Legion of Superheroes : Lightning Lad, Lightning Lord and Lightning Lass, the way it should have been....

I am thrilled to have a Legion commission by Jack Katz. He took the fractured family of Lightning Lad, Lord and Lass and brought them togther as they were meant to be. Despite his 84 years this art was turned around in less than 3 weeks without e-mails. He could teach us all a thing or two about good work-ethic.He is a JOY to deal with. Jack got his start in the industry in 1943, working on the C. C. Beck and Pete Costanza project, Bulletman. Before landing at King Features in 1946, Katz worked briefly for Jerry Iger and Ben Sangor. The time spent at Iger's shop in 1944 is notable for the young Katz's acquaintance with, and admiration for, artist Matt Baker. 'He was, in my opinion, one of the top illustrators, and a good storyteller'.

The move to King Features as a "detail man" brought Katz in contact with Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, two of the artists that inspired him most in his early years. Katz has considered Foster his "guiding light" since the age of six and believes that he laid the foundations for the graphic novel. Raymond praised Katz's illustrative style and said that working in comics was a waste of his time. Stanley Kaye, on the other hand, told Katz to stick with it: 'You're going to do something with comics'.

Katz went to work for Standard Comics (Better/Standard/Pines/Nedor Comics) in 1951, doing horror, war and some romance comics until the company went out of business. From this period comes some of the earliest work that can be identified as his, such as Adventures into Darkess #10 (June 1953). In the mid-1950s Katz landed a job with Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, working alongside Mort Meskin and Marvin Stein. Kirby taught Katz how to ink and use lighting to emphasize dramatic scenes. A slow-worker due to heavy detailing (influenced by the style of illustrator Dean Cornwell), Katz was let go and moved on to Timely Comics under Stan Lee around 1954. Katz worked on war and horror comics, as well as Westerns, but his pacing continued to cause friction. Without Lee's knowledge, Katz worked on the side for Fiction House, which slowed him down even more. In 1955 he left mainstream comics to paint and teach art, both privately and for the YMCA in New York City. His hiatus from the industry lasted fourteen years.

Impressed by Jim Steranko's Captain America, Katz entered mainstream comics for a second time in 1969 and bounced around from job to job.] He first found work with Stan Lee at Marvel Comics and worked on books such as Sub-Mariner, Monsters on the Prowl and Adventure into Fear. Katz then worked on House of Secrets and romance comics for DC before moving on to write and illustrate stories for Jim Warren.

Katz got a job with Skywald Publications around 1970, where he believed that he would be able to write his own stories. While there he worked on "Zangar" (from the Jungle Adventures comic book) and is credited with the full art and script for "The Plastic Plague" from the horror comics magazine, Nightmare #14 (August 1973). Katz moved permanently to California in the early 1970s while with Skywald as an associate editor. It was there that he began writing The First Kingdom, integrating ideas into the story that he'd had since his time with Warren Publications.
You dont just get a commission from him, you get to journey inside a wonderfully creative and beautifully eccentric and hopeful mind.
Enjoy