Gene Colan

{{Staff Template
 * Image                  = GeneColan6.13.09ByLuigiNovi.jpg
 * RealName               = Eugene Jules Colan
 * Pseudonyms             = Gene Colan; Adam Austin
 * Employers              = Archie Comics; Comic Art; Dark Horse; DC; Marvel
 * Titles                 = Penciler; Inker; Cover Artist


 * Gender                 = Male
 * YearOfBirth            = 1926
 * MonthOfBirth           = September
 * DayOfBirth             = 1
 * CityOfBirth            = New York City
 * StateOfBirth           = New York
 * CountryOfBirth         = USA
 * YearOfDeath            = 2011
 * MonthOfDeath           = June
 * DayOfDeath             = 23
 * PlaceOfDeath           = New York City, New York, USA
 * Creations              =
 * First                  =


 * PersonalHistory        =


 * ProfessionalHistory    = Eugene Jules "Gene" Colan (September 1, 1926 – June 23, 2011) was an American comic book artist best known for his work for Marvel Comics, where his signature titles include the superhero series Daredevil, the cult-hit satiric series Howard the Duck, and The Tomb of Dracula, considered one of comics' classic horror series. He co-created the Falcon, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comics, and the non-costumed, supernatural African-American character Blade, which went on to star in a series of films starring Wesley Snipes.

Colan was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2005.

Early life
Eugene Jules Colan was born September 1, 1926 to Harold Colan, an insurance salesman, and Winifred Levy Colan, an antique dealer, in The Bronx, New York City, New York, both of whom ran an antiques business on the Upper East Side. His family was Jewish, and his family's surname had originally been "Cohen". Colan began drawing at age three. "The first thing I ever drew was a lion. I must've absolutely copied it or something. But that's what my folks tell me. And from then on, I just drew everything in sight. My grandfather was my favorite subject". Among his earliest influences, he said in 2001, were the Coulton Waugh adventure comic strip Dickie Dare "in The New York Sun. I was influenced by the style, or the story. Mostly the story. I took it very seriously." He moved with his family "at about age 4" to Long Beach, New York, on Long Island. Later, he would try to copy artist Norman Rockwell's covers to The Saturday Evening Post. Other major art influences were comics artists Syd Shores and Milton Caniff. Colan attended George Washington High School in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and went on to study at the Art Students League of New York.

Early career
Colan began working in comics in 1944, doing illustrations for publisher Fiction House's aviation-adventure series Wings Comics. "Just a summertime job before I went into the service", it gave Colan his first published work, the one-page "Wing Tips" non-fiction filler "P-51B Mustang" (issue #52, Dec. 1944). His first comics story was a seven-page "Clipper Kirk" feature in the following month's issue.

After attempting to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II but being pulled out by his father "because I was underage", Colan at "18 or 19" enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Originally scheduled for gunnery school in Boulder, Colorado, plans changed with the war's sudden end. "I was going to be an aerial gunner. A bomber. But it never materialized", he recalled in 2001. After training at an Army camp near Biloxi, Mississippi, he joined the occupation forces in the Philippines. There Colan rose to the rank of corporal, drew for the Manila Times, and won an art contest.

Upon his return to civilian life in 1946, Colan went to work for Marvel Comics' 1940s precursor, Timely Comics. He recalled in 2000,

Comics historian Michael J. Vassallo identifies that first story as "Adam and Eve — Crime Incorporated" in Lawbreakers Always Lose #1 (cover date Spring 1948), on which is written the internal job number 2401. He notes another story, "The Cop They Couldn't Stop" in All-True Crime #27 (April 1948), job number 2505, may have been published first, citing the differing cover-date nomenclature ("Spring" v. "April") for the uncertainty.

Hired as "a staff penciler", Colan "started out at about $60 a week. ... Syd Shores was the art director". Due to Colan's work going uncredited, in the manner of the times, comprehensive credits for this era are difficult if not impossible to ascertain. In 2010, he recalled his first cover art being for an issue of Captain America Comics; Colan drew the 12-page lead story in issue #72, the cover-artist of which is undetermined. He definitively drew the cover of the final issue, the horror comic Captain America's Weird Tales #75 (Feb. 1950), which did not include the titular superhero on either the cover or inside.

After virtually all the Timely staff was let go in 1948 during an industry downturn, Colan began freelancing for National Comics, the future DC Comics. A stickler for accuracy, he meticulously researched his countless war stories for DC's All-American Men at War, Captain Storm, and Our Army at War, as well as for Marvel's 1950s forerunner Atlas Comics, on the series Battle, Battle Action, Battle Ground, Battlefront, G.I. Tales, Marines in Battle, Navy Combat and Navy Tales. Colan's earliest confirmed credit during this time is penciling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom", by an uncredited writer, in Atlas' Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Feb. 1949).

By the early 1950s, he was living in New Rochelle, New York. Around this time he broke into DC Comics, then the industry leader, on the licensed series Hopalong Cassidy, based on the film and TV Western hero, drawing it from 1954 to 1957. In the 1960s, he lived in New Jersey, where his and Adrienne's children, Erik and Nanci, were raised.

Silver Age
While freelancing for DC romance comics in the 1960s, Colan did his first superhero work for Marvel under the pseudonym Adam Austin. Taking to the form immediately, he introduced the "Sub-Mariner" feature in Tales to Astonish, and succeeded Don Heck on "Iron Man" in Tales of Suspense.

Sometime after Colan began this pseudonymous stint, Marvel editor Stan Lee made overtures to lure him from DC. Colan recalled, "Stan asked me to come over and work with him. I don't remember how, but I do know that we made a connection, and he asked me, "How about coming over?" And so, my answer was — I think this was at his house; I had some work to deliver late one night; it was in the wintertime, and I went over and delivered it — and he asked me to come over to Marvel, and I said, "Well, what's the inducement? Why should I leave DC and come over to work with you, unless there's a little something in it for me to do that? I'm not just going to leave them [DC]." He said, "Well, if you're looking for more money, there's no point to it." I said, "What do you mean?" [laughs] He said, "Simply because, sooner or later, they're going to have to fire you, and you'll have to come over here." [laughs] I smiled, and I said, "Stan, I think I have to go." And I shook his hand, and I said, "That's okay, I'll just stay where I am." The next day, I got a phone call from Stan, because I had asked for more money, and he gave it to me. He tried to bluff me, and ... then I came over."

Under his own name, Colan became one of the premier Silver Age Marvel artists, illustrating a host of such major characters as Captain America, Doctor Strange (both in the late-1960s and the mid-1970s series), and his signature character, Daredevil. Operating, like other company artists, on the "Marvel Method" — in which editor-in-chief and primary writer Stan Lee "would just speak to me for a few minutes on the phone, tell me the beginning, the middle and the end [of a story] and not much else, maybe four or five paragraphs, and then he’d tell me to make [a 20-page] story out of it," providing artwork to which Lee would then script dialogue and captions — Colan forged his own style, different from that of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, whom Lee would point to as examples of the Marvel style.

"Whatever book he thought was selling, he would have the rest of the staff try to copy the same style of work, but I wouldn't do it. I'd tell him if you want Stevie Ditko then you'll have to get Stevie Ditko. I can't do it, I have to be myself. So he left me alone. ... He knew I meant it and that I couldn't do it and there was no point in trying to force me to do it. Stan recognized something in my work from the very start, whatever that was, that gave [me] my first big break. And I always got along very well with Stan; not everybody can say that but I did ... so he let me do pretty much what I wanted to do.... [T]here was always some little change here and there, but basically he left me alone. ... And I was intimidated by Stan. I didn't want to go into his office, it upset me a little bit, but he was very nice to me. He left me pretty much alone because I was able to deliver pretty much what he was looking for, so we never had any trouble."

Colan's long run on the series Daredevil encompassed all but three issues in an otherwise unbroken, 81-issue string from #20-100 (Sept. 1966 - June 1973), plus the initial Daredevil Annual (1967). He returned to draw ten issues sprinkled from 1974 to 1979, and an eight-issue run in 1997. Colan admitted relying upon amphetamines in order to make deadlines for illustrating the series Doctor Strange, for which he would personally visit the character's real-life Manhattan neighborhood, Greenwich Village, and shoot Polaroid photographs to use as location reference.

In Captain America #117 (Sept. 1969), Colan and writer-editor Stan Lee created the Falcon, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books. The character came about, Colan recalled in 2008,

Concurrent with his move to Marvel, Colan also contributed several stories to Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror comics magazines, beginning with the six-page tale "To Pay the Piper", by writer Larry Ivie, in Eerie #2 (March 1966). There and in subsequent stories for that magazine and its sister publication, Creepy, Colan would ink his own pencil work. His final original Warren story, "First Blood", appeared in Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967). The vast majority of there were written by Warren editor Archie Goodwin, with whom Colan would later collaborate on Marvel's Iron Man.

Dracula and Batman
Colan also in the 1970s illustrated the complete, 70-issue run of the acclaimed horror title The Tomb of Dracula, as well as most issues of writer Steve Gerber's cult-hit, Howard the Duck.

Colan, already one of Marvel's most well-established and prominent artists, said he had lobbied for the Tomb of Dracula assignment.

Colan returned to DC in the 1980s, following a professional falling out with Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Colan recalled two decades later that Shooter "...hated me. I was miserable. It was the worst experience ... one of the worst I've ever experienced. I had to leave Marvel because of him. I wouldn't stay, and I ... left everything behind. I left a pension plan, everything. I would have stayed, but Shooter gave me such a rough time. In fact, the vice president [of Marvel] had been down in a meeting with me and Shooter, trying to pacify me and get me to stay. And I just wouldn't do it, cause I could see the writing on the wall, and I knew where Shooter was heading, and I didn't want any more of it."

He brought his shadowy, moody textures to Batman, serving as the character's primary artist from 1982 to 1986, penciling most issues of Detective Comics and Batman during this time. With writer Gerry Conway, Colan introduced the character Killer Croc in Detective Comics #523 (Feb. 1983). Colan was also the artist of Wonder Woman from early 1982 to mid-1983 wherein he and writer Dan Mishkin reintroduced the character Circe to the rogues gallery of Wonder Woman's adversaries. Helping to create new characters as well, Colan collaborated in the 1980s with The Tomb of Dracula writer Marv Wolfman on the 14-issue run of Night Force featuring characters introduced in an insert preview in The New Teen Titans #21 (July 1982). Additionally, Colan worked with Cary Bates on the 12-issue run of Silverblade; and with Greg Potter on the 12-issue run of Jemm, Son of Saturn. As well, he drew the first six issues of Doug Moench's 1987 revival of The Spectre.



Colan's style, characterized by fluid figure drawing and extensive use of shadow, was unusual among Silver Age comic artists, and became more pronounced as his career progressed. He usually worked as a penciller, with Frank Giacoia and Tom Palmer as his most frequent inkers. Colan broke from the mass-market comic book penciller/inker/colorist assembly-line system by creating finished drawings in graphite and watercolor on such projects as the DC Comics miniseries Nathaniel Dusk (1984) and Nathaniel Dusk II (1985–86), and the feature "Ragamuffins" in the Eclipse Comics umbrella series Eclipse #3, 5, & 8 (1981–83), with frequent collaborator Don McGregor.

Independent-comics work includes the Eclipse graphic novel Detectives Inc.: A Terror Of Dying Dreams (1985), written by McGregor and reprinted in sepia tone as an Eclipse miniseries in 1987, and the miniseries Predator: Hell & Hot Water for Dark Horse Comics. He contributed to Archie Comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing and occasionally writing a number of stories. His work there included penciling the lighthearted science-fiction series Jughead's Time Police #1-6 (July 1990–May 1991), and the 1990 one-shot To Riverdale and Back Again, an adaptation of the NBC TV movie about the Archie characters 20 years later, airing May 6, 1990; Stan Goldberg drew the parts featuring the characters in flashback as teens, while Colan drew adult characters, in a less cartoony style, and Mike Esposito inking both.

Back at Marvel, he collaborated again with Marv Wolfman and veteran inker Al Williamson on a new The Tomb of Dracula series, and with Don McGregor on a Black Panther serial in the Marvel Comics Presents anthology, as well as a six-issue adaptation of Clive Barker's "The Harrowers: Raiders of the Abyss."

Later life and career
Colan did some insert artwork on Hellbilly Deluxe (released August 1998), the first solo album of Rob Zombie, credited as Gene "The Mean Machine" Colan. Unrealized projects around this time included the Marvel Music comic Elvis: Mystery Train, which went on hold, he said in 1996, "when Marvel ran into problems, so everything came to a halt. Right now it's in limbo. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's son is writing it...."

In 1998, Colan and his Tomb of Dracula writing collaborator, Marv Wolfman, reteamed on Dark Horse Comics three-issue miniseries The Curse of Dracula (July-Sept. 1998). Saying the book required "a much younger and better-looking Dracula" than in their previous series, Colan used "my lawn-boy [as] my model. ... I asked him to do the posing and he did." For the same company early the next decade, Colan returned to vampires with the 2001 one-shot Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayers, an omnibus that included writer Doug Petrie's 16-page "Nikki Goes Down", starring a 1970s vampire slayer seen in one episode of the namesake TV series.

Colan penciled the final pages of Blade vol. 3, #12 (Oct. 2007), the final issue of that series, drawing a flashback scene in which the character dresses in his original outfit from the 1970s series The Tomb of Dracula. That same month, for the anniversary issue Daredevil vol. 2, #100 (Oct. 2007), Colan penciled pages 18–20 of the 36-page story "Without Fear, Part One"; the issue additionally reprinted the Colan-drawn Daredevil #90-91 (Aug.-Sept. 1972).

In the late 1980s, Colan, in addition to his art, taught at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology, and had showings at the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York City and at the Elm Street Arts Gallery in Manchester, Vermont. He had relocated to nearby Manchester Center, Vermont, from New York City in 1990 or 1991, and was living there as of 2001. By 2009 at the latest, they had returned to New York City, settling in Brooklyn.

On May 11, 2008, his family announced that Colan, who had been hospitalized for liver failure, had suffered a sharp deterioration in his health. By December, he had sufficiently recovered to travel to an in-store signing in California. He continued to produce original comics work as late as 2009, drawing the 40-page Captain America #601 (Sept. 2009), for which he won an Eisner Award.

Personal life
Gene Colan was married twice: first to Sallee Greenberg, with whom he had children Valerie and Jill before the couple divorced, and Adrienne Brickman, with whom he had children Erik and Nanci. Adrienne Colan died on June 21, 2010.

Colan died on June 23, 2011, aged 84, following complications of cancer and liver disease, his son told ''The New York Times.

Awards and honors
Colan won for the Shazam Award for Best Penciller (Dramatic Division) in 1974. He received the 1977 and 1979 Eagle Award for Favorite Comic Book (Humor), for Howard the Duck, and was nominated for five Eagle Awards in 1978.

In 2005, Colan was inducted into the comics industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. He subsequently won the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (together with writer Ed Brubaker) for his work on Captain America #601 (Sept. 2009)

The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California presented the retrospective "Colan: Visions of a Man without Fear" from November 15, 2008, to March 15, 2009.

Colan was the recipient of the 2008 Sparky Award, presented December 4, 2008. He also won the Comic Art Professional Society's Sergio Award on October 24, 2009.

DC Comics

 * Batman #340, 343–345, 348–351, 373, 383 (1981–1985)
 * Batman: Gotham Knights (Batman Black and White) #15 (2001)
 * DC Challenge #1 (1985)
 * DC Comics Presents (Wonder Woman preview) #41 (1982)
 * DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel Nightwings (1985)
 * Detective Comics #510, 512, 517, 523, 528–538, 540–546, 555–567 (1982–1986)
 * Elvira's House of Mystery #11 (1987)
 * ''Fury of Firestorm #19, Annual #4 (1984–1986)
 * Jemm, Son of Saturn #1-12 (limited series) (1984–1985)
 * Just Imagine Stan Lee With Jim Lee Creating Wonder Woman (backup story) (2001)
 * Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 2 #311 (1984)
 * Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #27 (1986)
 * Little Shop of Horrors movie adaptation #1 (1987)
 * Nathaniel Dusk #1–4 (1984)
 * Nathaniel Dusk II #1–4 (1985–1986)
 * New Teen Titans (Night Force preview) #21 (1982)
 * Night Force #1–14 (1982–1983)
 * Phantom Zone #1–4 (1982)
 * Secret Origins (Crimson Avenger) #5 (1986)
 * Silverblade #1–12 (1987–1988)
 * Spectre (vol. 2) #1–6 (1987)
 * Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #2, 11, 16–17, 25 (1985–1987)
 * Wonder Woman #288–305 (1982–1983)
 * World's Finest Comics (Zatanna) #274, (Superman and Batman) #297, 299 (1981–1984)

Marvel Comics

 * Amazing Adventures (Black Widow) #3-5; (Killraven) #26
 * Astonishing Tales (Dr. Doom) #7–8
 * Avengers #63–65, 206–208, 210–211
 * Captain America #116–137, 256, 601
 * Captain Marvel #1–4
 * Daredevil #20–49, 53–82, 84–100, 110, 112, 116, 124, 153–154, 156–157, 363, 366–368, 370
 * Daredevil, vol. 2, #100
 * Doctor Strange #172–178, 180–183
 * Doctor Strange, vol. 2, #6–18, 36–45, 47
 * Dracula Lives #6, 8
 * Howard the Duck #4–20, 24–27, 30–31
 * Howard the Duck Magazine #1–5, 7–9
 * Iron Man #1, 253, Annuals #10, 13, 15
 * Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1
 * Marvel Comics Presents #13–37, 101–108, 112
 * Marvel Preview #8, 16, 23
 * Marvel Spotlight #18, 19 (Son of Satan)
 * Marvel Super-Heroes #12–13 (Captain Marvel), 15 (Medusa), 18 (Guardians of the Galaxy)
 * Marvel Super Special (Meteor movie adaptation) #14
 * Marvel Team-Up #87
 * Savage Sword of Conan #33
 * Silver Surfer (The Watcher) #1–3
 * Strange Tales (Brother Voodoo) #169–173
 * Sub-Mariner #10–11, 40, 43, 46-49
 * Tales of Suspense (Iron Man) #73–99
 * Tales to Astonish (Sub-Mariner) #70–77, 79–82, 84–85, 101
 * The Tomb of Dracula #1–70
 * Tomb of Dracula Magazine #3–6
 * Tower of Shadows #3–4, 6
 * What If (Fantastic Four) #21

Audio

 * Around Comics Podcast Interview (December 2006)
 * Comic Geek Speak Podcast Interview (December 2005)