Ogden Whitney

Ogden Whitney
Whitney self-portrait from Unknown Worlds #4 (Dec. 1960)
Born	1918 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Died	early 1970s
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Writer, Penciller
Notable works	Herbie Popnecker The Skyman Waku, Prince of the Bantu

Ogden Whitney (born 1918; died early 1970s) was an American comic-book artist and sometime writer active from the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of comics through the 1960s Silver Age. He is best known as co-creator of the aviator hero the Skyman and of the superpowered novelty character Herbie Popnecker and his alter ego, the satiric superhero the Fat Fury. Whitney as well had long runs on characters as diverse as the Western masked crime-fighter the Two-Gun Kid, and the career-girl character Millie the Model.

In 2007, Whitney was one of two comics creators inducted into the comic-book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, as a "Judges Choice".

Ogden Whitney was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1918. His earliest recorded comic-book credit is drawing the six-page story "In the Pit of Dagan", written by Gardner Fox and starring adventurer Cotton Carver, in Adventure Comics #42 (Sept. 1939), published by DC Comics predecessor National Comics. He continued on the feature (both writing and drawing one story), and briefly succeeded artist Creig Flessel on the more prominent and enduring character the Sandman with issue #46 (Jan. 1940).

He continued on both features for two more issues before working primarily for Columbia Comics for the remainder of the decade, co-creating the Skyman with writer Fox in Big Shot Comics #1 (May 1940). That issue he also co-created (with an unknown writer), the adventure character Rocky Ryan, soon scripted by Fox. The team continued on both features through at least issue #11 (March 1941); records are spotty for this relatively obscure publisher, and such reference sources as the Grand Comics Database (cited here) list only those features, without credits, running well in 1942, when the Skyman and Rocky Ryan credits for Fox and Whitney resume. (The title became simply Big Shot with issue #30, Dec. 1942). Fox and Whitney (who also drew the vast majority of the covers) also collaborated on such additional Big Shot Comics characters as the Cloak, and the demon-masked war correspondent and World War II Axis-fighter the Face (all the stories for which the duo provided in issue #2 of his two-issue spin-off series). They also launched the solo title The Skyman in 1941; four issues were published from then through 1948.