One of the great individual stylists of comic books in the fifties and sixties was a gent named Jerry Grandenetti. His page design concepts reminded many of Will Eisner and with good reason. He had once assisted Eisner on The Spirit, as well as drawing several comics for which the editors consciously wanted an "Eisner look." In the early sixties, he worked primarily on DC's war comics where he did some striking work on covers like the one at left — but only for so long. As the decade wore on, he got away from combat art and conventional page layouts, taking what he'd learned from Eisner and applying it in new, then-revolutionary directions. Like most artists who departed from the conventional, his work was loved by many but disliked by some. (I suspect some who didn't like it then now appreciate it. We call this "The Mike Sekowsky Effect.")
Where Grandenetti really won me over was when he did a series of stories, mostly involving haunted houses, for Creepy and Eerie. Editor-writer Archie Goodwin thought Grandenetti drew the most atmospheric old mansions so he tailored his scripts in that direction and encouraged the artist to forget everything he'd been told by editors about what comics had to be. He did. The result was some of the most visually-arresting and controversial comic art of the period. In fact, by the early seventies, Grandenetti was working so far outside even the relaxed conventions of DC Comics that he no longer quite fit in. I thought he was a marvelous, distinct talent who wasn't precisely suited to the work he was assigned, like The Spectre, Prez and Nightmaster. He may have felt that way, too. After working for a time with his friend Joe Simon, Grandenetti finally got out of comics and into advertising — our loss. I think he was way ahead of the curve on where comics were going.
I'm pleased to say that he's recently surfaced in the comic art community, offering amazing drawings and re-creations at his website, where you can see samples of his recent work. There's also an interview and some biographical data. I just wished they showed more of his approach to designing a page, which is where he really was working without a net.
I've never met Mr. Grandenetti. Over the years, a number of folks have attempted without success to drag him out to a convention. I know he's received lush offers to be flown to the Comic-Con International in San Diego to be interviewed and honored, and he's declined. This is a shame because we have a long history of guys from his generation declining San Diego invites for years and years…and then finally, they accept and have what they admit is the greatest weekend of their lives. If anyone reading this can convince the man, please do. An awful lot of his fans would love to meet him, myself included.