Gil Turner

Although mainly active in animation, Gil Turner was the artist of many classic comics for Dell's Warner Bros and Disney comic books of the 1940s and 1950s. He had been active in comic book art since the mid-1940s, when he worked with Jim Davis through the Sangor shop for companies like Better Publications, Dearfield Comics and ACG (a.o. 'Little Pancho Vanilla' and animal comics for the Coo Coo, Giggle and Ha-Ha comic books).

At Dell, he mainly worked with Warner Bros characters like 'Bugs Bunny', 'Porky Pig' and 'Sniffles & Mary Jane', as well as the MGM character 'Barney Bear'. Turner was one of the original artists for Disney's 'Li'l Bad Wolf' stories, but also illustrated several stories with 'Mickey Mouse', 'Bucky Bug' and 'Dumbo'. In 1948-49 he had his own newspaper strip, called 'Chico'.

Turner had worked as an iceman before he got his first job in an animation studio. He started out working at Disney, and eventually moved over to other studios, such as Hugh Harmon's in Detroit. He also worked for Warner Bros in Hollywood and for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at the MGM studio during World War II. Turner had a long stint at the Walter Lantz Studio, before joining Format Films, where he worked on the 'Chipmunks' television series. In the 1950s he directed 'Mr Magoo' cartoons for UPA. In the 1960s, he settled in Phoenix, Arizona, where he passed away in 1967 at the age of 54.