Don Heck

Don Heck (January 2, 1929 – February 23, 1995) was an American comic book artist best known for co-creating the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, and for his long run penciling the Marvel superhero-team series The Avengers during the 1960s Silver Age of comic books. Born in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, New York, Don Heck learned art through correspondence courses as well as at Woodrow Wilson Vocational High School in Jamaica and at Brooklyn Community College. He continued with an impromptu education in 1949 when a college friend recommended him for a job at Harvey Comics, repurposing newspaper comic strip Photostat into comic-book form — including the work of Heck's idol, famed cartoonist Milton Caniff, whose art Heck's would later resemble. One co-worker in the Harvey production department was future comics-art notable Pete Morisi. Heck left Harvey after a year, and after taking his art samples to comic book companies chosen at random, he landed freelance... full article at wikipedia