Werewolf By Night, Magnus Robot Fighter, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Phantom Tollbooth, Blake 7, Frank Kelly Freas.

It's a great day for artists, especially the one known as the Dean of Science Fiction Artists. I recommend spending some extra time reading about him.


Enjoy !!!



Birthdays

Don Perlin 1929, comic book artist and occasional writer best known for Marvel Comics' Werewolf by Night, The Defenders, and Ghost Rider. In the 1990s, he was a major figure at Valiant Comics, where he was both an artist and editor. In 1951, Perlin was a penciller on Will Eisner's The Spirit. In 1974 he began a long association with Marvel, where he was a full-time penciler until 1987. Perlin left the Marvel managing art direction position in 1991 to became a major part of Jim Shooter's Valiant Comics team. Besides penciling the popular series Solar, Man of the Atom and Bloodshot, Perlin also edited (among others) titles like Shadowman, Magnus Robot Fighter, and Solar.

Larry Thor 1916, actor, Maj. Eric Coulter, MD - The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Army Colonel - Steve Canyon (1 episode, "Operation Mushroom", 1958), Major General Mallon - Men Into Space (1 episode, "Flare Up", 1960), Dr. Bill Jacobs - The Invaders (1 episode, "The Peacemakers", 1968), Kakofonous A. Dischord - The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) (voice).

Peter Craze 1946, actor, Dako / Du Pont / Costa - Doctor Who (8 episodes, 1965-1979), Prell / Servalan's Assistant - Blake 7 (2 episodes, 1978-1981).

Frank Kelly Freas 1922, called the "Dean of Science Fiction Artists," was a science fiction and fantasy artist with a career spanning more than 50 years. For Weird Tales (November 1950), Freas did his first fantasy magazine cover, illustrating H. Russell Wakefield's "The Third Shadow" with his painting "The Piper." With his illustrating career underway, he continued to devise unique and imaginative concepts for other fantasy and science fiction magazines of that period. In a field where airbrushing is common practice, paintings by Freas are notable for his use of bold brush strokes, and a study of his work reveals his experimentation with a wide variety of tools and techniques. Over the next five decades, he created covers for numerous books and magazines, notably Astounding Science Fiction both before and after its title change to Analog; Mad magazine (for whom he painted many early covers featuring the iconic character, Alfred E. Neuman) from 1958 to 1962 (he started at Mad in February 1957 and by July 1958 was the magazine's new cover artist; he painted most of its covers until October 1962); cover art for DAW, Signet, Ballantine Books, Avon, all 58 Laser Books (which are now collectors' items), and over 90 covers for Ace books alone. He was editor and artist for the first ten Starblaze books. He was a participant in one of the all-time great literary hoaxes, I, Libertine (Ballantine Books, 1956), along with Jean Shepherd, Ian Ballantine and Theodore Sturgeon, incorporating several hidden jokes and references into his cover painting for that book. That same year he drew cartoon illustrations for Bernard Shir-Cliff's The Wild Reader, also for Ballantine. Freas was commissioned to paint the Skylab I insignia design and posters promoting the space program (used by NASA and now hanging in the Smithsonian Institution); pinup girls on bombers while in the United States Army Air Forces; comic book covers; the covers of the GURPS worldbooks Lensman and Planet Krishna; and many others, such as more than 500 saints' portraits for the Franciscans executed simultaneously with his portraits of Alfred E. Neuman ("What? Me Worry?") for Mad. He was very active in gaming and medical illustration. His cover of Queen's album News of the World (1977) was a pastiche of his much-admired sad robot cover illustrating Tom Godwin's "The Gulf Between" for Astounding Science Fiction (October 1953).

Janet MacLachlan 1933, actress, Charlene Masters - Star Trek (1 episode, "The Alternative Factor", 1967), Celia Baxter - The Invaders (1 episode, "The Vise", 1968), Mrs. Cook - The Six Million Dollar Man (1 episode, "The Blue Flash", 1975), Sakri - The New Adventures of Wonder Woman (2 episodes, "Judgment from Outer Space: Part 1 & 2", 1977).

Christopher J. Marcinko 1975, actor, Miner - Quantum Leap (1 episode, "Mirror Image - August 8, 1953", 1993), Bajoran - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1 episode, "What You Leave Behind", 1999).

Events

1993, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr series begins.

1996, Homeboys in Outer Space airs on UPN.