Tony DiPreta R.I.P.

[Dick Pontoon]

Apologies for cross-posting, but I know some of the GA cognoscenti don't always make it over to General.

 

Tony DiPreta passed away last week. I didn’t even realize he was still with us. Here’s a link to Mark Evanier's blog with the news including a link to the obit.

 

He drew lots of terrific Atlas era horror stories. As a kid, his art art creeped me out. (And of course now I love those stories.)

 

From Evanier's blog:

 

Veteran comic book and strip artist Tony DiPreta died Wednesday at the age of 88. This obit in a Connecticut newspaper notes that he grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and got into comic art while still in junior high school, which would have been around 1939...about when the comic book industry had its first boom. His first job was working in color separation and engraving for one of the many companies then that prepped comic book art for publication, and he also picked up lettering work on Lyman Young's newspaper strip, Tim Tyler's Luck.

 

The engraving work was mainly on material for Quality Comics and this led to a string of jobs for that company — lettering at first, then inking, then drawing. His first published solo work was probably a one page gag in National Comics #8, published in 1941.

 

The obit says, "Eventually, DiPreta made his way to New York City, where he met legendary comic book writer and editor Stan Lee, who gave him Porky Pig to ink." Actually, it was Ziggy Pig and from there, DiPreta segued to Hillman Publications, where beginning around 1942, he was one of their most valuable artists, working on all their comics but most notably, Airboy. He also worked extensively for Lev Gleason on that publisher's character called Daredevil and on the firm's popular crime comics. Around 1950, he returned to Timely Comics and Stan Lee where he was put to work on mystery comics and westerns.

 

All this time, he had also assisted Lank Leonard on the Mickey Finn newspaper strip, at times drawing more of it than Leonard. In 1959, he got the job of producing Joe Palooka and he handled that strip for 25 years until it ended in 1984. DiPreta promptly took over drawing Rex Morgan, M.D., which he worked on until 2000. Though continuously involved in newspaper strips for more than forty years, he also found time to assist his neighbor Mort Walker with some Beetle Bailey projects and to draw occasional comics for Charlton Press, mainly on their early 70's Hanna-Barbera comics. The comic art community mourns the passing of such a fine, prolific talent.