Sam Kweskin

Irving Samuel Kweskin (February 24, 1924—June 23, 2005), who sometimes worked under the name Irv Wesley,Kweskin in was an American advertising and comic-book artist.

Biography

Early life and career

Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised there with a sister, Sally, and a father who died when Kweskin was 11, Kweskin learned to draw by copying Sunday newspaper comics, particularly those of Hal Foster, on sheets of grocery wrapping paper. Per differing accounts, he either won a scholarship at 16 to the Studio School of Art, and the following summer enrolled in a course at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, or before his senior year of high school won a scholarship to a summer course at the Academy. By both accounts one classmate was the future celebrated military cartoonist Bill Mauldin. At 16, through a neighbor who worked with Foster's brother, Kweskin visited Foster at the respected writer-illustrator's Evanston, Illinois, attic studio and subsequently "wrote a story about my visit for my high school newspaper." After high school, Kweskin worked as a night-shift copyboy for ''Chicago Tribune'' newspaper, and then entered the U.S. Army.

Private Kweskin did military service February 1943 to December 1945, during World War II, joining the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion in September 1944 as a military artist, contributing to the military periodicals ''Muzzleblasts'' and ''Rounds Away''. Note: Kweskin, in Quattro, 2002, says he attended the Art Institute of Chicago from January 1945 to early 1949, earning a four-year degree. and said he was among the Allied troops who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp.Letter from Kweskin cited in After his discharge, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in early 1949. He worked for a year with former Walt Disney Pictures animator Sam Singer, doing two children's cartoon series for the local ABC-TV station. Kweskin then left to develop his own local children's-TV programs.

He later drew comic-book bible stories for David C. Cook Publishing in Elgin, Illinois. A friend put Kweskin in touch with New York City's Atlas Comics, the 1950s precursor of Marvel Comics, and Kweskin "flew into NYC in August or September 1952" to meet with Atlas editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Kweskin began freelancing for Atlas from Chicago before eventually moving with his family to New York City.

Atlas and advertising

Kweskin's earliest confirmed credits include penciling and self- inking stories in five Atlas comics cover-dated February 1953: The horror/ mystery books ''Strange Tales'' #15, ''Adventures Into Terror'' #16, ''Astonishing'' #22 and ''Spellbound'' #12, and the war comic ''Battlefront'' #9. He continued drawing stories for such Atlas horror anthologies as '' Journey into Mystery'', '' Marvel Tales'', and '' Uncanny Tales'', Western titles including '' Kid Colt, Outlaw'' and '' Wild Western'', and even ''Bible Tales for Young Folk''.Sam Kweskin
at the Grand Comics Database
Archived
from the original on November 6, 2020.

He recalled of his Atlas stint that he was:

After about a year, during a downturn in the comics industry, Kweskin returned to commercial illustration, saying in letters to two comics historians that he "went to work as a studio artist for a while" and then became an art director for an industrial film production company and later at "an agency doing mostly Latin American advertising," followed by a similar position at a different agency working on television commercials. He said he continued to do freelance work including medical illustrations for ''Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy'', "and, in a couple of years, maintained a small agency of my own."

In 1957, he freelanced briefly again for Atlas on science fiction / fantasy and war comics.

Marvel Comics

In the early 1970s, Kweskin briefly returned to freelancing for what was now formally Marvel Comics. He both wrote and penciled a six-page horror tale, "Revenge from the Rhine", in ''Journey into Mystery'' vol. 2, #3 (Feb. 1973), and then succeeded Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett on that character's comic-book title following Everett's death; Kweskin and Everett together penciled issue #58 (Feb. 1973), with Everett inking and Kweskin variously penciled or laid out #59-60 and 62-63. Kweskin also filled in for Gene Colan and penciled ''Daredevil'' #99 (May 1973).

As Kweskin wrote in a 2002 e-mail excerpted in an article by comics historian Ken Quattro:

Later career

Afterward he spent three years as an art director at Ziff-Davis magazines, and then freelanced for 10 years as an ad-agency storyboard artist. Kweskin also painted and sketched, including several works depicting Manhattan's Upper West Side, where he lived for approximately 40 years before moving to Boca Raton, Florida, in 1993. He exhibited his art work venues including New York City's Grand Central Galleries, the Salmagundi Club, and the Society of Illustrators. His latter-life freelance work included a cover for the Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine, and painted a commissioned canvas for a military museum in Louisiana.

Personal life

Kweskin at the end of his life was no longer with wife Corinne. He had three children: son Joel and daughters Jean and Barbara, the latter of whom predeceased him. The Barbara Kweskin Scholarship Fund at the Art Institute of Chicago is named for her.

References

External links

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Sam Kweskin
at the Lambiek Comiclopedia
Archived
from the original on December 6, 2017.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kweskin, Sam
1924 births
2005 deaths
American advertising artists and illustrators
American comics artists
American horror artists
United States Army personnel of World War II
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
United States Army soldiers