Fred Kida

Fred Kida
Fred Kida, late in life
Born	(1920-12-12)December 12, 1920 Brooklyn, New York City
Died	April 3, 2014(2014-04-03) (aged 93)
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker
Pseudonym(s)	Kid, KID
Notable works	Airboy

Fred Kida (December 12, 1920 – April 3, 2014) was a Japanese-Americancomic book and comic strip artist best known for the 1940s aviator hero Airboy and his antagonist and sometime ally Valkyrie during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books. He went on to draw for Marvel Comics' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, in a variety of genres and styles, and then again for Marvel superhero titles in the 1970s. He drew the company's The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip during the early to mid-1980s. Kida also assisted artist Dan Barry on the long-running strip Flash Gordon from 1958 to 1961 and then again from 1968 to 1971.

Born on December 12, 1920 in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan, New York City, Kida attended the city's American School of Design, where Bill Fraccio and Bob Fujitani were classmates. Like many young artists in the 1930s to 1940s Golden Age of Comic Books, he then broke into the field at the Jerry Iger Studio, formerly Eisner & Iger, one of the earliest "packagers" that produced outsourced comic book content for publishers entering the new medium. Starting as an inker and background artist in 1941, Kida moved on to a staff position at Iger client Quality Comics. There he both penciled and inked his first known credited work, the feature "Phantom Clipper" in Military Comics #9 (April 1942).