Dick Briefer | |
---|---|
Born | January 9, 1915 |
Died | December 1980 Hollywood, Florida |
(aged 65)
Nationality | American |
Area(s) | Penciller, Inker |
Pseudonym(s) | Richard Norman, Dick Hamilton, Frank N. Stein |
Notable works
|
Frankenstein |
Richard "Dick" Briefer (January 9, 1915 – December 1980) was an American comic-book artist best known for his various adaptations, including humorous ones, of the Frankenstein monster. Under the pseudonym Dick Hamilton, he also created the superhero team the Target and the Targeteers for Novelty Press.
Dick Briefer studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan, New York City, and debuted in comic books in 1936 with work in Wow, What A Magazine!, one of the era's proto-comics "Comic books": tabloid-sized collections of comic strip reprints in color, which would later include occasional new comic strip-like material. Wow was edited by Jerry Iger, and when the comic ceased publication with issue #4 (cover-dated Nov. 1936), Briefer freelanced for the newly formed Eisner & Iger, one of the earliest "packagers" that produced complete comics on demand for publishers entering the fledgling medium.
Briefer's earliest recorded credit is as writer and artist of a five-page story beginning an adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in Jumbo Comics #1-8 & 10 (Sept. 1938 - July 1939 & Nov. 1939), for the Eisner-Iger client Fiction House. Other seminal work includes drawing and possibly writing the science-fiction adventure feature "Rex Dexter of Mars", which ran in several issues of Fox Comics' Mystery Men Comics; "Dynamo" in Fox's Science Comics; "Biff Bannon" in Harvey Comics' Speed Comics; "Storm Curtis" in Prize Comics' Prize Comics; and "Crash Parker" in Fiction House's Planet Comics. For Timely Comics, the precursor of Marvel Comics during the 1930s to 1940s period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, Briefer created or co-created (writer credit unknown) the single-appearance superhero the Human Top in Red Raven #1 (Aug. 1940).