Lee Elias

Lee Elias (May 21 1920 – April 8 1998) is an American comics artist. He was best known for his work on the Black Cat comic book published by Harvey Comics in the 1940s.

Biography

Lee Elias started working in comics in 1943 at Fiction House. Before that, he had studied art at the Cooper Union and the Art Students League. His work at Fiction House included work on features like "Captain Wings" in Wing Comics, on which he succeeded Bob Lubbers, as well as the western hero Firehair.

After leaving Fiction House in 1946 he worked for several different comics companies including Timely, Hillman and National/DC.

It was his work on "Black Cat", a stuntwoman turned crimefighter, for Harvey that stood out in this period. The series was praised by comics historian Trina Robbins in her book "The Great Women Superheroes" for its "logical" and "straightforward" approach, in contrast to more fantasy-oriented titles like Wonder Woman. Elias worked both as a penciler and an inker in this series, with an art style largely influenced by artists like Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles. He used the same style for the comic book version of Terry and the Pirates, Milton Caniff's classic comic strip in the same period.

Lee Elias left comics after the 1954 publication of Fredric Wertham's anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent, which used four of his Black Cat panels as examples of depraved comic art. Instead he concentrated on comic strips, which included a two year stint as an assistant to Al Capp on Li'l Abner.

His best known comic strip was "Beyond Mars", which ran from 1952 to 1955 and was co-created by Lee Elias and science fiction writer Jack Williamson. The strip was exclusive to the "New York Daily News"'s Sunday paper and was the last Sunday comic strip to be colour engraved by hand, according to comic strip historian Richard Marschall.

After "Beyond Mars" ended, Elias returned to comic books, working mainly for Dc Comics on features like Green Arrow, Cave Carson, Adam Strange and Eclipso. He had previously worked for DC in the 1940s on strips like Black Canary. After 1972 Elias mainly worked on DC's various horror titles.

His last big project was "The Rook" series for Warren Publishing, a black and white time travel series which played to his strengths as a western and science fiction artist. When this series was cancelled in 1980, Elias retired from comics.

ources

* [http://www.lambiek.net/artists/e/elias_lee.htm Lee Elias entry on Lambiek.net] - Accessed on November 17 2005
*Lee Elias obituary in "The Comics Journal" 204, May 1998