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Gray Morrow
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Gray Morrow (March 7, 1934 - November 6, 2001) was an American illustrator of paperback books and comics. He is best known as art director of Spider-Man between 1967 and 1970 and as illustrator of the syndicated Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant comic strips, among others. Gray first got into comic book work in the 1950s working for companies like Atlas and Classics Illustrated. In his vast and varied career, Gray has worked in animation, men’s magazines, advertising, book covers, and much more including ghosting some top newspaper strips like Big Ben Bolt, Prince Valiant, and many more. Morrow made his professional debut with an advertising agency and then worked for Timely, where he made an adaptation of 'Conan - The Elephant Tower', which remained unpublished. Serving in Korea during the war, he discovered oriental art and became the main pin-up artist for his company. |
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Back in civil life, he was introduced to Cracked magazine by Angelo Torres in 1958. He subsequently was one of the anonymous artists for Gilberton's Classics Illustrated line and the illustrator of several of Stan Lee's western comics for the Atlas line. Morrow was a feature cover and interior illustrator for many science fiction-genre magazines in the 1960s and 1970s. Examples of his work graced most of the covers of the American Perry Rhodan series. He also did the illustrations for the original Galaxy Magazine publication of the Hugo-winning novella Soldier, Ask Not by Gordon R. Dickson. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for best professional artist in 1966, 1967, and 1968. One of his greatest works was the 1978 trade paperback graphic novel, 'The Illustrated Roger Zelazny.' |
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Gray Morrow died on 6 November 2001, apparently from a gunshot wound. An overview of his career was published in the book 'Gray Morrow: Visionary', by Mark Wheatley and Allan Gross, in 2001. |
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