Jim Mooney
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| Jim Mooney | |
 |
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| Born | 1919 |
| Died | March 30, 2008 Florida |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller, Inker |
| Notable works | Spider-Man Supergirl |
James Noel "Jim" Mooney[1] (1919 – March 30, 2008) was an American comic book artist best known as a Marvel Comics inker and Spider-Man artist, and as the signature artist of DC Comics' Supergirl, both during what comics historians and fans call the Silver Age of comic books.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Jim Mooney was raised in Los Angeles, California.[2] He once recalled that his sister was a Ziegfeld showgirl,[2] but that appears a conflation of Ziegfeld showgirl Julia Rooney, daughter of vaudevillian Pat Rooney Sr.,[3] and Julia Mooney, listed as performing on Broadway in a 1908 musical and then as an Earl Carroll showgirl more than 20 years later, from 1931-1935.[4]
After attending art school and working as a parking valet and other odd jobs for nightclubs,[5] Mooney went to New York City in 1940 to enter the fledging comic-book field. Following his first assignment, the new feature "The Moth" in Fox Publications' Mystery Men Comics #9-12 (April-July 1940), Mooney worked for the comic-book packager Eisner & Iger, one of the studios that would supply outsourced comics to publishers testing the waters of the new medium. He left voluntarily after two weeks: "I was just absolutely crestfallen when I looked at some of the guys’ work. Lou Fine was working there, Nick Cardy ... and Eisner himself. I was beginning to feel that I was way, way in beyond my depth...." [5]
Mooney went on staff at Fiction House for approximately nine months, working on features including "Camilla" and "Suicide Smith" and becoming friends with colleagues George Tuska, Ruben Moreira (a future Tarzan comic-strip artist), and Cardy. He began freelancing for Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel, working on that company's "animation" line of funny animal and movie-cartoon tie-in comics. As Mooney describes his being hired by editor-in-chief and art director Stan Lee,
| “ | I met Stan the first time when I was looking for work at Timely. ...I came in, being somewhat young and cocky at the time, and Stan asked me what I did. I said I penciled; he said, 'What else?' I said I inked. He said, 'What else?' I said, 'Color.' 'Do anything else?' I said, 'Yeah, I letter, too.' He said, 'Do you print the damn books, too?' I guess he was about two or three years my junior at that point. I think I was about 21 or 22.[6] | ” |
Mooney also wrote and drew a funny-animal feature, "Perky Penguin and Booby Bear", in 1946 and 1947 for Treasure Chest, the Catholic-oriented comic book distributed in parochial schools.
[edit] Supergirl and DC
In 1946, Mooney began a 22-year association with the company that would evolve into DC. He began with the series Batman as a ghost artist for credited artist Bob Kane. As Mooney recalled of coming to DC,
| “ | [T]he funny animal stuff was no longer in demand, and an awful lot of us were scurrying around looking for work ... and I heard on the grapevine that they were looking for an artist to do Batman. So I buzzed up there to DC, talked to them and showed them my stuff, and even though they weren't so sure because of my funny-animal background, they gave me a shot at it. I brought the work in, and [editor] Whitney Ellsworth said, 'OK, you're on'. ...[I]t was ghosting. [Prominent Batman ghost-artist] Dick Sprang [had] taken off and wanted to do something else. So Dick took off for Arizona, and DC was looking for someone to fill in. So, that's where I fit in, and I stayed on Batman for quite a few years....[6] | ” |
Mooney branched out to the series Superboy, and such features as "Dial H For Hero" in House of Mystery, and Tommy Tomorrow in both Action Comics and World's Finest Comics. He also contributed to Atlas Comics, the 1950s iteration of Marvel, on at least a handful of 1953-54 issues of Lorna the Jungle Queen.
Most notably, Mooney drew the backup feature "Supergirl" in Action Comics from 1959 to 1968. For much of this run on his signature character, Mooney lived in Los Angeles, managing an antiquarian book store on Hollywood Boulevard and sometimes hiring art students to work in the store and ink backgrounds on his pencilled pages.[2] By 1968, he had moved back to New York, where DC, he recalled, was
| “ | getting into the illustrative type of art then, primarily Neal Adams, and they wanted to go in that direction. Towards the end there I picked up on it and I think my later 'Supergirl' was quite illustrative, but not quite what they wanted. I knew the handwriting was on the wall, so I was looking around.... The reason I hadn't worked at Marvel for all those years was because they didn't pay as well as DC. ... I think at that time [it] was $30 [a page] when I was getting closer to $50 at DC".[5] | ” |
[edit] Spider-Man and Marvel
By now, however, the rates were closer, and Mooney jumped ship. Marvel editor Stan Lee had him work with The Amazing Spider-Man penciler John Romita. Mooney would go on to ink a classic run of Amazing Spider-Man (#65, 67-88; Oct. 1968, Dec. 1968 - Sept. 1970), which he recalled as "finalising it over John’s layouts".[5] Mooney, who combined a slick, polished line with a down-to-earth, Everyman feel,[citation needed] also embellished John Buscema's pencils on many issues of The Mighty Thor.
As a penciler, Mooney did several issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, as well as Spider-Man stories in Marvel Team-Up, and he both penciled and inked issues of writer Steve Gerber's Man-Thing and the entire 10-issue run of Gerber's cult-hit Omega the Unknown, among many other titles.
Mooney also worked on Marvel-related coloring books, for the child-oriented Spidey Super Stories, and for a Spider-Man feature in a children's-magazine spin-off of the PBS educational series The Electric Company, which included segments featuring Spider-Man. On the other end of the spectrum, he drew in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's bawdy men's-adventure magazine comics feature "The Adventures of Pussycat": "Stan [Lee] wrote the first one I did, and then his brother Larry [Lieber] wrote the ones that came later".[6]
In 1975, Mooney, wanting to move to Florida, negotiated a 10-year contract with Marvel to supply artwork from there. "It was a good deal. The money wasn't too great, but I was paid every couple of weeks, I had insurance, and I had a lot of security that most freelancers never had".[6]
[edit] Later life and career
In Florida, Mooney worked on Adventure Publications' Star Rangers comics (1987-88); Superboy for DC; Anne Rice's The Mummy for Millennium Publications; Soul Searchers; an Elvira comic book for Claypool Comics; a retro "Lady Supreme" story for Awesome Entertainment; and commissioned pieces.
Mooney's wife Anne died in 2005.[2] Mooney died March 30, 2008 in Florida after an extended illness.[2]
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Full name per Treadway, Tyler, "Illustrator in Port Salerno was 'one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet'", TC Palm / Scripps Newspaper Group Online, April 1, 2008
- ^ a b c d e Evanier, Mark. "News from Me" (column): "Jim Mooney, R.I.P." (March 31, 2008)
- ^ Vaudville.org: Julia Rooney. This entry contains a typographical error that in one instance ironically renders her name "Julia Mooney" despite her parental provenance
- ^ Internet Broadway Database: Julia Mooney
- ^ a b c d e Jim Mooney interview, Adelaide Comics and Books (2004)
- ^ a b c d Comic Book Artist #7 (Feb. 2000): Jim Mooney interview
[edit] References
- Lambiek Comiclopedia: Jim Mooney
- Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Supergirl
- The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
- The Grand Comic-Book Database: Jim Mooney chronological search results
- WRLC Libraries Digital and Special Collections: Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact Note: List of contributors is not comprehensive.
