Frank Bolle
Frank W. Bolle (June 23, 1924 – May 12, 2020) was an American comic-strip artist, comic book artist and illustrator, best known as the longtime artist of the newspaper strips Winnie Winkle and The Heart of Juliet Jones; for stints on the comic books Tim Holt and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; and as an illustrator for the Boy Scouts of America magazine Boys' Life for 18 years. With an unknown writer, he co-created the masked, Old West comic-book heroine the Black Phantom. Bolle sometimes used the pen name FWB and, at least once, F. L. Blake. Early life Frank Bolle was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States at age 5 to join his mother in Brooklyn, New York, although Bolle in adulthood said he was born in Brooklyn. He grew up in that borough with mother Mary and stepfather Egidio "Louie" Covacich. Bolle attended Manhattan's High School of Music & Art, though one standard reference source, attributing its information to Bolle via an intermediary, lists the School of Industrial Art high school. From 1943 to 1946, Bolle served in the United States Army Air Force, and after his return from World War II attended Pratt Institute on the G.I. Bill, graduating in three years. Career 1940s and 1950s Bolle broke into comics in 1943, drawing backgrounds for Funnies Inc., one of a handful of "packagers" that supplied content to publishers entering the fledgling medium of comic books. His first known credits are penciling and inking two "Terry Vance" detective features for Timely Comics, the precursor of Marvel Comics, in Marvel Mystery Comics #47–48 (cover-dated Sept.-Oct. 1943). He served in World War II, and it is unclear if the small number of Bolle stories that appear in comics from U.S. Camera, Rural Home, and Green Publishing through 1946 were done during the war or were inventory from before his service. His comics output became regular soon afterward with a "Freddy Freshman" story in Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel Jr. #46 (Feb. 1947) and work in Crown Comics from the publisher McCombs from 1947 to 1948. He did additional work for Fawcett, and signed some of his Lev Gleason Publications comics work FWB. Bolle himself, in an undated interview, conducted no earlier than 1992, did not mention his prewar work when asked about "the first comic book you worked on": With an unknown writer, Bolle co-created the masked Old West heroine the Black Phantom in Magazine Enterprises' Western comic Tim Holt #25 (Sept. 1951). Through 1954, he also drew the title feature as well as the backup feature "Redmask", then took over the art for the spinoff series Red Mask, drawing issues #42–53 to (July 1954 – May 1956). Additionally, for DC Comics, Bolle drew the cyborg-superhero feature "Robotman" in Detective Comics #167–179 (Jan. 1951 – Jan. 1952). From 1955 to 1957, Bolle drew Robin Hood stories in ME's Robin Hood and the subsequent, TV series-based The Adventures of Robin Hood. For Marvel Comics' 1950s forerunner, Atlas Comics,