Fred Guardineer
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Fred Guardineer (born October 3, 1913, Albany, New York; died 2002) was an American illustrator and comic book writer-artist best known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s during what historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books, and for his 1950s art on the Werstern comic-book series The Durango Kid. A pionner of the medium itself, Guardineer contributed a feature to the seminal Action Comics #1, the comic book that introduced Superman.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Fred Guardineer broke into the fledgling field of comic books with DC Comics' landmark [[omnibus (media)|omnibus) title Action Comics #1 (June 1938), writing, drawing, and lettering the 12-page magician-hero feature "Zatara", which ran through 1951. Guardineer also drew and possibly wrote the adventure feature "Pep Morgan", which also debuted in that comic and on which he sometimes later used the pseudonym "Gene Baxter". Other early features include "Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator" in Detective Comics.
Guardineer's work appeared primarily in DC Comics titles, though he branched out to draw as well for Centaur Publications; for Quality Comics, where he created the character Blue Tracer; and Columbia Comics, where he worked with the former DC editor, Vin Sullivan, who had edited Action Comics.
[edit] Magazine Enterprises
Guardineer followed Sullivan to the editor's next venture, the comic-book company Magazine Enterprises, which Sullivan founded. There from 1949-1955, Guardineer drew writer Gardner Fox's Old West masked-crimefighter series The Durango Kid.
[edit] Personal
Guardineer married Ruth Ball in 1938. The couple lived in Long Island, New York, where in addition to his illustrating Guardineer worked 20 years with the U.S. Postal Service, beginning circa 1955.
[edit] Quotes
Ron Goulart: "He was a true nonpareil, an artist whose style was unmistakably his own.... His style was almost fully formed from the start. He seems always to have thought in terms of the entire page, never the individual panel. Each of hispages is a thoughfully designed whole, giving the impression sometimes that Guardineer is arranging a series of similar snapshots into an attracdtive overall pattern, a personal design that will both tell the story clearly and be pleasing to the eye...."[1]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Goulart, Ron. The Great Comic Book Artists (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986)
[edit] References
- Grand Comics Database: Fred Guardineer credits
- Black, Bill. "Fred Guardineer: The M.E. Years", Alter Ego #10 (Sept. 2001), p. 15
- Ibid., Fred Guardineer interview, pp. 16-18
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