Samuel Maxwell "Jerry" Iger (; August 22, 1903 – September 5, 1990) was an American

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

and art-studio entrepreneur. With business partner

Will Eisner William Erwin Eisner ( ; March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series '' The Spirit'' (1940–1952) wa ...

, he co-founded

Eisner & Iger Eisner & Iger was a comic book packager that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during the late-1930s and 1940s, a period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books. Founded by Will Eisner and Jerry Ige ...

, a

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

packager that produced comics on demand for new

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

s during the late-1930s and 1940s period known to fans and historians as the

Golden Age of Comic Books The Golden Age of Comic Books describes an era in the history of American comic books from 1938 to 1956. During this time, modern comic books were first published and rapidly increased in popularity. The superhero archetype was created and ma ...

. Iger, no relation to comic-book publisher Fred Iger, was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009.

Biography

Early life and career

Jerry Iger was born in New York City, to Austrian-Jewish parents Rosa and Jacob Iger. He was raised in Idabel,

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

, near the

Choctaw The Choctaw ( ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States, originally based in what is now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choct ...

Indian reservation An American Indian reservation is an area of land land tenure, held and governed by a List of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States#Description, U.S. federal government-recognized Native American tribal nation, whose gov ...

.Adelman, p. 351. The youngest of four children of a peddler who had settled in what was then the pre-statehood

Indian Territory Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the Federal government of the United States, United States government for the relocation of Native Americans in the United States, ...

, Iger contracted polio as a child and was cared for by his mother. Iger had two sisters,Adelman, p. 353 and a brother, Joe, whose son Arthur Iger (b. 1926) would become the father of

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

Chairman and CEO

Bob Iger Robert Alan Iger (; born February 10, 1951) is an American media executive who is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company. He previously was the president of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) between 1994 and 1995 and p ...

. Arthur by the mid-1970s was vice president and publisher of the educational division of

Macmillan Publishing Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be on ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

.Adelman, p. 354 In 1925, Iger, by then living in New York, and despite no formal art training, became a news cartoonist for the ''

New York American :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 ...

''. He entered the fledgling comic-book field 10 years later, contributing such one-page

humor Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids i ...

strips as "Bobby" (whose eponymous character was based on nephew Arthur), "Peewee" and "Happy Daze" to ''

Famous Funnies ''Famous Funnies'' is an American comic strip anthology series published from 1934 to 1955 with two precursor One-shot (comics), one-shots appearing in 1933–1934. Published by Eastern Color Printing, ''Famous Funnies'' is considered by popular ...

'', one of those seminal

American comic books An American comic book is a thin periodical literature originating in the United States, commonly between 24 and 64 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publ ...

that reprinted black-and-white newspaper strips in color. Iger became founding editor of another such early comic book, ''Wow, What a Magazine!'', which also included some new material. ''Wow'' lasted four issues (cover-dated July–Sept. & Nov. 1936) but brought Iger together with a 19-year-old Eisner – future creator of '' The Spirit'' – who wrote and drew the ''Wow'' adventure strip "Scott Dalton", the

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

strip "The Flame" and the

secret agent Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ''e ...

strip "Harry Karry".

Comics packager

After ''Wow'' folded, Eisner and Iger, anticipating that the well of available reprints would soon run dry, in late 1936 formed Eisner & Iger, one of the first comics packagers that produced outsourced comic-book material for publishers entering the new medium. Eisner & Iger was an immediate success, and the two soon had a stable of creators supplying work to Fox Comics,

Fiction House Fiction House was an American publisher of pulp magazines and comic books that existed from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was founded by John B. "Jack" Kelly and John W. Glenister.Saunders, David"JACK BYRNE (1902-1972),"Field Guide to Wild American P ...

Quality Comics Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, ...

, and others. Turning a profit of $1.50 a page, Eisner claimed that he "got very rich before I was 22", later detailing that in Depression-era 1939 alone, he and Iger "had split $25,000 between us", a considerable amount for the time. After Eisner left the firm in 1940, Iger would continue to package comics as the S. M. Iger Studio. In 1945, he took on comics artist/editor Ruth Roche as a partner in the studio, with some sources claiming it then became known as the Roche-Iger Studio. According to ''Who's Who of American Comic Books'', Iger was co-owner of the Canadian comics publisher Superior from 1945 to 1956, and co-owner of the American publisher Ajax-Farrell from 1946 to 1958. From 1947 to 1954, the Iger Studio packaged comics for Superior, and from 1954 to 1958, it packaged material for Ajax-Farrell's titles. Iger served as

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

for Ajax-Farrell until 1957. Iger also started the small Phoenix Features

newspaper syndicate Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, political cartoons, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. The syndicates offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content ...

, which in the early 1950s distributed a comic strip of Mickey Spillane's '' Mike Hammer''. The studio operated until 1961, with Iger then moving to commercial advertising artwork.

Later career

Iger was a guest of honor at the 1974 New York Comic Art Convention, where he told a panel audience of his plans for an art show to raise money for

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

research, saying his mother had died of the disease. By this time, he made his home in the Sunnyside neighborhood of

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

. Blackthorne Publishing has released three compilations of Iger-related comics: ''The Iger Comics Kingdom'' (1985); ''Jerry Iger's Classic Jumbo Comics''; and ''Jerry Iger's Classic National Comics''; as well as the six-issue series ''Jerry Iger's Golden Features'' (1986).

Biography

Early life and career

Comics packager

Later career

Awards

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading