'Mary Perkins, On Stage'.
Leonard Starr is an American comic book artist, whose credits vary from Golden Age comic books and advertisements to soap opera newspaper comics and stories for European comic magazines. Born in New York City, Starr got his art education from Manhattan's High School of Music and Art and the Pratt Institute. While still attending Pratt, he did his first comic book artwork through the Chesler shop and Funnies Inc. in 1942. He collaborated on 'The Sub-Mariner' and 'Human Torch' for Timely and on 'Don Winslow of the Navy' for Fawcett Comics. He also worked for a variety of other publishers, including Better Publications, Consolidated Book, Croyden Publications, E. R. Ross Publishing, Hillman Periodicals and Crestwood.
Cover illustrations for Gang Busters and My Greatest Adventure.
Starr then focused on advertising art until returning to comic books in the mid-1950s with war, mystery and crime stories for DC Comics and the American Comics Group. His first worked for syndicated newspapers was ghosting the 'Flash Gordon' strip for King Features in the mid-1950s, during the period whenDaniel Barry and Mac Raboy. Starr's biggest claim to fame is his adventurous soap opera strip 'Mary Perkins, On Stage', created for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate in 1957. He drew the strip until 1979. Among the artists who assisted him on 'Mary Perkins' were Tex Blaisdell, Archie Goodwin and Tom Scheuer. In 1979 Starr was hired by the same syndicate as 'Mary Perkins' to revive the 'Little Orphan Annie' strip. In the five previous years, the syndicate had been reprinting older episodes by the original creator Harold Gray.
'Mary Perkins, On Stage', 1965.
Starr also produced new comic book art in the 1970s and 1980s, drawing 'Morbius the Living Vampire' for Marvel and contributing a story to DC's Action Comics. He also worked for the European market, producing 'Cannonball Carmody' for comic magazine Tintin, and writing stories with the sexy heroine 'Kelly Green' for Pilote and Charlie Mensuel, with art by Stan Drake. Leonard Starr has written for American television since the 1970s, and was head writer of the 1980s cartoon series 'ThunderCats'.
Starr retired in June 2000, leaving the 'Annie' comic to writer Jay Maeder and artist Andrew Pepoy. From 2006, Starr produced new artwork for the covers to the 'On Stage' reprint volumes published by Classic Comics Press. He died on 30 June 2015.
'Little Orphan Annie', 1985.