page_title: Gray Morrow
section_title: 1960s to 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Gray Morrow / Biography / 1960s to 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of artist and illustrator Gray Morrow, from Michael Netzer's Portraits of the Creators Sketchbook. (December 2001)
context_page_description: Dwight Graydon "Gray" Morrow was an American illustrator of comics and paperback books. He is co-creator of the Marvel Comics muck-monster the Man-Thing and of DC Comics Old West vigilante El Diablo.
context_section_description: In the early 1960s, Morrow anonymously illustrated three literary adaptations for Classics Illustrated: The Octopus by Frank Norris (#159, Nov. 1960); Master of the World by Jules Verne (#163, July 1961); and The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas (#165, Jan. 1962), which he said he penciled and inked at the rate of "eight pages a day ... as fast as I've ever been able to go" since "I'd moved to California and needed those checks badly." Morrow also supplied drawings for chapters in Classics Illustrated Special Issue #159A, Rockets, Jets and Missiles (Dec. 1960), and in 13 World Around Us issues ranging from Prehistoric Animals (Nov. 1959) to Famous Teens (May 1961). One of those, #W28, Whaling (Dec. 1960), resulted in unexpected controversy when he accurately depicted African-American whalers:
  [T]he page rate [at Gilberton in general] wasn't much for the accuracy and authenticity they expected, but it was a challenge to 'do it right.' Roberta and Len Cole were demanding but genial editors. One job I do remember ... something about whaling, got me in dutch [i.e. trouble] with Roberta. My research indicated that many of the whalers were black — so that's what I drew. She had a fit and insisted they all be redrawn to 'avoid controversy.'
  In the end, the problematic chapter, "The Long Voyage", retained what one comics historian called "a respectable number of African-American whalemen." Morrow, however, recalled, "[T]hey had me make them all white. I had to change their features."
  Concurrently, Morrow also illustrated entries in the Bobbs-Merrill juvenile book series "Childhood of Famous Americans", continuing with that publisher after Gilberton ceased production of new titles. Morrow's art appears in Henry Clay: Young Kentucky Orator (1963), Douglas MacArthur: Young Protector and other entries. Some, including Crispus Attucks, Black Leader of Colonial Patriots, Teddy Roosevelt, Young Rough Rider, and Abner Doubleday: Young Baseball Pioneer, were reprinted by successor publishers in the 1980s and 1990s.
  Morrow next began a three-year association with Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines in 1964, starting with the six-page story "Bewitched!," written by Larry Ivie, in Creepy #1, and contributed over a dozen stories to that magazine and its sister publication Eerie, as well as to the war-comics magazine Blazing Combat, through 1967. He also painted four horror covers for Warren. For competitor Skywald Publications, he drew the eight-page "The Skin And Bones Syndrome" for Psycho #1 (Jan. 1971), and co-created the muck-monster Man-Thing, with writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, in Marvel Comics' first entry into the adult-oriented comics-magazine market, the black-and-white Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). 
  By 1970, Morrow was married to Betty Morrow, who wrote a story he drew, "The Journey", in the early independent comic witzend #7 (1970). That same year he returned to color comics, drawing several supernatural-fantasy stories for DC Comics' Witching Hour, House of Secrets and House of Mystery, as well as a smattering of romance and superhero tales. He also drew Western stories, and with writer Robert Kanigher co-created the Old West vigilante El Diablo in All-Star Western #2 (Oct. 1970). He did a small amount of work for Marvel during this time, with the cover and a romance story for My Love #14 (Nov. 1971), a Man-Thing cover and story in Adventure into Fear #10 (Oct. 1972), two "Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars" stories in Creatures on the Loose #20-21 (Nov. 1972 - Jan. 1973), and virtually his only Marvel superhero story, a 10-page Falcon feature in Captain America #144 (Dec. 1971).
  By 1973, Morrow had served as an uncredited ghost artist or art assistant on the syndicated comic strips Rip Kirby by John Prentice, Secret Agent X-9 by Al Williamson and Big Ben Bolt by John Cullen Murphy. He took over the Buck Rogers strip in 1979 and the Tarzan Sunday strip from 1983 to 2001. He recalled trying out for Prince Valiant, saying he provided a sample "when [strip creator] Hal Foster decided to go into s
caption: Gray Morrow by Michael Netzer
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "832", "Image ImageLength": "1208", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:01:18 00:05:42", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8479", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "832", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1208"}