#Art Students League of New York

[tgsclassics]

When notable paperback cover artist Jack Faragasso was an ambitious young student at the prestigious Art Students League of New York, he hired Bettie Page as a reference model. This is one of his pictures from 1952. Faragasso would go on to paint hundreds of covers, and ultimately teach art at the League.

[tgsclassics]

When notable paperback cover artist Jack Faragasso was an ambitious young student at the prestigious Art Students League of New York, he hired Bettie Page as a reference model. This is one of his pictures from 1952. Faragasso would go on to paint hundreds of covers, and ultimately teach art at the League.

Bettie Page Standing # 428 Photographed by Jack Faragasso

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Old Man Prohibition had been hanged and burned many times over the previous 14 years, but the day before the 18th Amendment was officially repealed, December 4, 1933, women at the Art Students League put him into a coffin. A procession along Fifth Avenue followed. No word on whether they actually buried him.

Photo: Associated Press

[argoscity]

ULTIMATE SUPERGIRL READING GUIDE

since i've been asked a few times in the past for various reading guides for kara, i thought i'd compile them all into one post for the sake of convenience!

this guide has reading orders for supergirl comics in PRE-CRISIS (1959-1985), POST-CRISIS (2004-2011), NEW 52 (2011-2016), REBIRTH (2016-2021), and INFINITE FRONTIER (2021-present).

if you have any questions at all don't be afraid to shoot me an ask!

for each section bolded comics are required, italicized comics are recommended, and everything else is optional!

[PRE-CRISIS]

ORIGIN AND MIDVALE ERA (NOTE: you'll have to flip to the back of each issue to get to kara's section!) action comics (1938) #252, 258, 267, 276, 278-282, 285, 295, 309-310, 313, 317

STANHOPE COLLEGE action comics (1938) #318, 366-368, 372, 374 world’s finest (1941) #169 adventure comics (1938) #381, 386, 391, 395, 397

K-SFTV REPORTER — SAN FRANCISCO adventure comics (1938) #406-407, 410-415, 419-424

VANDYRE UNIVERSITY supergirl (1974) #1-10

STUDENT ADVISOR — FLORIDA (NOTE: every member of the superfamily has a story in the superman family (1974), so you'll have to flip through to find kara's section!) the superman family (1974) #165, 168, 171, 174, 177, 180, 182 justice league of america (1960) #132-134 the superman family #183, 184-186, 187-189, 191-193, 194, 196-198, 199, 200, 201-202, 203, 204-205, 206-207

ACTRESS — NEW YORK the superman family (1974) 208-210, 211-214, 215-216, 217, 218 superman (1939) #373 (second story titled “an eye (and ear) on the world!”) detective comics (1937) #508-510 the superman family #219-222

THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA (i recommend this storyline in it's entirety, but kara only appears in the last issue!) legion of superheroes (1980) #290-294

LAKE SHORE UNIVERSITY supergirl (1982) #1-12 (cw: nazi imagery in the brief interlude in #12)  supergirl (1982) #13-15 (cw: antisemitism, nazi imagery, depictions of the holocaust.) supergirl (1982) #16-23

LAST APPEARANCES AND DEATH legion of super-heroes (1980) #300-303 dc comics presents (1978) #28 tales of the legion of super-heroes (1984) #314-315 crisis on infinite earths (1985) #4-7

BONUS POST-COIE APPEARANCES christmas with the super-heroes (1988) #2 (last story titled “should auld acquaintance be forgot”) supergirl (1996) #49, 75-80 solo (2004) #1 (third story titled “young love”) convergence: adventures of superman (2015) #1-2

[POST-CRISIS]

ORIGIN superman/batman (2003) #8-13  (or you can watch superman/batman: apocalypse (2010) instead which I recommend! the art is a lot more tasteful and it's a very faithful adaptation of the comic so you won’t be missing out on anything.)

KARA WITH THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES supergirl and the legion of super-heroes (2006) #16-36

LOEB AND KELLY HELL ERA supergirl (2005) #1-5, 9-10, 19 (you don’t have to read any of this since it gets retconned anyway, but if you’re interested in kara’s early characterization, the beginnings of her friendship with cassie sandsmark, or her difficulty fitting in on earth then you’re welcome to read what i’ve provided.)

KELLEY PUCKETT ERA Amazons Attack! teen titans (2003) #47-48  amazons attack! (2007) #3  supergirl (2005) #20  amazons attack! (2007) #4  teen titans (2003) #49

supergirl (2005) #21-22  teen titans (2003) #50, 51-55  supergirl (2005) #25-33

Superman: Brainiac  action comics (1938) #866-870

GATES AND IGLE HEAVEN ERA supergirl (2005) #34

New Krypton (new krypton is one of my favorite events and i recommend it in its entirety, but for the sake of brevity I’ll only be listing the issues relevant to kara.) superman: new krypton special #1  superman (1939) #681  adventure comics special featuring guardian #1  action comics (1938) #871  supergirl (2005) #35  superman (1939) #682  action comics (1938) #872  supergirl (2005) #36  superman (1939) #683  action comics (1938) #873

teen titans (2003) #66  supergirl (2005) #37-42

Friends and Fugitives superman: secret Files 2009 #1  supergirl (2005) #43  action comics (1938) #881  supergirl (2005) #45  action comics (1938) #882  supergirl (2005) #46-47

supergirl (2005) annual 1, #48-50

Last Stand of New Krypton  adventure comics (2009) #8  superman: last stand of new krypton #1  supergirl (2005) #51  superman (1938) #698  adventure comics (2009) #9  superman: last stand of new krypton #2  adventure comics (2009) #10  supergirl (2005) #52  superman (1938) #699  superman: last stand of new krypton #3 superman: war of the supermen (2010) #0, 1-4 

supergirl (2005) #53-57, annual 2, 58-59

END OF SUPERGIRL VOL 5 supergirl (2005) #60-64 supergirl (2005) #65-67

[THE NEW 52]

ORIGIN and SUPERGIRL VS THE WORLDKILLERS supergirl (2011) #1-7

SUPERGIRL and SILVER BANSHEE supergirl (2011) #8-11

SUPERGIRL and SUPERBOY superboy (2011) #6

SANCTUARY supergirl (2011) #12, 0, 13

H’EL ON EARTH superman (2011) #13 supergirl (2011) #14 superman (2011) #14 superboy (2011) #15 supergirl (2011) #15 superboy (2011) #16 superboy (2011) Annual #1 supergirl (2011) #16 superman (2011) #16 superboy (2011) #17 supergirl (2011) #17 superman (2011) #17

SUPERGIRL and POWERGIRL supergirl (2011) #18-20

CYBORG SUPERMAN supergirl (2011) #21-23 action comics (2011) #23.1 supergirl (2011) #24

KRYPTON RETURNS action comics (2011) annual #2 superboy (2011) #25 supergirl (2011) #25 superman (2011) #25

SUPERGIRL VS LOBO supergirl (2011) #26-27

RED DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON supergirl (2011) #28-29 red lanterns (2011) #28-29 supergirl (2011) #30 red lanterns (2011) #30 supergirl (2011) #31 red lanterns (2011) #31-32 supergirl (2011) #32-33

SUPERMAN: DOOMED (this is a whole storyline but I'll only be listing the issues that kara appears in!) superman/wonder woman (2013) #9 action comics (2011) #33 supergirl (2011) #34 superman: doomed (2014) #2 action comics (2011) #35 supergirl (2011) #35

FUTURES END supergirl: futures end (2014) #1

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED justice league united (2014) #1-5 justice league united (2014) annual #1 justice league united (2014) #6-10

CRUCIBLE supergirl (2011) #36-40

FINAL DAYS OF SUPERMAN (kara only appears in the issues i've italicized and bolded, but i put all the relevant issues if you wanted to read the full storyline!) superman (2011) #51 batman/superman (2013) #31 action comics (2011) #51 superman/wonder woman (2013) #28 batman/superman (2013) #32 action comics (2011) #52 superman/wonder woman (2013) #29 superman (2011) #52

[REBIRTH]

KARA IN NATIONAL CITY supergirl: rebirth #1

supergirl (2016) #1-8 batgirl (2016) annual 1 supergirl #9-12

supergirl (2016) annual 1 supergirl #13-20

world's finest: batwoman and supergirl #1-2

ROGOL ZAAR and THE SINS OF THE CIRCLE the man of steel #1-2, 3-6 supergirl #21-33, #34-36

LEVIATHAN and BATMAN WHO LAUGHS superman: leviathan rising special #1 supergirl #34-36 supergirl (2016) annual 2 supergirl #37-42

HOUSE OF KENT action comics (2016) #1022-1023 action comics (2016) #1024-1028

FUTURE STATE superman of metropolis (2021) #1-2 kara zor el, superwoman (2021) #1-2

[INFINITE FRONTIER]

action comics 2021 annual

WOMAN OF TOMORROW supergirl: woman of tomorrow (2021) #1-8

WORLD'S FINEST batman/superman: world's finest (2022) #2-6, 8, 12

A WORLD WITHOUT CLARK KENT and RED MOON (kara is featured in the back-up story! if you want the full context of this plot i recommend reading the full warworld arc in action comics [action comics #1030-1046, superman: warworld apocalypse #1]!) action comics (2016) #1044-1046, 1047-1049

DAWN OF DC action comics (2016) #1051-1053, 1055-1056 superman (2023) #1-3 power girl special #1 steelworks (2023) #1-3

KNIGHT TERRORS knight terrors: superman (2023) #1-2

DAWN OF DC (continued) action comics: doomsday special (2023) superman (2023) #7 hawkgirl (2023) #4 supergirl special (2023)

NEW WORLDS [this arc starts on action comics #1057—kara doesn't appear in that issue but I recommend reading it for context!] action comics (2016) #1058-1060 action comics 2023 annual

JOURNEY TO FERIMBIA powergirl (2023) #5, 6-7

HOUSE OF BRAINIAC action comics (2016) #1064 superman (2023) #13 action comics (2016) #1065 superman (2023) #14 action comics (2016) #1066 superman (2023) #15

UNIVERSE END action comics (2016) #1070-1075

UPCOMING: action comics (2016) #1076-1081 superwoman special #1 [out dec. 11]

[random-brushstrokes]

Katherine H. Wagenhals - The Visitor (1916)

A Pennsylvania native, Katherine Wagenhals studied at Smith College and at the Art Students League in New York and at the Académie Moderne in Paris before making her way to Fort Wayne, Indiana. There she may have taught t the Fort Wayne School of Art with her talented relatives the printmakers Jessie and Norah Hamilton. This prim lady in a blue suit and rather assertive bonnet won Wagenhals the Art Association of Indianapolis Purchase Prize in 1916. Although the genteel setting falls within the tradition of interiors painted by the Boston School artists, the thick, simple strokes used to suggest the visitor’s hands show Wagenhals’ familiarity with bolder painting styles. The tidy background of straight lines and 90 degree angles reinforces the impression of propriety. If not for the sitter’s intelligent expression and alert bearing, the door in the background might be interpreted as a symbol of a highly desired departure rather than a welcome arrival. (source)

[womblegrinch]

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) - Nude art drawing

Charcoal on paper. Executed in 1912.

24.9 x 19 inches, 63.2 x 48.3 cm. Estimate: US$10,000-15,000.

Sold Bonhams, New York, 1 May 2024 for US$10,240 incl B.P.

After leaving school at 14, Rockwell attended Chase Art School, then the National Academy of Design onto the Art Students League of New York, where this was drawn, under the tutelage of George Bridgman (1864-1943).

[mybeingthere]

Margot Glass grew up in New York City, and studied art at The Art Students' League, Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Fashion Institute of Technology. Her work explores the ephemeral through still life, nature and botany. She currently lives and works in Western Massachusetts.

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Maria Oakey Dewing (1845-1927) "A Bed of Poppies" (1909) Oil on canvas Located in the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, United States Maria Oakey Dewing (1845-1927) was an American painter known for her depiction of flowers. Her work was inspired by John La Farge and her love of gardening. She also made figure drawings and was a founding member of the Art Students League of New York. Dewing won bronze medals for two of her works at world expositions. She was married to the artist Thomas Dewing.

[canvasmirror]

Ellen Emmet Rand (American, 1875 - 1941) • Self-Portrait • 1927

Ellen Emmet Rand was a painter and illustrator. She specialized in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and her cousins Henry James and William James. Rand studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City and produced illustrations for Vogue Magazine and Harper's Weekly before traveling to England and then France to study with sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut owns the largest collection of her painted works and the University of Connecticut, as well as the Archives of American Art within the Smithsonian Institution both have collections of her papers, photographs, and drawings.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Guests at the annual Art Students League Ball, 1950s.

Photo: MCNY/Gothamist

[austinkleon]

Adolph Dehn, The Great God Pan (1940)

Over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art site you can see the multiple layers of this screen print by Adolph Dehn of some nuns painting the god Pan. Pretty great.

This lithograph is also great:

I'd never heard of Dehn's work before — he was a friend of the great Wanda Gág, whose book Millions of Cats I read to my kids “millions and billions and trillions” of times.

He did a lot of nun pieces:

Here's a biography of Dehn from The Smithsonian:

Dehn's satirical prints of European and New York scenes were the product of an unconventional Minnesota upbringing and an iconoclastic eye. The son of a feminist, socialist mother and an atheist, anarchist father, he was not destined for a quiet life. He studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York, after which he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I. On his release Dehn took odd jobs and made his way to Europe, where his work as a magazine illustrator supported him and his Russian immigrant wife in their travels. While in Europe Dehn was a critical observer of the social scene, especially in Vienna and Berlin, and a light-hearted painter of park scenes and landscapes. In 1930, after his return from Europe, his work, on both European and New York subjects, was shown at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. The critical response was good, but sales were only moderate. In the mid-1930s, Dehn began to paint watercolor landscapes, which proved immensely popular. As a result, new commercial opportunities opened, including travels through the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela. His fame led to offers to teach and then to work for the Navy during World War II. Throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties, Dehn and his wife traveled around the world, doing commercial work and lithography. His work became less satirical and more fanciful, and he experimented with new graphic techniques. He died of a heart attack in 1968 while planning new trips, beginning a book, and organizing a retrospective.

See more of his (non-nun) work here.

[mightyflamethrower]

The president of Houghton University on Monday called for an end to biological males participating in female sports, saying it defies nature and blurs the fundamental distinction between the sexes.

Dr. Wayne D. Lewis Jr., the sixth president of the private university in upstate New York, detailed his defense of women’s collegiate athletics in a statement noting Houghton is a Christian liberal arts college before qualifying his stance as not a religious one.

Rather, it’s a moral position that it’s simply wrong to allow males to take over girls’ and women’s sports, just as other sports organizations have already made clear.

“Biological males’ participation in women’s athletics is wrong,” wrote Lewis, the first African-American president of the university.

“Most Americans and most of the world know it to be wrong. A fringe agenda under the guise of making school and collegiate athletics more inclusive for transgender people has grown to the place of now unfairly displacing gifted and hardworking female athletes, obliterating the historic achievements and records of female athletes of the past, and threatening to dismantle the opportunities and protections for girls and women in sport trailblazing leaders fought so hard to create and protect.”

“Too many leaders, parents, professional athletes, and people of goodwill have been silent as female athletes are humiliated, silenced, and robbed of hard-earned opportunities. That silence is complicit with the fringe agenda that threatens to dismantle girls’ and women’s athletics.”

To conclude his statement, Lewis looked for broader community support.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “I will not sit by silently as a university president whose female student-athletes step weekly onto tracks, courts, and fields to compete but, in some cases, are forced to do so on playing fields we know to be unfair. I hope you will join me.”

Lewis’s statement comes after the All-Atlantic Regional Championships in track and field, where transgender athlete Sadie Schreiner of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) won the women’s 200-meter dash, Fox News notes.

He adds his voice to an issue already dividing a host of sports around the world.

Last month officials of Nassau County, New York, also bucked the liberal establishment of the state after moving to place a ban on men competing as women in the sports facilities the county controls.

County Executive Bruce Blakeman says the ban is intended to protect the integrity of women’s sports, as Breitbart News reported.

“What we are saying here today with our executive order is that if a league or team identifies themselves or advertises themselves to be a girls or women’s league or team, then biological males should not be competing in those leagues,” Blakeman said.

As happy as I am to see this. It is already too little too late. These pretend women athletes have already set new records that will probably never be broken by a real women. Male Victories have been given where females should have earned them. These races can never be re-run.

[topcat77]

student of George Bridgman, The Arts Student League in New York

[nils-elmark]

First African American in the Great War

Brave men and women from my new book

The young man on the drawing is Bob Scanlon. He was the very first African American, who joined the First World War where he showed extreme bravery. Here, he is drawn by a fellow-volunteer, the artist John Jocob Casey who like Scanlon 'for the duration of the war' joined The French Foreign Legion in Paris on 25 August 1914.

Bob Scanlon - whose real non-artistic name was Bob Lewis - was a talented boxer from Mobile in Alabama and came to Europe in 1907. Most of his boxing career was in France, where he amongst others sparred with the legenday Jack Johnson.

'Jack' Casey was an illustrator and artist from San Francisco. He had studied at the Mark Hopkins Department of Fine Arts of the University of California, the Art Students' League in New York, the Boston Museum and the New York School of Fine Arts. He had frequently exhibited his paintings with success at expositions in America and in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Francais.

Casey was wounded at the Battle of Champagne in 1915 and ended drawing maps for the French Army, and Scanlon  - who otherwise was considered to be born under a lucky star - was wounded at Verdun in 1916 when his famous left hand was hit by a shell case. But they both survived the war.

Bob Scanlon plays a key role in my book: Fighting for the French Foreign Legion.

[fiercerthanyou]

Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz , “Self-Portrait” (1936),

Oil on canvas, 32 1/4 x 26 inches.

Collection of Christopher Rothko,

© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko – Adagp, Paris, 2023.

Markus Rothkowitz was born in 1903, in what was then the Russian Empire and what is today Latvia, but 10 years later he emigrated along with his family to the US.

They were from the educated middle class, and Markus was a brilliant youth, leaving Yale University in 1923 and joining the Art Students’ League in New York.

He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1938 and soon changed his name.

For the rest of his life he was Mark Rothko.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

ANDRÉ LEBLANC

@thealmightyemprex @themousefromfantasyland @the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @piterelizabethdevries @themetropoliskonboy @a-roguish-gambit @knivxsanddespair @professorlehnsherr-almashy @gravedangerahead @softlytowardthesun

Early life André LeBlanc was born in 1921 in Haïti as the son of a French mother and Honduran father. LeBlanc's path of life led him through several countries, spending many years in the USA, Cuba and Brazil. In a March 1972 interview with O Pasquim magazine, LeBlanc said he had little memories of his time in Haiti. During the 1920s, the family already moved to the United States, where André LeBlanc spent the largest part of his childhood. In New York, he got his artistic training at the Art Students League, while debuting in the upcoming comic book industry.

American comic books In 1939, eighteen-year-old André LeBlanc got a job with the New York City-based comic production studio of Will Eisner and Jerry Iger. There, he was initially an assistant doing backgrounds and inking on the team's comic book production - largely for Quality Comics and Fiction House - while learning the trade from Will Eisner, Reed Crandall, Lou Fine and other associated artists. Among his other influences were the magazine illustrators Harold Von Schmidt, Matt Clark and Tom Lovell.

When Eisner-Iger was dissolved in 1940, LeBlanc worked for production studios led by Jerry Iger solo (S.M. Iger, founded in 1940) and Jack Binder (Binder Studio, founded in 1942), and also directly for publisher Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, who ran Quality Comics. At Binder, LeBlanc worked alongside Lee Ames and Dan Barry, who became lifelong friends of his. During these early years of his career, LeBlanc did pencil and/or inking duties on features like 'Sheena, Queen of the Jungle', 'Steve Brodie', 'Famous Fighters', 'Kayo Kirby' and 'Rip Carson' for comic books published by Fiction House Comics. At Fawcett Comics, he worked on superheroes like 'Bulletman', 'Captain Marvel', 'Golden Arrow' and 'Spy Smasher', while his Quality Comics contributions included work on 'Destroyer 171' in National Comics and 'P.T. Boat' in Military Comics. As an inker, he regularly worked with pencil artist John Spranger. During the 1940s, André LeBlanc also illustrated pulp magazines and occasional comic book stories for Street and Smith publishers.

Around 1943-1944, LeBlanc had to leave the USA for Cuba to take care of the estate of his recently deceased father, who was growing sugar and coffee on a piece of land. After wrapping up his father's businesses, he decided to stay and settled in Havana, which at the time, as he recalled in the O Pasquim interview, was a blossoming city populated by intellectual fugitives, spies of all nationalities and Spanish exiles.

Intellectual Amos While in Cuba, André LeBlanc got an idea for his own comic feature, and submitted it to his former boss in the USA, publisher Everett M. "Busy" Arnold. Intended as a protest against the superhero genre, 'Intellectual Amos' (1944-1945) was about a boy who was abandoned at the door of a library. Growing up there, he read everything and became an intellectual, who fought villains with his childlike innocence, unusual powerful memory and knowledge gained from reading. With four pages a week, 'Intellectual Amos' ran as a back-up feature in Will Eisner's Sunday newspaper supplement 'The Spirit Section' starting on 21 May 1944.

André LeBlanc continued to produce 'Intellectual Amos' when in 1944 he moved from Cuba to Brazil. There, he married his Brazilian wife Elvira Telles and settled in Niterói, a residential suburb of Rio de Janeiro. However, mailing his weekly comic pages to the USA eventually became problematic. The packages were intercepted by US customs and heavily taxed as works of art. Publisher Arnold was not prepared to pay the thousand dollar fine, and as a result the weekly 'Intellectual Amos' feature came to an accidental end on 29 April 1945. It was replaced by Al Stahl's 'Flatfood Burns'. Between February 1945 and August 1947, longer monthly stories with Amos and his sidekick Wilbur the Goblin appeared in Quality Comics titles like Police Comics and National Comics.

Work in Brazil With his regular assignment in the USA coming to an end, LeBlanc began exploring the Brazilian market. One of his first publications there was the cover for issue #1914 of the children's magazine O Tico-Tico (May 1945). He then also illustrated double-page short story spreads for the weekly magazine O Cruzeiro, and contributed to the cultural monthly A Cigarra.

He later also did commercial art assignments through the São Paulo branch of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. For Editora Brasiliense, he made the interior illustrations for almost all the re-editions of the children's books by Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948); the cover drawings were by Augusto Mendes da Silva (AKA  Augustus/Avgvstvs).

Morena Flor One of LeBlanc's best-known Brazilian comic creations was 'Morena Flor' (1948-1951), a daily strip of 833 episodes, published in the newspaper Diario da Noite. Debuting on 16 August 1948, Morena was a Brazilian jungle girl who fought the despoilers of the Amazon. Through Luiz Rosemberg's Agência Periodista Latino-Americana, LeBlanc's ecologically-themed strip was also distributed to newspapers in Argentina, Chile and Mexico. In 1953, the stories were also reprinted as a back-up feature in Capitão Atlas, a comic book based on the radio serial created by Péricles do Amaral.

Edição Maravilhosa Between 1950 and 1954, LeBlanc was also a prominent artist for the comic book collection 'Edição Maravilhosa - Clássicos Ilustrados', published by Adolfo Aizen's publishing company EBAL (Edição Maravilhosa da Editora Brasil-América Limitada). The Brazilian answer to the American 'Classics Illustrated' series, the Edição Maravilhosa comic books adapted important titles of Brazilian literature into comics.

LeBlanc notably drew the installments with adaptations of works by the 19th-century Brazilian Romantic novelist José de Alencar ('O Guarani', 'Iracema', 'Ubirajara', 'O Tronco do Ipê') and the regionalist novelist José Lins do Rego ('O Menino de Engenho', 'Doidinho', 'Banguê', 'Cangaceiros').

He additionally adapted classic novels by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo ('A Moreninha'), Dinah Silveira de Queiroz ('A Muralha'), Gastão Cruls ('A Amazônia Misteriosa'), Maria Dezonne Pacheco Fernandes ('Sinhá Moça') and Herberto Sales ('Cascalho').

Among the other artists working for this collection were Manoel Victor Filho, Nico Rosso, Ramón Llampayas, Aylton Thomaz, Gil Coimbra, José Geraldo and Gutemberg Monteiro.

Traveling reporter During the 1950s, LeBlanc also worked as an illustrator-reporter for the Brazilian newspapers Correiro da Manha and O Globo. For the latter, he traveled to the East for a series of 36 illustrated reports, first visiting India (Bombay, Benares, Agra, Calcutta, Goa), then going through Pakistan and the region that is now Bangladesh. After six months, he returned home through Europe.

In 1956, LeBlanc moved back to New York, where his wife could undergo medical treatment for a complication in her spine.

The treatment lasted more than a year, and the LeBlanc family decided to stay. In 1969, they went back to Brazil once again, but returned to the States a couple of years later. In Brazil, LeBlanc was part of a select group of cutting-edge illustrators that flourished in the country, but the repression of the military dictatorship made life difficult. In interviews, he expressed concerns about raising his children in the country.

A polyglot himself, he preferred to have his children educated in English instead of Portuguese.

U.S. comic book work Already in the second half of the 1940s, LeBlanc had renewed his old contacts in the United States. Between 1947 and 1948, he assisted his old taskmaster Will Eisner on the inking of 'The Spirit'. In 1949, he also contributed to the single issue of Eisner's children's comic book Kewpies, drawing the 'Pito' feature. He was also back at Quality Comics, drawing the 'Poodle Mc Doodle' feature in Modern Comics. Between 1951 and 1953, LeBlanc drew stories for Quality's 'Plastic Man' comic book, following in the footsteps of the series' creator, fellow former Eisner co-worker Jack Cole. LeBlanc's closeness with Will Eisner persisted over the years. In 1983, he helped his old friend with the colorization of his graphic novel 'Signal from Space'.

During the 1950s, even before his return to the USA, LeBlanc continued to work for American comic book companies. In 1952-1953, he drew a couple of crime and horror stories for 'Authentic Police Cases' and 'Weird Horrors' by St. John Publishing.

A couple of years later, he was present at Dell Comics, drawing comic adaptations of 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (1957) and 'The Pride and the Passion' (1957) for the publisher's Four Color Comics line of one-shot books.

According to Jerry Bails' 'Who is Who' index, LeBlanc possibly drew episodes of features like 'My Paul, Alien', 'Spyman' and 'Super Surplus' for Harvey Comics in 1966. Between 1966 and 1968, he was working for Western Publishing, drawing about a dozen stories for the anthology titles 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not', 'The Twilight Zone' and 'Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery'.

For the 1967 'Wham-O Giant Comics' anthology - published by the Wham-O toy company - LeBlanc made the three-page World War I story about 'The Young Eagles'. Between 1966 and 1967, LeBlanc was a penciler and inker for the 'Mandrake the Magician' title of King Comics, the comic book imprint of King Features Syndicate. It was the first time he worked with one of Lee Falk's creations; more followed later in his career.

Ghost artist for newspaper comics For a large part of his career, André LeBlanc was happy to work in the service of others. Besides assisting Will Eisner, he spent long periods of time doing well-paid jobs as assistant and ghost artist for newspaper comics.

Between 1957 and 1959, he regularly helped his former Binder Studio colleague Dan Barry with the 'Flash Gordon' newspaper comic. During this same period, he ghosted for Dan's brother Sy Barry on large parts of the civil rights comic book 'Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story' (Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1958).

Around 1976, he replaced George Olesen as Sy Barry's regular assistant on the newspaper comic with Lee Falk's 'The Phantom'.

One notable sequence penciled and inked anonymously by LeBlanc were the 1977 daily strips and Sunday pages detailing the Phantom's marriage to Diana Palmer.

LeBlanc continued to work with Sy Barry on an on-again off-again basis until the latter's retirement in 1994.

In the 1970s, LeBlanc also did some assistant work on the 'Mandrake the Magician' newspaper comic, another Lee Falk creation, drawn for King Features Syndicate by Fred Fredericks.

In August-September 1976 and August-October 1978, he additionally helped Alex Kotzky with the 'Apartment 3-G' strip and in the 1978-1979 period, he also ghosted on both Sunday and daily episodes of the 'Rex Morgan, M.D.' strip for Frank Edgington and Marvin Bradley.

Our Bible in Pictures LeBlanc's biggest claim to fame was arguably the Bible series he did for publisher David C. Cook. The origins of the project lay in the early 1950s, when Cook had Reverend David S. Piper write and Joseph Wirt Tillotson draw Bible stories in picture story format, added as "take home" supplements to Sunday Pix, a Christian comic book aimed at Sunday School pupils. By 1958, plans for a full Bible comic adaptation came about. Editor Iva Hoth was chosen to write the text to go with the pictures, while LeBlanc was hired as illustrator. Between October 1959 and 1964, 'Our Bible in Pictures' appeared as weekly installments of three to four pages in Sunday Pix. In 1964, selections of the feature were collected as the 'Life of Jesus' book, which appeared with editions in English, Dutch, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

In 1973, the first book version of the entire series appeared in black-and-white as the six-volume 'The Picture Bible for All Ages' collection. For reprints later that decade, LeBlanc was assigned to colorize the entire project. In 1978, a New Testament version appeared, followed in 1979 by 'The Picture Bible', containing both the Old and New Testaments in 750 full-color comic pages. Since then, the book has often been reprinted, becoming a worldwide hit. Interviewed in May 2001, the director of Cook Communications Ministries International, Ralph Gates, estimated that 75 million copies of the Picture Bible had been distributed around the world with translations in over 130 languages, including Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Romanian and Tagalog. In 2010, David C. Cook Publishing released a new and modernized version of 'The Picture Bible', entitled 'The Action Bible', with scripts by Doug Mauss and artwork by Sergio Cariello.

Other work Following the immense success of this ambitious Bible project for David C. Cook, LeBlanc became a sought-after illustrator for other Bible-related projects, including work for magazines and Sunday schools. In the mid-1980s, he was hired by Hanna-Barbera as character designer for the animated direct-to-video series 'The Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible' (1985-1992). Years earlier, he had already worked for Hanna-Barbera as an in-betweener on the animated TV show 'Space Ghost and Dino Boy' (1966-1968).

During the 1950s, LeBlanc also teamed up with former Binder Studio colleague Lee Ames to illustrate children's textbooks for publisher MacMillan. Represented by Ames' agent Mary Gerard, LeBlanc also landed jobs with other educational publishers, such as Allyn & Bacon. With Ames, he additionally collaborated on book projects like 'George Washington: Frontier Colonel' (Random House, 1957) and 'Draw 50 People from the Bible' (Watson-Guptill, 1995).

In 1959, LeBlanc was a contributing illustrator to the twelve-volume 'Picture World Encyclopedia' series, edited by Gene Fawcette. He illustrated paperback novels like 'Snow Treasure' by Marie McSwigan (Scholastic, 1958) as well as a mid-1980s sex manual, while doing commercial art assignments through the Ted Bates Advertising Agency. He was additionally an instructor at New York City's School of Visual Arts.

Recognition and legacy

In Brazil, André LeBlanc was awarded the prestigious "Southern Cross" - the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a Brazilian citizen - for his illustrations for classical literature.

After a long and varied career, André LeBlanc died in the USA on 21 December 1998, at the age of 77. Dividing his time between the USA and Brazil, LeBlanc worked in many fields and genres.

From the blossoming American comic book market to Brazilian journalism and youth literature, and from religious publications to newspaper comics. In articles, LeBlanc was described as a person with a great curiosity and intellect.

During his lifetime, he learned how to speak six languages fluently. He was also known for his keen understanding of science, politics, history and arts. These character traits he shared with his signature creation, 'Intellectual Amos'.

This boy genius can be considered a forerunner to later comic book whiz kids like 'Génial Olivier' by Jacques Devos in the Belgian Spirou magazine (1963-1988), and Alan Moore and Kevin Nowlan's 'Jack B. Quick' (1999-2002) at DC Comics in the USA.

André LeBlanc was also cited as an influence on Flavio Colin.