Russ Heath

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Russell Heath, Jr. (born September 29, 1926, New York City, New York) is an American artist best known for his comic book work — particularly his DC Comics war stories for several decades and his 1960s art for Playboy magazine's Little Annie Fanny featurettes — and for his commercial art, two pieces of which, depicting Roman and Revolutionary War battle scenes for toy soldier sets, became highly familiar bits of Americana after gracing the back covers of countless comic books from the early 1960s to early '70s.

Heath's drawing of a fighter jet being blown up, in DC Comics' All American Men of War #89 (Feb. 1962), was the basis for pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 oil painting Blam.

1 Biography
2 Awards
3 Quotes
4 Audio
5 Footnotes
6 References

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

One version of Russ Heath's famous "Roman Soldiers" ad that appeared for years on the backs of comic books in the 1960s and '70s

Raised in New Jersey as an only child, Russ Heath at an early age became interested in drawing. "My father used to be a cowboy, so as a little kid I was influenced by Western artists of the time. Will James was one, an artist-writer &mdash: I had most of his books. Charlie Russell was my favorite because his work was absolutely authentic, because he drew what he lived...."^[1] Largely self-taught, Heath began freelancing for comics during one or two summers while he was in high school, inking the naval feature "Hammerhead Hawley", drawn by penciler Charles Quinlan in Holyoke Publications' Captain Aero Comics.

It is unclear if Heath, anxious to fight in World War II, graduated high school; in a 2004 interview, he recalls going "into the Air Force in my senior year of high school, in 1945," after having been "put in an accelerated class so I could get through with high school. I almost made it, but then the Air Force called me and in I went".^[2] He served stateside for nine months, drawing cartoons for his camp newspaper, but due to a clerical error, he said, he was on neither the military payroll nor any official duty roster for a significant portion of his time. Upon his discharge, he lived at home on a one-year military stipend of $20 a week before working as a lifeguard at a swim club, where he met his future wife.

While spending several weeks arranging appointments with artists, seeking an assistant's job, Heath was hired as an office "gofer" for the large Manhattan advertising agency Benton & Bowles, earning $35 weekly. He continued looking for artist work on his lunch hour, and in 1947, landed a $75 a week staff position at Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics. While initially working in the Timely offices, Heath, like some of the other staffers, soon found it more efficient to work at home. He and his new wife had been living at his parents' home, and continued to do so for two more years while saving money for their own house; by the mid-1960s, however, they'd had children and were divorced.^[3]

The artist said in 2004^[3] he believed his initial work for Timely was a Western story featuring the Two-Gun Kid. Historians have tentatively identified a Kid Colt story in the omnibus series Wild Western #4 (Nov. 1948); the second Two-Gun Kid story in Two-Gun Kid #5 (Dec. 1948), "Guns Blast in Thunder Pass"; and the Two-Gun Kid story in Wild Western #5 (Dec. 1948), while confirming Heath art on the Kid Colt story that same issue. Heath's first superhero story is tentatively identified as the seven-page Witness story, "Fate Fixed a Fight", in Captain America Comics #71 (March 1949).^[4]

Timely let virtually all of its staff go in 1948 during an industry downturn. By then or before, Heath had gone freelance, doing art both for Timely and for ad agencies.

[edit] The 1950s

Heath's cover of Uncanny Tales #48 (Oct. 1956), with duplicate images and saturated color unusual for the time and medium.

Heath drew a corral-full of Western stories for such Timely comics as Wild Western, All Western Winners, Arizona Kid, Black Rider, Western Outlaws, and Reno Browne, Hollywood's Greatest Cowgirl. As Timely evolved into Marvel's 1950s iteration, known as Atlas Comics, Heath expanded into other genres. He drew the December 1950 premiere of the two-issue superhero series Marvel Boy, as well as scattered science fiction anthology stories (in Venus, Journey Into Unknown Worlds, and Men's Adventures); crime drama (Justice); horror stories and covers (Adventures into Terror, Marvel Tales, Menace, Mystic, Spellbound, Strange Tales, Uncanny Tales, the cover of Journey into Mystery #1), satiric humor (Wild), and — ironically given his short stateside military service — the genre that would become his specialty, war stories.

Heath produced a plethora of combat stories both for the wide line of Timely war titles but also for the first issue (Aug. 1951) of EC Comics' celebrated Frontline Combat. Heath later did the first of many decades' worth of war work for DC Comics, with Our Army at War #23 and Star Spangled War Stories #22, both cover-dated June 1954.

Other 1950s work includes an issue of 3-D Comics from St. John Publications, and the story "The Return of the Human Torch" (minus the opening page, drawn by character-creator Carl Burgos) in Young Men #24 (Dec. 1953), the flagship of Atlas' ill-fated effort to revive superheroes, which had fallen out of fashion in the postwar U.S.

[edit] Haunted tanks and sea devils

Russ Heath co-created with writer-editor Robert Kanigher the feature "The Haunted Tank", which headlined many issues of DC Comics' G.I. Combat. Also with Kanigher, Heath co-created and drew the first issues of DC's Sea Devils, about a team of scuba-diving adventurers.