Blum, Alex / Baker, Matt

Alexander Anthony Blum (February 7, 1889 – September 1969)[1] was a Hungarian-American comic book artist. In the 1930s and 1940s his work appeared in comics published by Fox Comics, Quality Comics, Fiction House and Fawcett Comics. For Fox Feature Syndicate (as "Alex Boon"), he illustrated the debut of the fictional superhero Samson, in Fantastic Comics #1 (Dec. 1939). He drew The Red Comet in Planet Comics #6–10 (Fiction House, 1940–1941). In the period 1948 to 1955, he worked for the publisher Gilberton, illustrating almost twenty-five Classics Illustrated titles, as well as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the debut issue of Classics Illustrated Junior. Along with Henry C. Kiefer, he was one of the leading Classics Illustrated artists. Clarence Matthew Baker (December 10, 1921 – August 11, 1959) was an American comic book artist active in the 1940s and 1950s. He is one of the first known African-American artists to find success in the comic book industry. Baker is best known for drawing romance comics and early comics heroines such as the costumed crime fighter Phantom Lady. He also penciled St. John Publications' digest-sized "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust (1950), the first graphic novel despite that term not having been coined at the time. Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009.