Don Heck
Charlton Tales
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- Creator Name
- Don Heck
- Notes
- Don Heck was a very talented comic book artist. He broke in briefly at Magazine Enterprises, Quality and Hillman in 1951-52 before quickly moving over to Comic Media in 1953. Heavily influenced by Milton Caniff, Heck was the defacto most important artist of the line (ahead of Pete Morisi) and their main cover artists including some of the most riviting pre-code horror covers of the era. He drew great stories and covers for HORRIFIC, WEIRD TERROR, WAR FURY, DANGER, and DEATH VALLEY. This work is fabulous and has never been reprinted so if you don't have the books you are out of luck and heavily in the dark. Pull out your Gerber and look up the covers. Look at HORRIFIC #3 and #7and WEIRD TERROR #9. He went over to Marvel's 1950's incarnation Atlas in 1954 and became one of Stan Lee's most dependable and talented freelancers. Foregoing covers (to this day I don't know why), he drew fantasy, westerns and beautiful war stories in a stylized Caniff motif also influenced by Jack Davis. He was the artist on the Torpedo Taylor feature that ran in the entire run of NAVY COMBAT and is quite possibly his best work of all time. Look at some of these stories and I "dare" you to tell me he was one of the worst artists in comics. Look at Torpedo Taylor in NAVY COMBAT #7 or "The Ace of Mig Alley" in MARINES IN BATTLE #13 (Aug/56 ). This is top of the line comics art. And boy could he draw westerns. Stan should have used him more often as exemplified by the gorgeous cover and interior art to THE KID FROM DODGE CITY #1 (July/57). Don Heck was also a sterling romance artists and Jack Kirby himself has called Don one of the best romance artists of all. He didn't do as much romance for Stan Lee as he did for National where along with his own stories he ghosted layouts for all those romance stories John Romita did. When Stan called back a small group of freelancers in June 1958 Don Heck was one of the first to return and he performed admirably in scores and scores of pre-hero fantasy stories in a style now endowed with much cross-hatching and finer delineation. The problem you probably have with Don Heck's Marvel -Age work is that he hated to change his natural style to adapt to what Stan Lee wanted, that is "Kirby dynamics". Heck was not a super-hero artist but he ended up doing a good job and his classic 1960's AVENGERS stories and X- MEN covers attest to this, as do his work on IRON MAN in TALES OF SUSPENSE. The "visual" character of Tony Stark is a Don Heck creation. All subsequent artists are drawing Heck's Tony Stark based on Errol Flynn. Heck's skills waned in the 1970's and he was further humiliated by Gary Groth and inadvertently by Harlan Ellison in Ellison's COMICS JOURNAL interview where Groth goaded Ellison into naming the worst artist in comics and somehow Don Heck was mentioned. Ellison was thinking of someone else but Groth supplied Heck's name. Ellison later apologised publicly. I don't know if Groth ever did. Heck later was the man editors at Marvel and DC went to when they needed a story done overnight. Heck, ever the professional would always deliver and then be criticized that the work looked like it was done "overnight". Heck also was saddled with terrible inkers in his later years and his best inker was always himself. According to Don himself in an interview (not sure if it's Comic Interview or some other...conducted in the 80) he says that he went to see Stan Lee and got his first job on September 1, 1954.
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