Nic,
I caught your post while doing a Google search. Al Luster was my father! We knew he had drawn comics while in NYC going to art school from 1949-51, but little else. I can remember reading some of them he had in a box as a kid after he moved back to Seattle in 1951. He was a Navy fighter pilot that didn't quite get into WW2, and after his time in NYC, went back to Seattle to take over the family business at the insistence of my Grandfather. He was miserably unhappy, as he really wanted to be pursue his art career, but ended up working for Herman Miller as he needed to support a growing family. He developed epilepsy in the mid 1960's, which caused him to loose his job and washed him out of the Naval Air Reserve, but because of this, he went back into art and produced some great Western and rodeo art until his untimely death at 56 in 1980. That same seizure disorder took him while on a swim with my sisters in front of our house in Mercer Island, Washington. As tragic as that was, he was able to finally do what he really was meant to do all along before he left us, and he left us with some really great art! His legacy is, of course, his artwork, and my sister, Claire, who is an amazing western & equine sculptress. We recently discovered a box of his comics, and it was interesting how the trademarks of his western art were present even in his early comic book work. Hope you enjoy his work!