Werner Roth (comics)

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Werner Roth is an American comic book artist, perhaps best known for immediately succeeding Jack Kirby on Marvel Comics' X-Men.

Roth's work began appearing in Marvel Comics, then known as Atlas Comics, in 1953. Stan Lee, the editor at Atlas, was impressed with Roth's portfolio, particularly his drawings of women. According to Lee, "when you have a good artist like Werner Roth, you want to use him. So I took his samples to show [then-publisher] Martin Goodman. I suggested we should use Werner, even create a comic for him. Which we did, and that was how Lorna the Jungle Girl was born."^[1] Roth drew the first dozen issues of Lorna. He drew a number of other features for Atlas, including most of the stories of the Apache Kid. He later drew romance comics at DC.

Roth returned to Marvel to work on the X-Men in 1966, initially using the pseudonym Jay Gavin, taken from the names of his two sons, to conceal his Marvel work from his editors at DC.^[2] He later drew more Western comics for Marvel, and pencilled issues of Lois Lane for DC.

[edit] References

^ Nicky Wright, The Classic Era of American Comics, Prion Books Limited, London, 2000, p. 166
^ Ro, Ronin. Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and the American Comic Book Revolution, p. 92 (Bloomsbury, 2004)