Gene Colan

Eugene Colan, who sometimes used the pseudonym of Austin Adams, began working in comics in 1944 at Fiction House. Among his earliest credits are 'Wings Tops', 'Clipper Kirk' and 'Suicide Brigade'. After spending the remainder of WWII in the Air Force, Gene spent about a year in the Art Students League. In the following years, Colan did artwork for Ziff-Davis ('Ken Brady'), Dell Publishing ('Ben Casey'), Ace, Charlton and Quality.

In 1947, he then tried showing work to both National (DC) and Timely (Marvel) Comics. Stan Lee at Timely Comics was impressed enough to hire Gene for around sixty dollars a week. He worked on 'Menace', 'Mystic', and 'Journey into Mystery' before heading over to DC for a while to do 'Sea Devils' and 'Hopalong Cassidy'. Returning to Marvel Comics in the 1960s, he worked on 'Silver Surfer', 'Iron Man', 'Sub-Mariner', 'Captain America', and 'Dr. Strange'. Especially notable were his long runs on 'Daredevil' and 'Tomb of Dracula' with Marv Wolfman.

Colan specialized in horror comics, when his work appeared in the Warren magazines Creepy and Eerie throughout the 1970s. He also created 'Howard the Duck' together with Steve Gerber. In the 1980s, Gene did some more work over at DC, including 'Night Force' (again with Marv Wolfman), 'Jemm', 'Wonder Woman' and the notable series 'Nathaniel Dusk'. Gene always enjoyed the detective genre, and this was one of the first times a book went to press with colors done directly over the pencils - there was no inking involved.

From 1985, Colan was also present at Eclipse Comics, where he published black-and-white pencil comic 'Raga Muffin'. He used that same technique in 'Curse of Dracula', again in cooperation with Wolfman, and published by Dark Horse in 1998. He also took on 'Daredevil' again, as well as the 'Batman' graphic novel 'The Bat and the Bird'. From 2001, he took over the graphical part of the classic pulp fiction charcter 'The Spider'.

Most recently, he returned to 'Daredevil' for a short stint and did the art for the 'Curse of Dracula' mini-series (with Wolfman) for Dark Horse.