A few hours ago, I wrote here, "We would like to not have to write an obit for this lovely man any time soon." Well, sadly, here it is and I believe the cause was stomach cancer. He was 95 and until recently, he'd been having the time of his life attending comic conventions, making new friends, signing autographs, meeting fans and being delighted to find that people cared about the work he'd done in comics between 1942 and approximately 1953.
In '42, not long after Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had left Timely Comics and Captain America, 17-year-old Allen Bellman from Brooklyn answered a newspaper ad and was hired to join the team that carried on their work. Mostly at first, he inked Syd Shores but soon, they gave him his own work to pencil and/or ink. I believe I interviewed him three times at comic conventions and he told three different stories about why he left the field, all of which boiled down to "comics were not looking like a great place to make a living." He moved into graphic design and photography and put comics behind him.
But just when he was retiring from that, he was contacted by folks in the comic book community and invited to conventions. I hope this doesn't sound snide but for about the last ten years, if you were running a comic con and wanted to have someone there who dated back to the so-called Golden Age of Comics, you kinda had your choice of inviting Allen Bellman or not having anyone like that. There just aren't a whole lot of options and Allen was always eager to accept. He and his wife of more than five decades, Roslyn, had the time of their lives at cons, and countless fans will forever treasure the autographs and sketches and the mere fact that they got to meet him.
Since I posted the earlier message, I've been thinking about what I wanted to say in this piece I knew I'd be writing within a matter of days. And I think what I want to do is to thank everyone who was that thrilled to meet Allen because you made the last years of his life so very happy. Not everyone who's worked in comics lived long enough to enjoy the kind of love and respect he received…but he did and I'm so glad he did.