Bert Christman

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Bert Christman

Allen Bert Christman (born May 31, 1915 in Fort Collins , Colorado , † January 23, 1942 in Rangoon , Myanmar ) (pseudonym: Larry Dean) was an American cartoonist and fighter pilot . Christman was best known as a co-creator of the cartoon character Sandman and as a pilot of the American volunteer squadron "The Flying Tigers" in the Chinese army during World War II.

Live and act

Christman was born in 1915, the second of three children to Allen Christman, an officer of German descent and his wife Elise Reuter.

Christman began working as a freelance cartoonist and advertising artist in New York City after attending Colorado A&M College in his hometown, from which he graduated in 1936 with a bachelor's degree with honors in mechanical engineering . In the following two years he worked primarily as an illustrator for the Associated Press . His greatest success during this time was working on the newspaper comic strip Scorchy Smith , which was created in the early 1930s. This was about the daring adventures of a fighter pilot and was designed by Christman from 1936 to 1938 as the successor to Noel Sickles . Christman's impressionistic drawing style is often viewed by comic historians like Bill Blackbeard in deliberate contrast to the realistic lines of draftsmen like Alex Raymond . Blackbeard adds that Christman “was a very unorthodox comic book artist for the time. […] For the conditions at the time, his work was very sophisticated. He really understood the medium and his artistic work was outstanding. "

In 1938 Christman joined the American Air Force and subsequently lived mainly in Pensacola . Some of his bereaved friends claim that the main motive for this step was the desire to actually live the life of a pilot, which he portrayed in Scorchy Smith, and so incidentally first-hand experience for his work as a draftsman of "pilot comics "to collect - an activity that he continued parallel to his work in the Air Force. From 1939 Christman began to work under the pseudonym Larry Dean for the publisher DC-Comics. For DC he created the series "Three Aces", which also focuses on pilots, and which appeared at times as a backup series of Superman in the Action Comics , as well as, together with the science fiction writer Gardner Fox , the title characters of bis Today's continued superhero series The Sandman . The series for which he contributed drawings also included Funny Pages , New Fun , Adventure Comics and Detective Picture Stories .

In 1941 Christman signed up as an American volunteer for the "Flying Tigers", a squadron of fighter pilots in the Chinese army composed mainly of Americans. In the following months he took part as a fighter pilot in the clashes between the Chinese and the Japanese army in China and Burma.

In January 1942, Christman died when he was shot at by a Japanese fighter during a parachute jump and was killed by a bullet piercing his neck after he had to leave his damaged aircraft. After his death he was first buried in the cemetery of the Church of Edward the Martyr in Rangoon. In recognition of Christman's status as a "hero of the Chinese cause," Chinese Foreign Minister Soong Christman's family in Colorado paid a personal visit to offer their condolences the following month. In the same year, the Paramount film studio produced a weekly film titled Minute Man Bert Christman , which traced Christman's life and death. Howard Hawks later processed Christman's last dogfight in his film Air Force . Christman's hometown of Fort Collins honored the late 1943 by officially renaming their small airfield, Collins Airfield, to Christman Field in 1943.

In February 1950, Christman's body was transferred to a cemetery in his hometown of Fort Collins and received military honors as Lt. Colonel of the Chinese Air Force buried.

literature

  • Kenn Thomas: JFK & UFO: Military-Industrial Conspiracy and Cover-Up from Maury Island to Dallas. Feral House 2011, ISBN 1-936-2390-78 , p. 33.
  • Terrill J Clements: American Volunteer Group? Flying Tigers? Aces. Illustrated by Jim Laurier, Bloomsbury Publishing 2013, ISBN 1-472-8005-91 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to Lambiek Net
  2. ↑ Christman had an older and a younger sister, Ruth Christman (* 1912) and Joanne Christman (* 1926), respectively.
  3. ↑ Allen Christman's father Frederick immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1853.
  4. ↑ cit. n. Andrew Glaess: Remembering Bert Christman (own translation)
personal data
SURNAME Christman, Bert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Christman, Allen Bert (full name); Dean, Larry (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic artist and fighter pilot
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Collins , Colorado
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1942
Place of death Rangoon , Myanmar