Sheldon Moldoff
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Sheldon "Shelly" Moldoff (born April 14, 1920, New York City, New York) is an American comic book artist best known for co-creating such DC Comics characters as Hawkgirl and Poison Ivy, and as one of Bob Kane's primary "ghost artists" (uncredited collaborators) on the superhero Batman. He is not to be confused with fellow Golden Age comics professional Sheldon Mayer.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Born in Manhattan but mostly raised in The Bronx, Sheldon Moldoff sold his first cartoon drawing at age 17. "My first work in comic books was doing filler pages for Vincent Sullivan, who was the editor at National Periodicals"[1], one of the three companies, with Detective Comics Inc. and All-American Comics, that eventually merged to form the modern-day DC Comics. Moldoff's debut was a sports filler that appeared on the inside front cover of the landmark Action Comics #1 (June 1938), the comic book that introduced Superman.
Moldoff did military service in World War II.
[edit] Golden Age
During the late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age of comic books, Moldoff became a prolific cover artist for the future DC Comics. His notable covers include issue #16 (July 1940) of All-American's flagship title All-American Comics, featuring the first appearance of the Golden Age Green Lantern.
In 1940, he created the Black Pirate, and became one of the earliest artists for the character Hawkman.
[edit] The 1950s and '60s
In 1953, Moldoff became one of the primary Batman ghost artists who, along with Win Mortimer and Dick Sprang, drew stories credited to Bob Kane, following Kane's style and under Kane's supervision. While Sprang ghosted as a DC employee, Moldoff, in a 1994 interview given while Kane was alive, described his own clandestine arrangement:
| I worked for Bob Kane as a ghost from ' 53 to ' 67. DC didn't know that I was involved; that was the handshake agreement I had with Bob: 'You do the work don't say anything, Shelly, and you've got steady work'. No, he didn't pay great, but it was steady work, it was security. I knew that we had to do a minimum of 350 to 360 pages a year. Also, I was doing other work at the same time for [editors] Jack Schiff and Murray Boltinoff at DC. They didn't know I was working on Batman for Bob. ... So I was busy. Between the two, I never had a dull year, which is the compensation I got for being Bob's ghost, for keeping myself anonymous".[2] |
Kane and Moldoff co-created the original, teen Betty Kane, the Bat-Girl, as well as the novelty characters Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound. Ironically, all three were largely phased-out in 1964 after a change in editors.
Moldoff was let go from DC in 1967, along with such other Golden Age artists as George Papp and Wayne Boring. He turned to animation, doing storyboards for such animated TV series as Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, and wrote and drew promotional comic books given away to children at the Burger King and Red Lobster restaurant and fast-food chains, as well as through the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team.
[edit] Later life
Moldoff retired to Florida with his wife Shirley, and continued to appear as a guest at comic-book fan conventions into the mid-2000s.
[edit] Awards
- Inkpot Award: 1991
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ 1994 Sheldon Moldoff interview, first published in Alter Ego #59 (June 2006), p. 15
- ^ Ibid., p. 16
[edit] References
- Lambiek Comiclopedia: Sheldon Moldoff
- Comic Art & Grafix Gallery: Sheldon "Shelly" Moldoff
- Sheldon Moldoff interview,Alter Ego #4 (Spring 2000)
- Sheldon Moldoff interview, Alter Ego #59 (June 2006), pp. 14-23; previously unpublished interview conducted in 1994 for Comics Interview magazine.
