CC Beck

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CC Beck (1982)

Charles Clarence Beck (born June 8, 1910 in Zumbrota , Minnesota, † November 22, 1989 in Gainesville , Florida) was an American comic artist .

Life

Beck grew up in the US state of Minnesota. He studied art at the Chicago Academy and the University of Minnesota and then began in 1933 to work as a full-time draftsman for the publisher Fawcett Publications, for which he first illustrated pulp magazines and from 1939 comic books.

Beck's best-known work from this period are the drawings for the stories about the superhero Captain Marvel , whose adventures appeared in the Whiz Comics series from 1940 . Beck was the first draftsman to visualize the stories written by Bill Parker . His work on Captain Marvel enabled Beck to also work on series such as Spy Smasher and Ibis the Invisible , and to set up his own drawing studio in New York City in 1941, where he and his assistants performed their engagements.

In the following years Beck and his team produced various Captain Marvel spin-offs for Fawcett , such as Captain Marvel Jr. or Mary Marvel, and advertising work in comic form for other customers, such as a series of one-page comics about "Captain Tootsie", who wrote for the Tootsie Roll promoted product. In 1954, when the demand for the superhero comics, which he mainly produced, gradually declined, Beck had to close his New York studio, as well as a second studio that opened in 1944.

Starting in 1973, Beck drew ten more issues of a new Captain Marvel series, which is now called Shazam! and was published by the publisher DC-Comics . The series was unsuccessful and was discontinued after five years. Another crop of those years was the short-lived, humorous series Fatman the Human Flying Saucer .

Charles Clarence Beck died on November 22, 1989 after a long illness at Shandsville Hospital in Gainesville , Florida. He left a son and a daughter.

reception

As Andreas C. Knigge noted, among others, CC Beck was the one who determined the graphic style of the character Captain Marvel and its adventures, which has been essentially retained to this day . Knigge sees restraint and simplicity in the depictions of violence and their tendency to always subordinate themselves to the course of the plot instead of trying to dominate as the outstanding characteristics of this style.

In recognition of his work, Beck was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 1993 and into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1997 , two halls of fame intended to unite the "greatest American comic artists".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Andreas C. Knigge: Comics - Vom Massenblatt ins multimediale Abenteuer , p. 122 ff. Rowohlt, 1996.
personal data
SURNAME Beck, CC
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beck, Charles Clarence (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Zumbrota , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1989
Place of death Gainesville , Florida