Reed Crandall

Reed Crandall was born in Winslow, Indiana. After graduating, he moved to New York at the invitation of a publisher of children's books, but after illustrating just one cover, Reed left the company. He then went to work for the NEA Syndicate as an editorial cartoonist before finally landing a job at the Eisner-Iger shop on Manhattan's east side. At this time he worked alongside such greats as Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Paul Gustafson, Alex Kotzky, Jerry Iger and Fred Gardineer. Almost all of Crandall's output at this time went to the Quality Comics Group which published such titles as Hit Comics, Crack Comics, Smash Comics, Military Comics and Uncle Sam which later became Blackhawk Comics.

In the beginning, one of Reed's chores was inking Lou Fine's wonderful Military Comics covers. After a few issues of that, Everett M. Arnold, the publisher of Quality saw his beautiful fine-lined renderings, he reportedly hired hem exclusively. Some of the features he drew included 'The Ray', 'Firebrand', 'Hercules', 'Uncle Sam', 'Dollman' and 'The Blackhawks'. Before long Reed was illustrating all of the 'Blackhawk' and 'Dollman' stories, which he continued to draw for almost fifteen years.

When Quality scaled down their line, Reed Crandall began doing work over at EC. The genres he drew for crossed from SF to Suspenstory to Horror. When EC & Quality both folded comic production in 1955/56, Reed did occasional work for Atlas/Marvel, Classics Illustrated (Gilberton). In 1960 he landed a contract with Treasure Chest Comics and drew stories for them for twelve years doing stories & covers as often as twice a month. Then in 1964 he increased his workload further and delivered some of the best work of his career.

His last contribution to comics was published in 1973. His life ended on September 13, 1982.