written by David Michelinie.
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Plastic Man #12 (April/May 1976). I’m a tough man to please when it comes to portrayals of Plastic Man. To me, the only creator to ever get the character right was originator Jack Cole… and I include myself in those who failed to get Plas right. But Ramona’s art during her run on Plastic Man came about as close to nailing him visually as anybody ever has. “The Bogus-Men Will Get You if You Don’t Watch Out,” written by Steve Skeates, inked by Bob Smith.
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Freedom Fighters #3 (July/August 1976). Straight up superhero action! “The Super Sniper,” written by Martin Pasko, inked by Juan Canale (and an uncredited Vince Colletta).
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Super Friends #3 (February 1977). With writer E. Nelson Bridwell and inker Smith, Super Friends was a book Ramona seemed destined to draw, the perfect blend of lighthearted humor and superheroics.
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Secrets of Haunted House #14 (October/November 1978). Ramona made no secret of the fact that she had a lot of fun with the 1970s work she did for Joe Orlando’s and other horror books at DC, like “Selina,” written by Nicola Cuti, inked by Smith.
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Wonder Woman Annual #2 (1989). Ramona returned to comics after almost a decade away working on Brenda Starr to contribute the art for this vignette by writer Trina Robbins.
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Just Imagine Stan Lee with Scott McDaniel Creating Aquaman (2002). And just to prove she still had it, Ramona put her pen to Aquaman again, only this time for a “What if–?” version created by Stan Lee and Michael Uslan for this DC Comics series. (OK, so I kind of included solo Aquaman after all. Oh well.)
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MORE
— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite AQUAMAN Artists. Click here.
— Dig This Marvelous Rarity: RAMONA FRADON’s SPIDER-MAN. Click here.
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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life.
Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/
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