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GIL KANE
He was born as Eli Katz in Latvia. "I was brought up in New York City," he's said. "I grew up feeding my imagination on the inspired work produced by my personal gods of that time-- Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, and Milton Caniff." By his middle teens he was working in the comic book field, free-lancing and also working for the art shops of Jack Binder and then Bernard Baily.In 1947 editor Sheldon Mayer hired him to draw Wildcat in Sensation Comics. He went on to draw such cowboy creations as Johnny Thunder, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Trigger Twins for DC. He also participated in the revival of superheroes in the 1960s, drawing the Green Lantern, the Atom, and the like. He next did a number of features for Tower's short-lived Thunder Agents titles. Kane had by this time at last worked out a style he was satisfied with and could build on. "Everything that had to do with understanding how things worked and what they looked like underneath" became something he became fascinated with. "And that for me became a point of view. I worked out of that attitude and I think it's made me what I am today."
Branching out, Kane moved to Marvel in the 1970s, drawing Spider-Man, Warlock, Conan, Kazar. He was also their top cover artist. In the early 1980s he was back again with DC, drawing the Superman annuals, Sword of the Atom, and quite a few covers. He also drew the Star Hawks newspaper strip, which started its four-year run in 1977 and during part of that time he did the Tarzan Sunday page as well.
In the middle 1980s he moved to Sosthern California and continued doing work for DC off and on. He got into television animation, designing the characters for the most recent Superman Saturday morning show. Kane still draws occasional comic books and late in 1989 DC began to publish his four-part miniseries adapting Wagner's Ring into graphic novel format. R.G. The Encyclopedia of American Comics. New York: Facts on File, :211.
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