Sam Kweskin

Sam Kweskin
U.S. Army photo, taken July 1944
Born	Irving Sam Kweskin (1924-02-24)February 24, 1924 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	June 23, 2005(2005-06-23) (aged 81)
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Artist
Pseudonym(s)	Irv Wesley

Irving Samuel Kweskin

Born in

Private Kweskin did military service February 1943 to December 1945, during World War II, joining the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion in September 1944 as a military artist, contributing to the military periodicals Muzzleblasts and Rounds Away.^[5] and said he was among the Allied troops who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp.^[6] After his discharge, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in early 1949.^[1] He worked for a year with former Walt Disney Pictures animator Sam Singer, doing two children's cartoon series for the local ABC-TV station.^{[citation needed]} Kweskin then left to develop his own local children's-TV programs.^{[citation needed]}

He later drew comic-book

moved by the fact that [editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee] was never stand-offish, and always found time to sit in his office with an artist to just talk. He immediately gave me another story, which I completed to his satisfaction. Eventually, I had to return to Chicago; after the first NY trip I took two more excursions that Fall/Winter to make certain that I might decide to move East — in fact, Stan had been sending me scripts and said that, '[O]f course, you could do more work if you lived here.' My wife was especially thrilled with New York — I had never been there except on a soldier's pass for a day or so — and so I moved first to NYC, found an apartment, and was followed by my wife and two small children.^[1]

After about a year, during a downturn in the comics industry, Kweskin returned to commercial illustration, saying in letters to two comics historians that he "went to work as a studio artist for a while" and then became an art director for an

In 1957, he freelanced briefly again for Atlas on science fiction / fantasy and war comics.^[7]

Marvel Comics

In the early 1970s, Kweskin briefly returned to freelancing for what was now formally Marvel Comics. He both wrote and penciled a six-page horror tale, "Revenge from the Rhine", in Journey into Mystery vol. 2, #3 (Feb. 1973), and then succeeded

I did have lunch with Bill [Everett] one day after he had had a heart attack somewhat earlier that month, and [Marvel publisher] Stan Lee suggested we get together for me to get the 'feel' of Bill's approach to a strip that he had developed. And so I began doing Sub-Mariner. ... Whether [editor-in-chief] Roy Thomas or Stan or I decided it was not in the cards to continue it after a few issues, I can't remember, since at the time I was also president of my own small ad/art agency and responsible to several employees. Much of my time there had to be spent doing ad layouts and — on occasion — writing copy".^[1]

Later career

Afterward he spent three years as an art director at

Kweskin at the end of his life was no longer with wife Corinne. He had three children: son Joel and daughters Jean and Barbara, the latter of whom predeceased him. The Barbara Kweskin Scholarship Fund at the Art Institute of Chicago is named for her.^[3]

References