Tony Strobl
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Anthony Joseph (Tony) Strobl (born May 12, 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, died December 29, 1991) was an American comics artist and animator. He went to Cleveland School of Art from 1933–37, with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who actually got some help from Strobl creating Superman. After finishing his education, Strobl became impressed enough by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to seek a job at Walt Disney Studios. After a refusal, he eventually was hired in 1938. He worked as an animator on Fantasia, Dumbo, and Pinocchio before he left the studio to fight in World War II. He returned to animation after the war, but moved over to the comics field, and after a few commercial artist jobs, he started working for Western Publishing in 1947.
At Western, he illustrated primarily Disney comics, especially from the Duck universe. Starting with a Bucky Bug story for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #100 in 1949, Strobl had a long and impressive production of Disney comics. He did comics for the American market until 1968, and comics with Disney characters for foreign markets from 1963 to his retirement in 1987. This was for a little known special unit set up by Disney to provide material for their foreign comics licensees (some of whom had titles published weekly and were quickly burning through the backlog of materials published by Western, which also reduced its output of new material by the mid-1960s). Although during his career he primarily illustrated stories written by others, he did in a few cases wrote scripts he illustrated. Strobl illustrated some stories written by Carl Barks after the latter's 1966 retirement. The most significant of these is "King Scrooge the First" (Uncle Scrooge #71).
In addition to Disney, Strobl illustrated comics with several other characters, such as Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker.
In the Hall of Fame book of hardcover books devoted to the greatest Duck (and Mouse) comics artists, published in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish by Egmont, Volume 15 (2006) is dedicated to Strobl's work.
[edit] Trivia
Gerard Jones in his book Men of Tomorrow reveals at one point Jerry Siegel contemplated ending his partnership with Joe Shuster in developing what became Superman and work with someone else instead. Strobl was among those approached but he respectfully declined, feeling his more cartoony artstyle was ill suited for such a serious character.
In 1942, Strobl saved a seven year old girl from drowning.
