John Belfi was an American artist who was active during the Golden Age of American Comics. Educated at the School of Industrial Arts in New York City, he started his career in comics at the age of 13. He served as an inker for artist like Irwin Hasen, Dan Barry, Jack Cole, Lou Fine, Paul Gustavson, Reed Crandall, Lee Elias and Mac Raboy. He was a staff artist at Quality, where he inked features like 'Black Condor', 'Dollman', 'P.I. Boat' and 'The Human Bomb'. He also inked 'Black Cat' and mystery features at Harvey Comics, western features for Hillman, 'Captain Marvel Jr.' for Fawcett, as well as 'Justice Society of America' and 'Green Lantern' at National/DC.
In the late 1940s and 1950s he was present at Lev Gleason, inking crime titles but also doing pencils on 'Buck Roper'. He drew 'Sky Wolf' for Hillman's Air Fighters Comics and 'The Heap' in Airboy Comics, while also penciling horror and romance stories for Magazine Enterprises. During the 1950s Belfi was mainly working for Charlton on 'The Thing', 'Racket Squad in Action', 'Spurs Jackson and his Space Vigilantes', 'Strong Bow' and other jungle, crime and space features.
Straight Arrow
Belfi also worked on syndicated comics. In 1949 and 1950 he assisted Mike Roy on 'The Saint'. In the early 1950s, he did the newspaper strip 'Straight Arrow' in cooperation with Joe Certa and with scripts by Gardner Fox. He has additionally inked some 'Tarzan' and 'Flash Gordon' newspaper strips. In the mid-1960s he was assistant inker on 'Dan Flagg'. John Belfi was also an art teacher, an editor for the Spring Valley News Paper in Spring Valley, New York and a photographer for Arizona Highways Magazine.
