Lee Elias

Lee Elias
Lee Elias (r.) with Harvey Comics publisher Alfred Harvey in 1947
Born	Leopold Elias (1920-05-21)May 21, 1920 Manchester, United Kingdom
Died	April 8, 1998(1998-04-08) (aged 77)
Nationality	Naturalized American (immigrated British)
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker
Notable works	Beyond Mars Black Cat

Lee Elias (May 21, 1920 – April 8, 1998) was a British-American comics artist. He was best known for his work on the Black Cat comic book published by Harvey Comics in the 1940s.

Emigrating to the United States from Manchester, England, when he was a boy, Elias studied art at the Cooper Union and the Art Students League. He started working in comics in 1943 at Fiction House, where his work included features such as "Captain Wings" in Wing Comics, on which he succeeded Bob Lubbers, as well as the Western hero Firehair.

After leaving Fiction House in 1946, he worked for several different comics companies, including Timely Comics, Hillman Periodicals and National/DC where he worked on such characters as the Flash, Tommy Tomorrow and Black Canary. He drew three issues of All Star Comics in 1947 and co-created the Fiddler and the original Star Sapphire with writer Robert Kanigher in All-Flash #32 (Dec. 1947).

It was Elias's work on Black Cat, a stuntwoman turned crimefighter, for Harvey, that stood out in this period. The series was praised by comics historian Trina Robbins for its "logical" and "straightforward" approach, in contrast to more fantasy-oriented titles like Wonder Woman. Elias worked both as a penciler and an inker in this series, with an art style largely influenced by artists such as Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles. Elias worked for a period as Caniff's assistant. He used the same style for the comic book version of Terry and the Pirates, Caniff's classic comic strip in the same period. Lee Elias left comic books after the 1954 publication of Fredric Wertham's anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent, which used four of his Black Cat panels as examples of "depraved" comic art.