Tom Sutton

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Tom Sutton's cover painting for Creepy 22 (August 1968)

Tom Sutton, aka "Sean Todd" (born April 15, 1937; died May, 2002, Amesbury, Massachusetts) was an American comic book artist best known for his work at Marvel Comics and on Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines, particularly as the first story-artist of the highly popular character Vampirella. He is not the designer Tom Sutton.

1 Biography
2 Quotes
3 Footnotes
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Sutton was raised in North Adams, Massachusetts, where father Harry was a plumbing, heating and air conditioning shopkeeper, and a machinest and gunsmith for General Electric and others. Influenced by the comic strip art of photorealist draftsman Milt Caniff and the illustrative Alex Raymond and Hal Foster, as well as by the EC line of 1950s horror comics, Sutton began drawing nudie schoolyard art for paying classmates.

He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school in 1955, and worked on art projects while stationed at Fort Francis E. Warren, near Laramie, Wyoming. Later, stationed at Itami base in northern Japan, Sutton created the Caniff-style adventure strip F.E.A.F Dragon for a base publication. Sutton's first professional comics work, it led to a long-hoped-for placement on the military's Stars and Stripes magazine. At its Tokyo office, he drew the comic strip Johnny Craig, a character name inspired by the EC artist Johnny Craig. Sutton recalled that he worked on this strip "for two years and some odd months. I did it seven days a week, I think. It was all stupid. It was a kind of cheap version of [Frank Robbins'] Johnny Hazard, I think it was".^[1]

On his return, Sutton attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on a scholarship, and began working as a freelance commercial artist. At one point, living and working in San Francisco, he became acquainted with the work of Robert Crumb. Although he was not enamored of the local underground comics scene, he did express a desire for the kind of creative freedom he saw in alternative comics.

Sutton became an art director at AVP, a company that produced film strips for marketing, and was a director of animation for Transradio Productions. By the mid-1960s, he was married with two sons; his first marriage lasted five years, and he remarried in the 1970s.

[edit] Warren and Marvel

Sutton's first two comic-book stories appeared the same month. His first sale, "The Monster from One Billion B.C.", was published in Warren's Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967), though it was originally commissioned for Famous Monsters of Filmland (where it was reprinted four months later). He also illustrated the five-page anthological Western story "The Wild Ones", written by Sol Brodsky, in Marvel's Kid Colt, Outlaw #137 (Sept. 1967). It was one of many Westerns he would draw for the company, including the introduction of the short-lived feature "Renegades" — The Fugitive times four, in the Old West — in Western Gunfighters #1 (Aug. 1970).

Splash page, Werewolf by Night #9 (Sept. 1973), one of two issues penciled and inked by Tom Sutton

Sutton soon developed a trademark frantic, cartoony style that, when juxtaposed on dramatic narratives, gave his work a vibrant, quirky dynamism reminiscent of the underground comics he largely disdained. That distinctive style helped establish the popular supernatural character Vampirella from her first story, "Vampirella of Draculona" by Forrest J. Ackerman in Vampriella #1 (Sept. 1969). Later, with writer Archie Goodwin, Sutton helped transition Vampi from cheeky horror hostess to serious dramatic character in the 21-page story "Who Serves the Cause of Chaos?" in issue #8 (Nov. 1970, reprinted in color in Harris Comics' 1995 Vampirella Classics series).

Though well-suited to horror stories, Sutton was also admired for his work on such science fiction series as Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine and First Comics' GrimJack and Squalor, and for the humor title Not Brand Ecch, on which he appeared in nearly every issue with parodies of Marvel's own characters. He was not especially equipped to do superheroes, either by art style or temperament, once calling them "fascist". While he lent a hand very occasionally, Sutton stayed mostly on Marvel's supernatural heroes: Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider, Doctor Strange (in the 1970s series, plus Baron Mordo backup stories in the 1980s Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme). With writer Steve Englehart, penciler Sutton introduced the new furrily transformed X-Men character the Beast, who starred in a superhero/horror feature in Amazing Adventures #11-15 (March-Sept. 1972).

For the horror-oriented Warren, Sutton drew dozens of stories early in his career. He moonlighted for Warren competitor Skywald Publications, drawing the Frankenstein-novel sequel "Frankenstein, Book II" (serialized in Psycho magazine #3-6, May 1971 - May 1972) — doing so under the pseudonym "Sean Todd" (writer-penciler Sutton and inkers Dan Adkins, Jack Abel and Sutton himself), to avoid the wrath of publisher James Warren. A separate story in Psycho #4, written by Sutton and drawn by him and Syd Shores, was credited as "Larry Todd" (writer) and "David Cook" (art) — someone having inadvertently inserted the name of real-life writer Larry Todd rather than usual pseudonym Sean Todd.

For Skywald's short-lived line of color comics, Sutton wrote and drew stories under his own name for the Western title Butch Cassidy and the horror title The Heap (no relation to the 1940s-'50s Hillman Publications character later revived by Eclipse Comics). Sutton would draw Marvel's similar muck-monster Man-Thing as eight-page installments in the omnibus series Marvel Comics Presents in the late 1980s.

[edit] Later career

He both wrote and drew anthological horror stories for such Charlton Comics titles as Ghost Manor, Midnight Tales, Monster Hunters and The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves in the mid-1970s to early 1980s, and produced painted covers for the company. In the mid-'80s, Sutton drew suspense stories for DC Comics' House of Mystery and House of Secrets, and penciled virtually every one of the 56 issues of DC's licensed series Star Trek. He also penciled the Harlan Ellison-scripted "Croatoan" in Heavy Metal volume two, #5 (Sept. 1978).

The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #39 (June 1973): Painted cover by Tom Sutton

Near the end of his life, Sutton did commercial art for New England ad agencies, and, under the pseudonym "Dementia", drew for Fantagraphics' Eros Comix line of pornographic comics.

Sutton was also a painter who had gallery showings of his bar-scene canvases. A limited edition portfolio of fantasy prints, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, was produced by Another World, Ltd., in 1978.

Police found Sutton dead in his apartment on May 3, 2002; it is unclear whether a medical examiner's determination of time or date of death was reported. News accounts did say he had died of a heart attack at his drawing board, during production of the book Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft, which the publisher posthumously dedicated to him. Eros' Dementia's Dirty Girls #1 (May 2002) included a tribute by Bill Pearson.

[edit] Quotes

The Comics Reporter: "The comic work recognized by many as Sutton's best came in partnership with [writer] Doug Moench. Together, they created the "Future Chronicles" stories for Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine. [For this] enormously elaborate and cleverly designed fantasy saga set on the world featured in the movies, Sutton worked with oversized originals to better show off his mixed-media work and allow for meticulous detail. The result was a lush, moody, and striking fantasy story to stand with any in mainstream comics history. ' He really made the work a joy, and pure fun,' Moench told [The Comics] Journal. ' This guy was so into the Future Chronicles, he wanted to put so much detail into it, he worked on these gigantic boards. It was [a] black-and-white [magazine], so it was already bigger than regular comics pages. Then he did that series twice up, these enormous things that would cover my desk. Right there it made it something special, the sheer physical size of it. The enthusiasm you could see in every brushstroke just made it so exciting'".^[2]