Underappreciated Artist Spotlight: Ramona Fradon

[Lone Ranger]

Back by popular demand...

Given the fact that many of us have or are planning on picking up DC Showcase Presents Metamorpho, I thought that it would be a great time to discuss the wonderfully charming art of Ramona Fradon.

From what I remember reading in Trina Robbins' book on the history of women cartoonists, there was a long, long stretch of time (20 years?) here Ramona Fradon and Marie Severin were the only female artists working as artists for a major comic book publisher.

You tend to hear a lot more 'war stories' about Marie than you do Ramona, as the antics of the Marvel Bullpen were reported on a regular basis. What we do know about Ramona is that she has a very impressive body of work.

What we do know is that she got her start at DC around 1950 and did some work on crime books like Mr. District Attorney and Gang Busters before getting a regular gig on the Aquaman strip. She went on to co-create Metemorpho before taking time off to raise a child. When she returned in the 70s, she worked on a variety of books, most notably Super Friends where her fluid pencils were Super Friendly for young kids. She even did some work for Marvel, including pencils on Fantastic Four #133. She left the comic book world around 1980 to take over the Brenda Starr strip (working on a female character for the first time?) until retirement in the mid 90s.

My first exposure to Ramona's work was through the Super Friends comics book in the mid to late 70s. As I began to buy Silver Age books, I found Metamorpho to be strangely appealing (it was also available for next to nothing) and picked up quick a few of those. That title seemed different than anything else I'd seen up until that point.

Eventually, I began buying old issues of Adventure Comics and and World's Finest and loved her take on Aquaman and his whole underwater world. I know that many people love either the Nick Cardy or Jim Aparo versions of Aquaman but, in my opionion, Ramona's Aquaman holds its own.

Please share your thoughts on Ramona Fradon's work.

What is your favourite work by her?
What title would you have like to see her pencil?
How important were her contributions for the women creators of today?

I don't have any interior artwork handy, but here are a few covers to get everyone in the right frame of mind.

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/1671/200/1671_2_02.jpghttp://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/2335/200/2335_2_10.jpghttp://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/2331/200/2331_2_20.jpg

[gentlesatirist]

...I was first exposed to Fradon's art via the Super Friends comic. I liked it some at the time, but in retrospect, it was a strategic mistake on the part of DC since her art - though charming - didn't all that much resemble the Alex Toth-designed look of the cartoon. Kids who would watch the show would pick up the comic and say "What's this?" The title still lasted 47 issues, but I think DC kept it going on life support for at least the last half of that run.

(Most SF issues not draw by Fradon were by Kurt Schaffenberger, whose art also has never been mstaken for Toth's.)

Conversely, today's Justice League and Batman animated titles - as well as the Batman animated comics of the last decade - very much resemble their animated selves.

In the same vein, DC also stumbled by using licensing art inspired by Neal Adams - and drawn by either Carmine Infantino or Jose Luis Garcia Lopez - for much of the 70s and 80s, in spite of the fact that the public's most recognized version of their characters was on the SF cartoon.

Fradon's work on Aquaman and Plastic man was much more inspired, from my point of view.



- FE

[Gingold]

I got the Showcase Presents:Metamorpho book last week, and her work on the early issues is great. Such great lines, wonderful characterization, great storytelling ability. I've only been exposed to her work in small chunks, but I've yet to be disapointed. I hope her Aquaman work gets the Showcase format at some point.

[crankyoldman]

About 16 years ago, I was living in St. Louis and caught Brenda Starr for the first time in the local daily. I recognized Fradon at once, and was delighted by her work on that strip.

I remembered her from Super Friends and a single issue of Plastic Man I read as a kid, but I purged my entire comics collection when I was about 18. Lately I've picked up some back issues of Plas, as well as some 70s DC "mystery" titles (where I was genuinely surprised to find her work) and it still has quite a bit of appeal for me. Not my favorite, but far preferable to many of the hotter artists of the day, including some I worshipped as a kid.

I wish someone somewhere was still having her do work for them on a regular basis.

[crankyoldman]

Oh, and gentlesatirist has some good points, but I can't resist pointing out that the actual finished SF cartoon didn't really look much like Alex Toth's work either.

I hadn't seen SF for 20 years when they started rerunning it on Cartoon Network. In the intervening years, my knowledge that the great Toth designed the characters, and my exposure to far superior stuff like the Bruce Timm Batman series, had played tricks with my memory. I wasn't expecting greatness, but the result was awful! A truly terrible cartoon. By comparison, Scooby Doo is Citizen Kane.

A comic book that looked just like the cartoon would be an eyesore of unimaginable dimensions.

[MDG]

Oh, and gentlesatirist has some good points, but I can't resist pointing out that the actual finished SF cartoon didn't really look much like Alex Toth's work either....

A comic book that looked just like the cartoon would be an eyesore of unimaginable dimensions.
Exactly--Toth was a great animation designer because he could get a lot of "character" into realistically drawn characters with minimal rendering--but even this was lost in the final product. I think a major reason the "Timm" Batman became so popular was it didn't try to be realistic and played much better as animation.

On the other hand, Fradon's (and Schaffenberger's) lighter approach on the book was what the show should have had.

She's one of my favorite artists mainly because of her clean style and focus on character (again, like Schaffenberger). Also, the essay she wrote for the hardcover version of the History of the DC Universe is, though short, probably one of the best pieces I've read by an artist.

When I met her at a convention in 2000 (she was sharing a table with Marie Severin), a bigwig in at DC came up to say hi. She was very nice, but told him, "You really need to fire all of your editors. None of them seems to know whet they're doing."

MDG

[jam]

HUGE fan of Ms. Fradon's work.

I'm old enough to remember Metamorpho when it first came out (I'm a dyed-in-the-wool metamaniac) and her work just looked so different (in a good way) to the conventional comic art that was around at the time.

Of course I've bought the recent "Showcase" and was really surprised to find out she only did the first few issues ...

I even bought the Aquaman archives (no great Aquaman fan, I) just for her artwork. I'd read somewhere that she based her style on Dick Sprang and I think this is particularly noticeable in these archives. Not so much on Metamorpho, I think ...

[Scott Shaw!]

Ramona Fradon has always been one of my favorite cartoonists. I grew up on her version of "Aquaman" and always found her drawings to be wonderfully appealing.

I've met Ramona a few times (she strikes me that, when she was younger, she must have been quite the Bohemian-type) and even got to ink one of her BRENDA STARR daily strips at SDCCI when a bunch of her strips got lost in the mail and she had to recreate 'em practically overnight. It was, hands-down, the easiest inking-job I've ever done; she did all the work in the pencils!

Speaking of METAMORPHO, I picked up the SHOWCASE collection, and was greatly impressed by Ramona's storytelling, even with the weird characters and situations. When she quit the strip, the difference was crucial; going through SHOWCASE, I found the stories not drawn by Ramona to be, literally, unreadable. It was as though Joe Orlando and Sal Trapani (or whoever his ghost-penciler was) assumed that the only way to imitate Ramona's style was to draw everything from a "crazy" angle. The problem is, SHE could make this approach work (and beautifully, too), while the others only produced visual gibberish. (Jack Sparling didn't even attempt to imitate Ramona's style.)

I've bought a few pieces of her artwork, and plan to buy lots more at WonderCon, where she and her pal Marie Severin (another favorite of mine) will be this February.

Aloha,

Scott!

P.S.: I liked her approach to PLASTIC MAN a lot, too.I also love Andru and Esposito's METAL MEN, but based on Ramona's handling of the characters in a few teamup issues of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, she would have been a wonderful replacement for them when they left METAL MEN...probably much more so than Gil Kane or Mike Sekowsky. -- SS!

P.P.S.: Check out the latest issue of NICKELODEON SPECIAL, an all-comics issue with a faux 1950s SPONGEBOB funnybook on the cover; inside is a new story by Ramona Fradon starring the Aquaman and Aqualad parodies from the cartoon show (I can't recall the characters' names at the moment -- Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy? -- but their voices are performed by McHALE'S NAVY stars Ernie Borgnine and Tim Conway!) DEFINITELY worth picking up, folks! -- SS!

[Jeremy A. Patterson]

The AQUAMAN & AQUALAD parodies are named MERMAID MAN & BARNICLE BOY!!


J.A.P.

[gentlesatirist]

...looked more like the Toth designs than the Fradon/Schaffenberger comic art. But that - as well as the intrinsic quality of the animated art - really isn't the point.

The point I'm making is that DC had a cartoon drawn - good or bad - in a certain style that was popular enough to stay on Saturday morning TV for 10-plus years (at a time when Saturday morning was an absolute advertising behemoth for TV networks). But when DC attempted to capitalize on those characters, they used comic art and licensing art that didn't really resemble the characters as they appeared on the cartoon.

I'm not saying DC should have switched all of its comics to the SF style, but when you bought a Timm Batman item - or even the cool pseudo-manga version of today - on a comic, t-shirt, pajamas or DVD - it looked the same. That consistency rewards your fan base and helps drive retail sales.


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Slam_Bradley]

I'm not terribly familiar with Ms. Fradon's work. Prior to picking up the Metamorpho trade my reading of her stuff consisted of a few Aquaman reprints and a single issue of Plastic Man that I purchased off the spinner. I was never interested in the Super Friends book (a tad to old for it I felt). I have been impressed by Metamorpho. Very fluid, entertaining story-telling.

[Bill Angus]

Like many, I too first encountered Ramona's work in Super Friends. Beautiful stuff.

Over the years I've come across various example of her stuff, usually as back-up reprints (though I'm thinking some of her stuff must've made it into one of those old DC digests in the 80s - no idea what one though), and I've always found it charming.

I picked up the Showcase book just for her stuff, but I haven't had a chance to crack the cover yet, so I don't really have a lot more to contribute at the moment... but I wanted to just drop in to express my admiration for her work.

[telerites]

Ranger - thanks for bringing this back.

I always marveled at Fradon - a woman artist in a male dominated field. But no wonder - she was excellent. Her pencils were very clean.

I too liked her Superfriends but I'd have to say her Aquaman was my favorite. Throughout the 50s her pencils on Aquaman were absolutely beautiful. I liked her pencils on the Metamorpho books even though I have never like Metamorpho as a character.

After looking her credits up in the CGD, I really must confess I never knew she worked on so many different titles like House of Mystery and Mr. District Attorney to name just a few. I'm sure I have some of those books and didn't even realize her pencils graced those pages.

I would have loved to see Fradon work on some of the early Marvel characters, like Spider-Man, Daredevil, Sub-Mariner - well you get the idea.

[Scott Shaw!]

In the early 1970s, Ramona drew a single issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, written, I believe, by Roy Thomas. I don't recall it looking particularly like her usual style, probably due to the inking (Joe Sinnott?) and her attempt to emulate the bombastic Marvel approach. Besides, it's not really surprising she only drew one issue; she's often mentioned that she finds superheroes kinda silly and boring to draw.

By the way, I should clarify that the MERMAID MAN AND BARNACLE BOY story she's drawn is NOT in the standard style of SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS. Instead, it's an intentional self-parody of Ramona's own work on "Aquaman"! Well worth taking a look at; she's still got it!

Aloha,

Scott!

[JKCarrier]

My favorite Fradon work is probably Metamorpho -- The offbeat character, her bold, exaggerated style, and Haney's completely loony scripts all worked together brilliantly.

I do love the Super-Friends comic, though, and thank god they didn't try to match the stiff, bland look of the cartoon. No offense to Toth, who's work I admire a great deal, but the ultra-cheap animation just killed any sense of life there. Fradon's figures, on the other hand, were *bursting* with life. Very fun stuff (and great scripts by E.N.B. as well).

[gentlesatirist]

...but DC still missed the boat on this one, even with R Fradon drawing the SF comic.

If you put Fradon's art, the Toth designs and some animation cels from the show side by side, obviously the cels would show the least artistic merit. But that style kept the show on the air for a decade and made a lot of money for DC, as well as for Mego, whose classic action figures debuted around the same time. The TV/toy/comic trifecta was a major part of my youth and subsequent comics addiction.

All DC had to do was have the SF comic drawn in the animated style - by someone substantially less gifted than R Fradon - and it probably would have been a big seller. Instead SF became basically a throwaway title which DC kept alive for almost 50 issues just to avoid embarassment (at having one of their most recognized properties fail).

It's almost like the thinking at DC, even in the late 70s, was that comics were driving the TV/movies and toy markets. Even by then it should have been obvious that it was the other way around.


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Scott Shaw!]

I'm sure that you and millions of kids loved SUPERFRIENDS, and not to sound too jaded, but I don't think the style of SUPERFRIENDS added a thing to its success or popularity among little kids. Not only did Toth's designs rarely (if ever) emerge from the mediocre-to-terrible, doughy, hardly-ever-moving-in-a-dynamic-fashion animation, but the show was generally ghastly, with storylines and Standards And Practices restrictions that hobbled the entire concept. (Most of the artists working on SUPERFRIENDS freely admitted that they hated it.) If kids could enjoy that show, it was only because they loved the colorful characters and that were was no alternatives. By comparison, when my son Kirby was young, and he could watch such shows as BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, the second, superior season of FANTASTIC FOUR and tapes of the Max Fleischer SUPERMAN and original H-B JONNY QUEST, the would refer to SUPERFRIENDS as "that crummy show where the superheroes stand around and talk." After all. the final season or two of SUPERFRIENDS featured character designs by none other than Jack Kirby (those equally tepid shows where the JLA went to planets and dimensions resembling Camelot and Oz, among others) and not even that could extend the series run, not that Jack's participation in the show was any sort of plan to increase ratings. (The folks at H-B never really understood Jack's appeal or ability; I know this because I was working there at the time.)

Aloha,

Scott!

[Scott Shaw!]

It just occured to me that none other than Mike Sekowsky did a lot of design work on those last few seasons of SUPERFRIENDS, too. I think it's kinda ironic that the original artist on DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA funnybook was working on what was essentially the animated equivalent of that title, and yet hardly anyone "out there" was aware of it. (Were any of you?)

Again, another example of how a designer's style could become completely lost in the mediocre-to-poor production values of a ground-out-like-cheap-sausages TV cartoon series. (Not that I'm putting down TV cartoons -- a major portion of my career has been spent working on 'em -- but back in the 1970s and early 1980s, very few studios were lavashing any real care on producing their cartoon shows.)

Aloha,

Scott!

[JKCarrier]

Instead SF became basically a throwaway title which DC kept alive for almost 50 issues just to avoid embarassment

Do you have a source for that, or are you just speculating? I find it hard to believe that DC would keep a money-losing title going that long.

I also doubt that Fradon's style was as off-putting to tv fans as you claim. It's not like the characters were unrecognizable or anything. "Ew, they have varying line weights and expressive faces! I'm not buying this!" :rolleyes:

[Scott Shaw!]

I also doubt that Fradon's style was as off-putting to tv fans as you claim. It's not like the characters were unrecognizable or anything. "Ew, they have varying line weights and expressive faces! I'm not buying this!" :rolleyes:

It's more likely that comic fans reacted with, "Ew, who thought that Vince Colletta was an appropriate inker for Ramona Fradon's pencils?" Seriously, having inked a tiny bit of her work, it's hard to imagine how "Vinnie The C" could have botched such an easy job, but botch it he did. Repeatedly, in fact.

See how I brought this back around to the topic of Ramona Fradon?

Aloha,

Scott!

[gentlesatirist]

...that DC kept alive in spite of poor sales : Wonder Woman.

(That may have to do with a legal contract with the family of WW's creators. I've read that, but haven't verified.)

DC Comics Presents - the Superman team-up book - also never sold all that well, and DC kept it going for about 8 years or so. The company seemed to have greater patience with titles featuring its flagship characters than with, say, Claw the Unconquered or Ragman.

And not to stray further and further from Fradon, but I'm wondering if Scott Shaw thinks a comic based on the style of the SF show would have sold better than the Fradon/Schaffenberger version?

And I realize I'm biased by my age - being in my formative years during the heyday of SF - but there had to be something about the show that kept kids watching for 10 years. The TV networks of the day revamped their Saturday morning lineups all the time - just check out the glorious ads that ran every fall in comics of the 70s, hyping these new lineups - but SF stayed in the mix year after year.

The only other shows that could make that claim in the 70s Saturday morning universe probably were Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo.


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Scott Shaw!]

And not to stray further and further from Fradon, but I'm wondering if Scott Shaw thinks a comic based on the style of the SF show would have sold better than the Fradon/Schaffenberger version?

I think the SUPERFRIENDS series would have sold pretty much the same, at least to the younger readers. If you mean the generic, actual production style of SUPERFRIENDS that was broadcast, I'd say it would probably discourage older readers from buying it, but if you're referring to the look of Alex Toth's original model sheet designs for SUPERFRIENDS, then I think older readers might have embraced the book more than they actually did, especially if Toth was drawing it.

All I know for certain is that I bought each and every issue of SUPERFRIENDS, no matter who drew it...and I NEVER cared for the animated version! With Bridwell, Fradon and Schaffenberger, how could you go wrong?

Aloha,

Scott!