Sidney Jacobson (October 20, 1929 – July 23, 2022) was an American writer who worked in the fields of children's

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...

, fiction,

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

, and

non-fiction comics Non-fiction comics, also known as graphic non-fiction, is non-fiction in the comics medium, embracing a variety of formats from comic strips to trade paperbacks. Comic strips and comic books Traditionally, comic strips have long offered factua ...

. He was managing editor and editor in chief for

Harvey Comics Harvey Comics (also known as Harvey World Famous Comics, Harvey Publications, Harvey Comics Entertainment, Harvey Hits, Harvey Illustrated Humor, and Harvey Picture Magazines) was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by A ...

. Jacobson was also known for his late-career collaborations with artist

Ernie Colón Ernesto Colón SierraColón in English translation of Via (July 13, 1931 – August 8, 2019) was a stateside Puerto Rican comics artist, known for his wide-ranging career illustrating children's, superhero, and horror comics, as well as main ...

, including such nonfiction graphic novels as ''The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation'' and ''Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography''.

Biography

Jacobson was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

on October 20, 1929, the son of Beatrice (Edelman) and Reuben Jacobson. His parents were Jewish immigrants. Jacobson graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, and then

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

, where he majored in journalism. His first jobs out of school were at the New York tabloid '' The Compass'' and the horse racing paper '' The Morning Telegraph''. In the 1950s and 1960s, while working at

, Jacobson wrote songs for such pop acts as

Frankie Avalon Francis Thomas Avallone (born September 18, 1940), better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. ''Billboard'' singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" an ...

A Boy Without a Girl "A Boy Without a Girl" is a song written by Sid Jacobson and Ruth Sexton and performed by Frankie Avalon. The song reached #10 on the ''Billboard'' Top 100 in 1959. It was performed by Avalon in the 1964 film, '' Muscle Beach Party''. The son ...

"),

Earl Grant Earl Grant (January 20, 1931 – June 10, 1970) was an American pianist, organist, and vocalist popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Career Grant was born in Idabel, Oklahoma. Though he would be known later for his keyboards and vocals, Grant also p ...

(" (At) The End (of a Rainbow)"), Dion and the Belmonts, and Johnny Mathis—despite the fact that Jacobson did not read music. It was at Harvey that Jacobson met artist

, whose work he edited for many years both there and at

Star Comics Star Comics was an imprint of Marvel Comics that began in 1984 and featured titles that were aimed at child readers and were often adaptations of children's television series, animated series or toys. The last comic published under the imprint ...

. After his long stint at Harvey, Jacobson became an executive editor at

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...

, where he helped create the children's imprint

. In addition to editing the entire Star line, Jacobson contributed scripts to some of the titles such as ''Wally the Wizard'' and '' Top Dog''. He wrote comics adaptations of the films '' Santa Claus: The Movie'' (1985), ''

Labyrinth In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (, ) was an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by t ...

'' (1986), ''

Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night ''Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night'' is a 1987 American animated fantasy adventure film that was released on December 25, 1987, by New World Pictures. Created by Filmation, the film was conceived as a sequel to the 1883 Italian classic nov ...

'' (1987), and '' Elvira, Mistress of the Dark'' (1988). During this period, Jacobson published the novel ''Streets of Gold'' (

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing ...

, 1985), a fictionalized history of his family's immigration journey from the

shtetls A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

of Russia to the United States. Jacobson returned to Harvey Comics in the early 1990s, among other things creating a line of Hanna-Barbera comics, original stories based on the animated TV series characters. In 2006, Jacobson and his old Harvey colleague Ernie Colón teamed up as writer and illustrator to create a

graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...

version of the ''

9/11 Commission Report ''The 9/11 Commission Report'' (officially the ''Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States)'' is the official report into the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prepa ...

'' titled ''The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation''. In 2008, they released a 160-page follow-up: ''After 9/11: America's War on Terror''. Subsequent collaborations with Colón include ''A Graphic Biography: Che'', released in 2009; and ''

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

: The

Anne Frank House The Anne Frank House ( nl, Anne Frank Huis) is a writer's house and biographical museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank. The building is located on a canal called the Prinsengracht, close to the Westerkerk, in central Amsterda ...

Authorized Graphic Biography'', published in 2010 by

Hill & Wang Hill & Wang is an American book publishing company focused on American history, world history, and politics. It is a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hill & Wang was founded as an independent publishing house in 1956 by Arthur Wang (1917/ ...

in the U.S. and Uitgeverij Luitingh in the Netherlands.

Personal life

Jacobson had two children, Seth and Kathy. He lived in Los Angeles. He died at a hospice facility in San Mateo, California, from complications of a stroke following

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

, on July 23, 2022, aged 92.

Awards

Sid Jacobson received an

Inkpot Award The Inkpot Award is an honor bestowed annually since 1974 by Comic-Con International. It is given to professionals in the fields of comic books, comic strips, animation, science fiction, and related areas of popular culture, at CCI's annual conv ...

in 2003.

Bibliography

* '' The Ultimate Casper the Friendly Ghost'' * '' The Ultimate Casper Comics Collection'' * '' The Ultimate Hot Stuff'' * ''Streets of Gold'' (as "Sidney Jacobson") (Pocket Books, 1985) * ''

Pete Reiser Harold Patrick Reiser (March 17, 1919 – October 25, 1981), nicknamed "Pistol Pete", was an American professional baseball outfielder and coach, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB), during the 1940s and early 1950s. While known primarily f ...

: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of the Perfect Ballplayer'' ( McFarland & Company, 2004) * '' The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation'' with

(

, 2006) * '' After 9/11: America's War on Terror (2001- )'' with Ernie Colón (2007) * '' A Graphic Biography: Che'' (2009) with Ernie Colón * ''Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography'' with Ernie Colón (Hill & Wang, 2010)

References

External links

NPR interview with Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón

Commission Report adaptation
serialised at '' Slate''
Macmillan Speakers Bureau profile

at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators {{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobson, Sid 1929 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American novelists Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) alumni American comics writers American graphic novelists American male novelists American male songwriters American people of Russian-Jewish descent Comic book editors Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in California Harvey Comics Inkpot Award winners Marvel Comics writers New York University alumni Novelists from New York (state) Silver Age comics creators Writers from Brooklyn Writers from Los Angeles