A little while ago, I was talking with my pal Richard Howell about our pal Jim Mooney, who passed away yesterday. (As a point of info: Jim's last regular assignment in comics was inking Soulsearchers, which Richard edited for Claypool Comics.) We were discussing what a great guy Jim was and how he drew so many of our favorite comics…and I remembered something I oughta mention here. One of those personal notes…
I have eighty quadrillion comic books and I don't know what the first one I owned or read was. Probably something Disney. But I do remember the first super-hero type comic I read. I first learned of this guy Superman on the TV series starring George Reeves and then I traded a duplicate issue of something Disney to a friend of mine for a comic with Superman in it. It was Action Comics #250, cover dated March of 1959. I probably got my mitts on it in late 1960 or early '61.
The lead story was a Superman tale written (I later learned) by Bill Finger and drawn by Wayne Boring. In the back were two short stories — an adventure of Congorilla, a strip which even insulted my intelligence at that age, plus a tale of a spaceman named Tommy Tomorrow. That was my favorite story in the issue and it was drawn by Jim Mooney. In a way, he was my first favorite artist.