C.C. Beck

Charles Clarence Beck (June 8, 1910 – November 22, 1989) was an American cartoonist and comic book artist, best known for his work on Captain Marvel (today known as Shazam!) at Fawcett Comics and DC Comics.

Early life

C. C. Beck was born on June 8, 1910, in Zumbrota, Minnesota. Beck's father was a Lutheran minister and his mother was a schoolteacher. He had two older sisters. When he was 15, his family moved to West Bend, Wisconsin. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Minnesota, and also took an art correspondence course.

Career

Fawcett Comics

In 1933, Beck joined Fawcett Publications as a staff artist, where he created pulp magazines. When the company began producing comic books in autumn 1939, Beck was assigned to draw a character created by writer Bill Parker called "Captain Thunder". Before the first issue of ''Whiz Comics'' came out, the character's name was changed to Captain Marvel. Besides Captain Marvel, Beck also drew other Fawcett series, including the adventures of Spy Smasher and Ibis the Invincible.

His early Captain Marvel stories set the style for the series. Beck favored a cartoony versus realistic rendering of character and setting, which also came to be reflected in the whimsical scripting (by Otto Binder and others). The Captain Marvel stories boasted a clean style which facilitated Beck's assistants and other Fawcett artists emulating Beck's style (one exception was Mac Raboy whose work on Captain Marvel, Jr. was more in the style of Alex Raymond). While Beck oversaw the visual aspects of the various comics featuring Captain Marvel, he emphatically stated in an interview with Tom Heintjes published in ''Hogan's Alley'' #3 that he and his fellow artists had no input or influence on the scripts they illustrated, noting "In the 13 years I spent drawing Captain Marvel, I wrote only one story, about Billy's trip to a Mayan temple 'Whiz Comics'' 22, "Capt. Marvel and the Temple of Itzalotahui" which had to be submitted in typed form and edited and approved before I was allowed to illustrate it." At most he allowed the art and editorial departments "did develop an interplay of ideas ... that kept Captain Marvel changing and developing."

The popularity of Captain Marvel allowed Fawcett to produce a number of spin-off comic books and Beck to open his own New York City comics studio in 1941. He later expanded his studio, adding one in Englewood, New Jersey. Beck's studio supplied most of the artwork in the Marvel Family line of books. In this he acted as Chief Artist (akin to an Art Director), a role Fawcett formally recognized on the contents page of ''Captain Marvel Adventures''. This facilitated Beck's efforts to bring a coherent look to the stories with Captain Marvel and related characters, ensuring they adhered to the style he originated. The studio also did commercial art, most prominently a series of advertisements in comic strip form starring Captain Tootsie promoting Tootsie Roll. Done in the style of the Marvel Family books and similarly whimsical (this Captain had a large T on his shirt instead of a lightning bolt), the ads appeared in comic books published by both Fawcett and its rivals, and in Sunday comic strip sections of newspapers.

After years of litigation due to a suit lodged by National Comics Publications (one of the companies that would later become DC Comics) against Fawcett for copyright infringement claiming that Captain Marvel was a copy of Superman (see ''National Comics Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications, Inc.''), Fawcett in the early 1950s (partly in response to flagging sales) reached a settlement with DC in which it agreed to discontinue its comic line.

Later work

After Fawcett Comics folded, Beck left the comic book industry but continued doing commercial illustrations. With Otto Binder, Beck prepared six sample strips for a proposed newspaper comic strip starring the character Tawky Tawny but it was rejected by the syndicates that saw it. By 1953, Beck had relocated to Florida and owned the Ukulele Bar & Grill in Miami, Florida, where he tended bar. That year he contacted Joe Simon and expressed a desire to re-enter the comic book industry and sought Simon's aid in creating a suitable character. The result was The Silver Spider, with Beck doing rough art from a script by Jack Oleck; Simon used his connections to pitch the property to Harvey Comics but they rejected it. Several years later, in 1959, Simon and Jack Kirby re-worked the Silver Spider concept for publication by Archie Comics

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