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Volume7438
Featuring Artist
PAUL NORRIS
Paul Leroy Norris was an American comic book artist best known as co-creator of the DC Comics superhero Aquaman, for a 35-year run as artist of the newspaper comic strip Brick Bradford and for Gold Key Tarzan Comics 188-196
PAUL NORRIS (1914.04.28 - 2007.11.05)Early Years
Paul Norris was born in Greenville, Ohio during the Great Depression. He spent two years at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska at the behest of his cousin, Dr. Emerson Reck, a journalism professor and director of the school's news bureau. Self-described as having been "drawing pictures from the first time I could hold a pencil," Norris became art director of The Warrior, the college yearbook, and also performed in plays, served as president of the campus YMCA, and painted signs for businesses. After two years, Norris left college in an aborted attempt to pursue a career as comic strip cartoonist.World War II
Norris said that during his World War II military service as a tech sergeant, "I did a little comic strip for the ship newspaper." He was then assigned to do illustrated propaganda leaflets to be dropped from aircraft over Okinawa, urging Japanese soldiers to surrender. While Norris told one interviewer that, "The Japanese came in with these things in their hands and wanted to surrender", he told another that the leaflet, designed to look like a comic-book page, had not yet gone into print when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, scuttling the project.Brick Bradford and Gold Key
Following the war, Norris did some covers featuring Buck Rogers for Four Color, including issues 190, 204, and 247. Norris was rehired by King Features Syndicate, and in 1948 began drawing the Sunday edition of Austin Briggs' comic strip Jungle Jim. He continued to freelance for DC Comics through 1953, drawing the detective feature "Captain Compass" in most issues of Star Spangled Comics #106-130 (July 1950 - July 1952), and the super-speedster feature "Johnny Quick" in Adventure Comics #171-186 (Dec. 1951 - March 1953).
In 1952, Norris succeeded artist Clarence Gray on the science-fiction comic strip Brick Bradford, continuing to draw it for 35 years until his and the strip's retirement in 1987. The final daily appeared April 25, 1987
As well in the 1950s, Norris drew issues of Dell Comics' Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Jungle Jim, the latter of which he had previously drawn as a newspaper comic strip. The following decade, he drew stories of jungle adventurer Tarzan and science-fiction hero Magnus, Robot Fighter in comic books for Gold Key Comics.
With writer Gaylord DuBois, Norris co-created the Gold Key jungle characters Kono and Tono in the namesake series The Jungle Twins, which ran 17 original issues (April 1972 - Nov. 1975), followed by reprints.
Norris' last known comics story is co-penciling (with Roman Arambula and Scott Shaw) the cover and the 17-page talking animal feature "Now You See Them...", starring Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, and a plethora of other Hanna-Barbera animated TV series characters, in Marvel Comics' Laff-A-Lympics #10 (Dec. 1978). His last comics work was a drawing of Aquaman in DC Comics' multi-artist, multi-character "History of the DC Universe" poster in 1987.Later life
Norris was living in Oceanside, California at the time of his death. Norris and his wife Ann, who died in 2000, had two sons, Michael and Paul Jr. (called Reed). Norris is buried in Glen Haven Memorial Gardens in New Carlisle, OH.Ref: Wikipedia
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Read these Gold Key Comics Reprints
For the Paul Norris Tarzan Art
(Click each cover to read the entire comic)
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