Posted in: Comics | Tagged:

Happy 91st Birthday, Russ Heath!

Published Sat, 30 Sep 2017 11:00:25 -0500

Comic book living legend Russ Heath turned 91 yesterday. Russ has been drawing comics longer than most of us have been alive, and one look at his work reveals he is truly a master of the medium.

Born September 29th, 1926), Heath is best known for his comic book work, particularly his DC Comics war stories and his 1960s art for Playboy magazine's "Little Annie Fanny" feature. He has also produced commercial art, two pieces of which, depicting Roman and Revolutionary War battle scenes for toy soldier sets, became familiar pieces of Americana after gracing the back covers of countless comic books from the early 1960s to early 1970s.

Heath drawings of fighter jets in DC Comics' All-American Men of War #89 were also used by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein in his oil painting Blam and Brattata.

He won an Inkpot Award in 1997, was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009, received the Comic Art Professional Society Sergio Award in 2010 and the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Award in 2014 – but he keeps on working.

He recently illustrated a cover to an upcoming issue of Combat by Sam Glanzman that Drew Ford is reprinting. Not bad for a nonagenarian in the competitive world of comic books.

Below are some examples of his work, including a great-self portrait he did for an issue of Sin City for Frank Miller (look closely and you can see he is about to be taken out by the mute female assassin Miho…)