| Birth Name: | Eugene Jules Colan |
| Birth Place: | The Bronx, New York |
| Death Place: | The Bronx, New York |
| Nationality: | American |
| Pencil: | y |
| Ink: | y |
| Alias: | Adam Austin |
| Notable Works: | Daredevil Detective Comics Batman Doctor Strange Howard the Duck The Tomb of Dracula |
| Awards: | Eagle Award, 1977, 1979 Eisner Award, 2010 |
| Birth Date: | 1 September 1926 |
| Spouse: | Sallee Greenberg (divorced) Adrienne Colan (Brickman) |
Eugene Jules Colan (; September 1, 1926 – June 23, 2011)[1] was an American comic book artist best known for his work for Marvel Comics, where his signature titles include the superhero series Daredevil, the cult-hit satiric series Howard the Duck, and The Tomb of Dracula, considered one of comics' classic horror series. He co-created the Falcon, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comics;[2] [3] Carol Danvers, who would become Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel; and the non-costumed, supernatural vampire hunter Blade.
Colan was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2005.
Eugene Jules Colan was born September 1, 1926, to Harold Colan, an insurance salesman, and Winifred Levy Colan, an antique dealer,[4] in The Bronx,[5] New York City.[6] His parents ran an antiques business on the Upper East Side.[7] His family was Jewish, and the family's surname had originally been "Cohen".[8] Colan began drawing at age three. "The first thing I ever drew was a lion. I must've absolutely copied it or something. But that's what my folks tell me. And from then on, I just drew everything in sight. My grandfather was my favorite subject". Among his earliest influences, he said in 2001, were the Coulton Waugh adventure comic strip Dickie Dare "in The New York Sun. I was influenced by the style, or the story. Mostly the story. I took it very seriously." He moved with his family "at about age 4" to Long Beach, New York, on Long Island.[9] Later, he would try to copy artist Norman Rockwell's covers to The Saturday Evening Post. Other major art influences were comics artists Syd Shores and Milton Caniff.[6] Colan attended George Washington High School in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and went on to study at the Art Students League of New York.
Colan began working in comics in 1944, doing illustrations for publisher Fiction House's aviation-adventure series Wings Comics. "[J]ust a summertime job before I went into the service",[10] it gave Colan his first published work, the one-page "Wing Tips" non-fiction filler "P-51B Mustang" (issue #52, Dec. 1944).[11] His first comics story was a seven-page "Clipper Kirk" feature in the following month's issue.[12]
After attempting to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II but being pulled out by his father "because I was underage", Colan at "18 or 19" enlisted in the Army Air Corps.[6] Originally scheduled for gunnery school in Boulder, Colorado, plans changed with the war's sudden end. "I was going to be an aerial gunner. A bomber. But it never materialized", he recalled in 2001.[9] After training at an Army camp near Biloxi, Mississippi, he joined the U.S. forces in the Philippines. There Colan rose to the rank of corporal, drew for the Manila Times, and won an art contest.[6]
Upon his return to civilian life in 1946, Colan went to work for Marvel Comics' 1940s precursor, Timely Comics.[13] He recalled in 2000,
Comics historian Michael J. Vassallo identifies that first story as "Adam and Eve — Crime Incorporated" in Lawbreakers Always Lose #1 (cover date Spring 1948), on which is written the internal job number 2401. He notes another story, "The Cop They Couldn't Stop" in All-True Crime #27 (April 1948), job number 2505, may have been published first, citing the differing cover-date nomenclature ("Spring" v. "April") for the uncertainty.[14]
Hired as "a staff penciler",[3] Colan "started out at about $60 a week. ... Syd Shores was the art director".[15] Due to Colan's work going uncredited, in the manner of the times, comprehensive credits for this era are difficult if not impossible to ascertain. In 2010, he recalled his first cover art being for an issue of Captain America Comics;[16] Colan drew the 12-page lead story in issue #72, the cover-artist of which is undetermined.[17] He definitively drew the cover of the final issue, the horror comic Captain America's Weird Tales #75 (Feb. 1950),[18] which did not include the titular superhero on either the cover or inside.[19]
After virtually all the Timely staff was let go in 1948 during an industry downturn, Colan began freelancing for National Comics, the future DC Comics. A stickler for accuracy, he meticulously researched his countless war stories for DC's All-American Men at War, Captain Storm, and Our Army at War, as well as for Marvel's 1950s forerunner Atlas Comics, on the series Battle, Battle Action, Battle Ground, Battlefront, G.I. Tales, Marines in Battle, Navy Combat and Navy Tales. Colan's earliest confirmed credit during this time is penciling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom", by an uncredited writer, in Atlas' Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Feb. 1949).[20]
By the early 1950s, he was living in New Rochelle, New York.[21] Around this time he did his first work for DC Comics, then the industry leader, on the licensed series Hopalong Cassidy, based on the film and TV Western hero, drawing it from 1954 to 1957.[22] In the 1960s, he lived in New Jersey, where his and Adrienne's children, Erik and Nanci, were raised.
While freelancing for DC romance comics in the 1960s, Colan did his first superhero work for Marvel under the pseudonym Adam Austin.[23] Taking to the form immediately, he introduced the "Sub-Mariner" feature in Tales to Astonish,[24] and succeeded Don Heck on "Iron Man" in Tales of Suspense.
Sometime after Colan began this pseudonymous stint, Marvel editor Stan Lee made overtures to lure him from DC. Colan recalled,
Under his own name, Colan became one of the premier Silver Age Marvel artists, illustrating a host of such major characters as Captain America, Doctor Strange (both in the late-1960s and the mid-1970s series), and his signature character, Daredevil. Operating, like other company artists, on the "Marvel Method" — in which editor-in-chief and primary writer Stan Lee "would just speak to me for a few minutes on the phone, tell me the beginning, the middle and the end [of a story] and not much else, maybe four or five paragraphs, and then he'd tell me to make [a 20-page] story out of it," providing artwork to which Lee would then script dialogue and captions — Colan forged his own style, different from that of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, whom Lee would point to as examples of the Marvel style:
Lee and Colan introduced the Emissaries of Evil in Daredevil Annual #1 (1967)[25] and the Jester in Daredevil #42 (July 1968).[26] Colan's long run on the Daredevil series encompassed all but three issues in an otherwise unbroken, 81-issue string from #20-100 (Sept. 1966 - June 1973), plus the initial Daredevil Annual (1967). He returned to draw ten issues sprinkled from 1974 to 1979, and an eight-issue run in 1997. Colan admitted relying upon amphetamines in order to make deadlines for illustrating the series Doctor Strange,[27] for which he would personally visit the character's real-life Manhattan neighborhood, Greenwich Village, and shoot Polaroid photographs to use as location reference.[28] Captain Marvel, a character created to secure the trademark on the name,[29] debuted in Marvel Super-Heroes #12 (Dec. 1967) by Lee and Colan.[30] The original Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (Jan. 1969) by writer Arnold Drake and Colan.[31]
In Captain America #117 (Sept. 1969), Colan and writer-editor Stan Lee created the Falcon,[32] the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books.[2] [3] The character came about, Colan recalled in 2008,
Concurrent with his move to Marvel, Colan also contributed several stories to Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror comics magazines, beginning with the six-page tale "To Pay the Piper", by writer Larry Ivie, in Eerie #2 (March 1966). There and in subsequent stories for that magazine and its sister publication, Creepy, Colan would ink his own pencil work. His final original Warren story, "First Blood", appeared in Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967). The vast majority of these were written by Warren editor Archie Goodwin, with whom Colan would later collaborate on Marvel's Iron Man.[33]
Colan in the 1970s illustrated the complete 70-issue run of the acclaimed[34] [35] horror title The Tomb of Dracula[36] as well as most issues of writer Steve Gerber's cult hit Howard the Duck.[37]
Colan, already one of Marvel's most well-established and prominent artists, said he had lobbied for the Tomb of Dracula assignment: