Fred Guardineer

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Fred Guardineer

Born October 3, 1913
Albany, New York
Died 2002
Nationality American
Area(s) Penciller, Inker, Writer
Pseudonym(s) F.G.B.; Gene Baxter; Lance Blackwood

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 Western comic-book series The Durango Kid. A pioneer of the medium itself, Guardineer contributed a feature to the seminal Action Comics #1, the comic book that introduced Superman.

He occasionally wrote and illustrated under the pseudonyms F.G.B., Gene Baxter and Lance Blackwood.[1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Action Comics #8 (Jan. 1939), Guardineer's first comic-book cover
Action Comics #8 (Jan. 1939), Guardineer's first comic-book cover

Fred Guardineer broke into the fledgling field of comic books with DC Comics' landmark omnibus title Action Comics #1 (June 1938), writing, drawing, and lettering the 12-page feature introducing his magician-hero creation Zatara. Guardineer was also one of the artists on the existing features "Pep Morgan" (on which he sometimes used the pseudonym Gene Baxter) and, in Detective Comics, "Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator". He married Ruth Ball in 1938, and the couple settled in Long Island, New York.

Guardineer's early work appeared primarily in DC Comics titles. Later, he went on to draw 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] Later life and career

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.

In addition to his illustrating, Guardineer worked 20 years with the U.S. Postal Service, beginning circa 1955.

[edit] Award

[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 his pages is a thoughtfully designed whole, giving the impression sometimes that Guardineer is arranging a series of similar snapshots into an attractive overall pattern, a personal design that will both tell the story clearly and be pleasing to the eye...."[2]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Bails, Jerry. Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999
  2. ^ Goulart, Ron. The Great Comic Book Artists (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986)

[edit] References

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