85 years ago today, Sheldon Moldoff was born. Talk about a guy who was present for a lot of comic book history: Sheldon had artwork in the very first issue of Action Comics. He drew the cover for the first issue of Flash Comics, introducing The Flash and Hawkman, and was the artist for many early stories of Hawkman and The Black Pirate. He also drew the cover for the issue of All-American Comics that introduced Green Lantern. He was Bob Kane's first assistant on the Batman strip, and drew many stories for All Star Comics. In the late forties, he was one of the first creators of horror comics, and even approached EC publisher William Gaines with the idea of doing them, years before Gaines launched his own Tales From the Crypt.
He is probably best known to a generation of comic fans as "Bob Kane." Throughout the forties, Kane turned more and more of his Batman art chores over to assistants, to the point where he was doing virtually none of it. In 1953, he hired Moldoff as his ghost, and for fifteen years, the artwork that DC (and many fans) thought was being done by Kane was actually done by Moldoff. Sheldon also worked directly for DC Comics, often as an inker of Curt Swan's art for Superman, and worked for Kane as a designer of his 1960 cartoon series, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.
For the last decade or so, Sheldon has been a frequent and welcome guest at comic book conventions, usually selling wonderful sketches of the many classic characters he's drawn. I've enjoyed interviewing him on panels and chatting with him away from panels. He's a wonderful source of historical info about comics and a fine gentleman. I hope he has a happy 85th birthday day with many more to follow.