As you've no doubt noticed, I run a lot of obits on this site, particularly of veteran comic book creators. This is not something I do happily but because for a long time, if I didn't do it, no one did. Over the years, I've developed a certain set of rules for myself over how solid the sourcing has to be before I'll announce here that someone has shuffled off this mortal coil.
For a couple of months now, I've been told by various folks that Jerry Grandenetti had passed…and given his age (he was born in '27) and reports of ill health, that seemed more than possible. But no one who told me about it seemed to have a source that traced back to his family or some verified news report so I didn't announce it here. I still don't know of one but the news is now being e-mailed all over the comic book community and public obits are starting to appear, presuming it is so.
With all that in mind: Jerry Grandenetti began his career as an assistant to Will Eisner on The Spirit. Fresh out of the Navy, he began calling on comic book companies with an eye towards making some money in that field before moving on to loftier artistic ambitions. The editors at Quality Comics sent him to Eisner where he started by erasing pages and eventually worked his way up to drawing on them. During much of this time, he studied at Pratt Institute and that training, plus the influence of Eisner, shaped him into an artist with a unique, organic style. Writers he'd later work with like Robert Kanigher and Archie Goodwin raved about his ability to stage scenes and tell stories with angles and shots that no other artist would have imagined.
Grandenetti worked for almost every company that was around in his days but is probably best remembered for his work for DC. He did a long stint for Kanigher who edited the DC war comics and was a particular favorite of that editor. (Kanigher was notorious for disliking the work of most comic artists, including some who worked for him for years and years. But he liked Grandenetti.) In the sixties and seventies, Grandenetti did some striking horror work for Creepy and Eerie, some of it under his own byline; other jobs, ghosting for Joe Orlando. He ghosted for Orlando on sixties' DC comics like Scooter and The Inferior Five, then worked on his own for House of Mystery and other "weird" comics of the sixties and seventies. When Joe Simon returned to DC to edit comics like Prez and Championship Sports, Grandenetti drew almost all of them. And when he wasn't doing comics, he had a lucrative career going in advertising.
I never met Mr. Grandenetti but I always admired his work…and I find it hard to write about him without using the word "unique" a lot. His work in comics was always striking and fresh and it reminded me of something I once heard said about a certain actor, which was that "He'll take the script and for good or ill, do something with the part that no other actor on this planet would have done with it." I hope reports of his passing are untrue. But (sigh) they probably aren't.