Reed Crandall was born in Winslow, Indiana,[3] the son of Rayburn Crandall and wife.[4] Crandall graduated from Newton High School in Newton, Kansas, in 1935,[5] and then attended the Cleveland School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio,[6] on a scholarship.[7] He graduated in 1939.[5] His father died in the spring of Crandall's freshman year at art school, which Crandall left temporarily to return to Kansas.[8] His mother and sister moved to Cleveland during Crandall's junior year.[8] With his schoolmate Frank Borth, Crandall found work painting signs on storefront windows.[8] Crandall's art influences included the painters and commercial illustrators N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle and James Montgomery Flagg.[6]
Another classmate, the son of the president of the Cleveland-based Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate, recommended Crandall for a job at NEA as a general art assistant, where Crandall drew maps and other supporting material.[9] Following his desire to be a magazine illustrator, Crandall unsuccessfully made the rounds of glossy magazines in New York City and Philadelphia,[9] and at some point did a small amount of work for a children's book publisher.[3] Moving to New York with his mother and sister, Crandall found work in the fledgling medium of comic books, joining the Eisner and Iger Studio, an early comic book packager that supplied complete, outsourced comics for publishers.[3]
Quality Comics
Hit Comics #18 (Dec. 1941), featuring Stormy Foster. Cover art by Crandall.
Crandall drew for comic books from 1939 until 1973. His first work appears in comics from publisher Quality Comics, for which he drew stories starring such superheroes as the Ray (in Smash Comics, beginning in 1941 and initially under the playful pseudonymE. Lectron)[10] and Doll Man (first in Feature Comics in 1941, then in the character's own solo title). His earliest confirmed cover art is for Fiction House's Fight Comics #12 (April 1941) at the Grand Comics Database.[11] Other early work includes inking the pencil art of future industry legend Jack Kirby on two of the earliest Captain America stories, "The Ageless Orientals That Wouldn't Die", in Captain America Comics #2 (April 1941),[12] and "The Queer Case of the Murdering Butterfly and the Ancient Mummies" in #3 (May 1941).[13]
With S.M. "Jerry" Iger credited as writer, Crandall co-created the superhero the Firebrand in Quality's Police Comics #1 (Aug. 1941) and began his long run as artist of his signature series, the World War II aviator-team strip "Blackhawk", in Military Comics #12-22 (Oct. 1942 - Sept. 1943) and, after his WWII service in the Army Air Force,[6] in Blackhawk and in Modern Comics. During this time he also drew the adventures of Captain Triumph in Quality's Crack Comics. His final "Blackhawk" work was a seven-page story, plus the cover, for Blackhawk #67 (Aug. 1953).
Following the demise of EC in the wake of the 1954 U.S. Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency and a wave of anti-comics sentiment,[14] Reed freelanced for Atlas Comics, the 1950s iteration of Marvel Comics, as well as for the Gilberton Company's Classics Illustrated. Crandall's work for Classics Illustrated consisted of joint projects with EC veteran George Evans on four titles: No. 18, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Fall 1960); No. 23, Oliver Twist (Fall 1961); No. 68, Julius Caesar (1962); No. 168, In Freedom's Cause (completed 1962; published UK 1963; published US 1969).[15]
Crandall, who had left New York City in the 1960s in order to care for his ailing mother in Wichita, Kansas, had developed alcoholism.[6][19] Recovering by the time of his mother's death, he nonetheless suffered debilitated health and left art in 1974 to work as a night watchman and janitor for the Pizza Hut general headquarters in Wichita.[6] After suffering a stroke that year, he spent his remaining life in a nursing home and died in 1982 of a heart attack.[6] One of his last published stories, "This Graveyard Is Not Deserted", appeared in Creepy #54 (July 1973).[6]Creepy #58 contained "Soul and Shadow", possibly his last published comic book work.[20]
Family
Crandall married artist Martha Hamilton, and they had two children.[9] Their daughter, artist Cathy Crandall, had three children. Their son, Navy veteran Reed L. "Spike" Crandall (Sept. 8, 1945-July 2, 2005), an artist who owned and operated Crandall's Creations (Clarkesville, Georgia), had a daughter, Samantha Pledger, and three grandchildren.[21]
^Reed Crandall at the Social Security Death Index, via GenealogyBank.com; and via FamilySearch.org, citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing. Retrieved on 22 February 2013. Neither gives specific day of death. First cite archived from the original on 22 February 2013; second cite archived from the original on 22 February 2013.
^Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008) ISBN0-374-18767-3, ISBN978-0-374-18767-5
^Jones, William B., Jr., Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, Second Edition(McFarland, 2011), pp. 320, 321, 326, 334.
^Bails, Jerry; Ware, Hames. "Crandall, Reed". Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999. Archived from the original on November 24, 2007. Retrieved February 27, 2011.
