The Most Famous

COMIC ARTISTS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Comic Artists. The pantheon dataset contains 226 Comic Artists, 57 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 2nd most number of Comic Artists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Comic Artists of all time. This list of famous American Comic Artists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Comic Artists.

1. Stan Lee (1922 - 2018)

With an HPI of 73.59, Stan Lee is the most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 86 different languages on wikipedia.

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber ; December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018) was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and producer. He rose through the ranks of a family-run business called Timely Comics which later became Marvel Comics. He was Marvel's primary creative leader for two decades, expanding from a small publishing house division to a multimedia corporation that dominated the comics and film industries. In collaboration with others at Marvel —particularly co-writers and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko— he co-created iconic characters, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, the Wasp, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow. These and other characters' introductions in the 1960s pioneered a more naturalistic approach in superhero comics. In the 1970s, Lee challenged the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to changes in its policies. In the 1980s, he pursued the development of Marvel properties in other media, with mixed results. Following his retirement from Marvel in the 1990s, Lee remained a public figurehead for the company. He frequently made cameo appearances in films and television shows based on Marvel properties, on which he received an executive producer credit, which allowed him to become the person with the highest-grossing film total ever. He continued independent creative ventures until his death, aged 95, in 2018. Lee was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the NEA's National Medal of Arts in 2008.

2. Joseph Barbera (1911 - 2006)

With an HPI of 64.75, Joseph Barbera is the 2nd most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 52 different languages.

Joseph Roland Barbera ( BAR-bər-ə; Italian: [barˈbɛːra]; March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an American animator and cartoonist, best known as the co-founder of the animation studio Hanna-Barbera. Born to Italian immigrants in New York City, Barbera joined Van Beuren Studios in 1927 and subsequently Terrytoons in 1929. In 1937, he moved to California, and while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Barbera met William Hanna. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry. In 1957, after MGM dissolved its animation department, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Top Cat, The Smurfs, Huckleberry Hound, and The Jetsons. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company. In 1991, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors. Hanna and Barbera directed seven Academy Award films and won eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoon shows have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media, such as films, books, and toys. Hanna-Barbera's shows had a worldwide audience of over 300 million people in the 1960s and have been translated into more than 28 languages. Joseph Barbera was born at 10 Delancey Street in the Little Italy, Lower East Side section of Manhattan, New York, to Italian Sicilian immigrants Vincenzo Barbera (1884–1969), born in Castelvetrano, and Francesca Calvacca (1892–1974), born in Sciacca. He grew up speaking Italian, as stated in his autobiography.: 17–18, 58, 128, 208 He had two brothers, Larry (1909–1982) and Ted (1919–1994), both of whom served in World War II. As a member of the United States Army, Larry participated in the invasion of Sicily. Ted was a fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Forces and served in the Aleutian Islands Campaign.: 91–95 Barbera's father, Vincent, was the prosperous owner of three barbershops who squandered the family fortunes on gambling.: 19 By the time Barbera was 15, his father had abandoned the family, and his maternal uncle Jim had become a father figure to him. : 22–24 Barbera displayed a talent for drawing as early as the first grade.: 25–26 He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn in 1928.: 23 While in high school, Barbera won several boxing titles. He was briefly managed by World Lightweight Boxing Champion Al Singer's manager but soon lost interest in boxing.: 30–32 In 1935, Barbera married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Earl. In school, they had been known as "Romeo and Juliet".: 28 Barbera and his wife briefly separated when he went to California. They reunited but were on the verge of another separation when they discovered that Dorothy was pregnant with their first child. They had four children: two sons, Neal and an infant boy who died two days after his birth, and two daughters, Lynn and Jayne, who has been a producer in her own right. The marriage officially ended in 1963.: 58, 61, 66, 90, 129 Shortly after his divorce, Barbera met his second wife, Sheila Holden, sister of British rock and roll singer Vince Taylor, at Musso & Frank's restaurant, where she worked as bookkeeper and cashier. Unlike Dorothy, who preferred to stay home with the children, Sheila enjoyed the Hollywood social scene that Barbera often frequented.: 137–139, 147 During high school, Barbera worked as a tailor's delivery boy.: 28 In 1929, he became interested in animation after watching a screening of Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance. During the Great Depression, he tried unsuccessfully to become a cartoonist for The NY Hits Magazine. He supported himself with a job at a bank and continued to pursue publication for his cartoons. His magazine drawings of single cartoons, not comic strips, began to be published in Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's—the magazine with which he had the most success.: 35–36 Barbera also wrote to Walt Disney for advice on getting started in the animation industry.: 105 Disney wrote back, saying he would call Barbera during an upcoming trip to New York, but the call never occurred.: 38 Barbera took art classes at the Art Students League of New York and the Pratt Institute and was hired to work in the ink and paint department of Fleischer Studios. In 1932, he joined the Van Beuren Studios as an animator and storyboard artist.: 38–42 He worked on cartoon series such as Cubby Bear and Rainbow Parades and an earlier Tom and Jerry. This Tom and Jerry series starred two humans; it was unrelated to Barbera's later cat-and-mouse series, although both of these cartoons adopted the name created in an 1821 book, Life in London, written by Pierce Egan. When Van Beuren closed in 1936, Barbera moved to Paul Terry's Terrytoons studio.: 53–54 In 1935, Barbera created his first solo-effort storyboard about a character named Kiko the Kangaroo. The storyline was of Kiko in an airplane race with another character called Dirty Dog. Terry declined to produce the story. In his autobiography, Barbera said of his efforts ..."I was, quite honestly, not in the least disappointed. I had proven to myself that I could do a storyboard, and that I had gained the experience of presenting it. For now, that was enough."The original storyboard, passed down through the Barbera family, went on sale at auction in November 2013. Lured by a substantial salary increase, Barbera left Terrytoons and New York for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in California in 1937.: 58–59 : 106 He found that Los Angeles suffered just as much from the Great Depression as Brooklyn and almost returned to Brooklyn.: 201 Barbera's desk was opposite that of William Hanna. The two quickly realized they would make a good team.: Foreword By 1939, they had solidified a partnership that would last over 60 years. Barbera and Hanna worked alongside animator Tex Avery, who had created Daffy Duck and co-created Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros. and directed Droopy cartoons at MGM.: 33 : 18 In 1940, Hanna and Barbera jointly directed Puss Gets the Boot, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject. The studio wanted a diversified cartoon portfolio, so despite the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Barbera and Hanna's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons, believing that those were already enough.: 75–76 Surprised by the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Barbera and Hanna ignored Quimby's resistance: 45 and continued developing the cat-and-mouse theme. By this time, Hanna wanted to return to working for Rudolph Ising, to whom he felt very loyal. Barbera and Hanna met with Quimby, who discovered that although Ising had taken sole credit for producing Puss Gets the Boot, he never worked on it. Quimby, who wanted to start a new animation unit independent from Ising, then permitted Hanna and Barbera to pursue their cat-and-mouse idea. The result was their most famous creation, Tom and Jerry.: 78–79 Modeled after the Puss Gets the Boot characters with slight differences, the series followed Jerry, the pesky rodent who continuously outwitted his feline foe, Tom. Hanna said they settled on this cartoon's cat and mouse theme because "we knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, chase, and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought." The revamped characters first appeared in 1941's The Midnight Snack.: 46 Over the next 17 years, Barbera and Hanna worked exclusively on Tom and Jerry, directing more than 114 popular cartoon shorts. During World War II, they also made animated training films.: 92–93 Tom and Jerry relied mostly on motion instead of dialog. Despite its popularity, Tom and Jerry have often been criticized as excessively violent.: 42 : 134 The series won its first Academy Award for the 11th short, The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)—a war-time adventure. Tom and Jerry was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 7, more than any other animated series featuring the same characters. Tom and Jerry also made guest appearances in several of MGM's live-action films, including Anchors Aweigh (1945) and, Invitation to the Dance (1956) with Gene Kelly, and Dangerous When Wet (1953) with Esther Williams. In addition to his work in animated cartoons, Barbera and Tom and Jerry layout artist Harvey Eisenberg moonlit to run a comic book company named Dearfield Publishing. Active from 1946 to 1951, Dearfield's titles included "Red" Rabbit Comics, Foxy Fagan, and Junie Prom. Quimby accepted each Academy Award for Tom and Jerry without inviting Barbera and Hanna onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising.: 83–84 Quimby once delayed a promised raise to Barbera by six months.: 82 When Quimby retired in late 1955, Hanna and Barbera were placed in charge of MGM's animation division. As MGM began to lose more revenue on animated cartoons due to television, the studio soon realized that re-releasing old cartoons was far more profitable than producing new ones.: 2–3, 109 In 1957, MGM ordered Barbera and Hanna's business manager to close the cartoon division and lay off everyone phone.: 2–3, 109 Barbera and Hanna found the no-notice closing puzzling because Tom and Jerry had succeeded. In 1957, Barbera reteamed with his former partner Hanna to produce cartoon films for television and theatrical release. The two brought their different skills to the company as they had at MGM. Barbera was a skilled gag writer and sketch artist, while Hanna had a gift for timing, story construction, and recruiting top artists. Major business decisions would be made together, though each year, the title of president alternated between them.: 120 : 77, 146 A coin toss gave Hanna precedence in the naming of the new company : Foreword first called H-B Enterprises but soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions. Barbera and Hanna's MGM colleague George Sidney, the director of Anchors Aweigh, became the third partner and business manager in the company and arranged a deal for distribution and working capital with Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, who took part ownership of the new studio.: 81–83 The first offering from the new company was The Ruff & Reddy Show, a series which detailed the friendship between a dog and a cat. Despite a lukewarm response for their first theatrical venture, Loopy De Loop, Hanna-Barbera soon established themselves with two successful television series: The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show. A 1960 survey showed that half of the viewers of Huckleberry Hound were adults. This prompted the company to create a new animated series, The Flintstones. A parody of The Honeymooners, the new show followed a typical Stone Age family with home appliances, talking animals, and celebrity guests. With an audience of both children and adults, The Flintstones became the first animated prime-time show to be a hit. Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation, "yabba dabba doo," soon entered everyday usage, and the show boosted the studio to the top of the TV cartoon field. The company later produced a futuristic version of The Flintstones, known as The Jetsons. Although both shows reappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, The Flintstones was far more popular. By the late 1960s, Hanna-Barbera Productions was the business's most successful television animation studio. The Hanna-Barbera studio produced over 3000 animated half-hour television shows. Among the more than 100 cartoon series they produced were The Quick Draw McGraw Show, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, The Magilla Gorilla Show, The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, Scooby-Doo, Super Friends, and The Smurfs. The company also produced animated specials based on Alice in Wonderland, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cyrano de Bergerac, and feature-length films Charlotte's Web and Heidi's Song.: 228–230 As popular as their cartoons were with 1960s audiences, they were disliked by artists. Television programs had lower budgets than theatrical animation, and this economic reality caused many animation studios to go out of business in the 1950s and 1960s, putting many people in the industry out of work. Hanna-Barbera was key in developing of an animation technique known as limited animation,: 75 : 54 which allowed television animation to be more cost-effective but often reduced quality. Hanna and Barbera had first experimented with these techniques in the early days of Tom and Jerry.: 74, 115 To reduce the cost of each episode, shows often focused more on character dialogue than detailed animation. The number of drawings for a seven-minute cartoon decreased from 14,000 to nearly 2,000, and the company implemented innovative techniques such as rapid background changes to improve viewing. Critics criticized the change from detailed animation to repetitive movements by two-dimensional characters. Barbera once said that they chose to adapt to the television budgets or change careers.: 75 : 54 The new style did not limit the success of their animated shows, enabling Hanna-Barbera to stay in business, providing employment to many who would otherwise have been out of work. Limited animation paved the way for future animated series such as The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, and South Park. In December 1966, Hanna-Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting, renamed Great American Communications in 1987, for $12 million.: 162, 235–236 Barbera and Hanna remained at the head of the company until 1991.: 16 : 151 The company was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated $320 million. Turner began using Hanna-Barbera's television catalog as material for its new Cartoon Network cable channel in 1992, and by the mid-1990s, Hanna-Barbera was producing several original series for Cartoon Network, among them Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., who would eventually absorb Hanna-Barbera into Warner Bros. Animation. Barbera and Hanna continued to advise their former company. They periodically worked on new Hanna-Barbera shows, including shorts for the series The Cartoon Cartoon Show and feature film versions of The Flintstones (1994) and Scooby-Doo (2002). In a new Tom and Jerry cartoon produced in 2000, The Mansion Cat, Barbera voiced the house owner. Ten days before Hanna's death from throat cancer in March 2001, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation, with the unit dedicated to the Cartoon Network original series spun off into Cartoon Network Studios. Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Bros. on direct-to-video cartoon features and television series such as What's New, Scooby-Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales. He also wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed, and co-produced The Karate Guard (2005), the return of Tom and Jerry to the big screen. His final animated project was the direct-to-video feature Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale (2007). On December 18, 2006, Barbera died of natural causes at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, at 95, ending a seventy-year career in animation. His wife Sheila was at his side at the end; he was also survived by three children from his first marriage: Jayne (who worked for Hanna-Barbera), Lynn, and Neal.: 105–107 He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Most of the cartoons Barbera and Hanna created revolved around close friendship or partnership; this theme is evident with Fred and Barney, Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble, Dick Dastardly and Muttley, Tom and Jerry, Scooby and Shaggy, Ruff and Reddy, Jake Clawson/Razor and Chance Furlong/T-Bone, The Jetson family and Yogi & Boo-Boo. These may have reflected the close business friendship and partnership that Barbera and Hanna shared for over 60 years.: 214 Professionally, they balanced each other's strengths and weaknesses very well, but Barbera and Hanna traveled in entirely different social circles. Hanna's circle of personal friends primarily included other animators. Barbera socialized with Hollywood celebrities—Zsa Zsa Gabor was a frequent visitor to his house.: 52–53, 137–139, 147, 222–224 Their division of work roles complemented each other, but they rarely talked outside of work since Hanna was interested in the outdoors and Barbera liked beaches and good food and drink.: 120–121 In their long partnership, in which they worked with over 2,000 animated characters, Barbera and Hanna rarely exchanged a cross word. Barbera said: "We understood each other perfectly, and each of us had a deep respect for the other's work." Hanna once told that Barbera could "capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I've ever known." Barbera and Hanna were also among the first animators to realize the enormous potential of television. Leonard Maltin says the Hanna–Barbera team "held a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year—without a break or change in routine. Their characters are not only animated superstars, but also a very beloved part of American pop culture". They are often considered Walt Disney's only rivals in cartoon animation. Barbera and Hanna had a lasting impact on television animation.: 16 Cartoons they created often make the greatest lists. Many of their characters have appeared in films, books, toys, and other media. Their shows had a worldwide audience of over 300 million people in the 1960s and have been translated into more than 20 languages. The works of Barbera and Hanna have been praised not only for their animation but for their music. The Cat Concerto (1946) and Johann Mouse (1952) have both been called "masterpieces of animation" largely because of their classical music.: 34 : 133 The Hanna–Barbera team won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards,: 32 including the 1960 award for The Huckleberry Hound Show, which was the first Emmy awarded to an animated series. They also won these awards: Golden Globe for Television Achievement (1960), Golden IKE Award – Pacific Pioneers in Broadcasting (1983), Pioneer Award – Broadcast Music Incorporated (1987), Iris Award – NATPE Men of the Year (1988), Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association award for Lifetime Achievement (1988), Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (1988), Jackie Coogan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Youth through Entertainment Youth in Film (1988), Frederic W. Ziv Award for Outstanding Achievement in Telecommunications – Broadcasting Division College – Conservatory of Music University of Cincinnati (1989), stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1976), several Annie Awards,: 170 several environmental awards, and were recipients of numerous other accolades before their induction into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994.: 171 In March 2005, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Warner Bros. Animation dedicated a wall sculpture at the Television Academy's Hall of Fame Plaza in North Hollywood to Hanna and Barbera. In 1992, Barbera met with pop musician Michael Jackson, an avid cartoon fan, in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange for Jackson to sing in Tom and Jerry: The Movie. Barbera drew five quick sketches of Tom and Jerry for Jackson and autographed them. Jackson autographed a picture of himself and his niece Nicole for Barbera with the words: "To my hero of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with many thanks for all the many cartoon friends you gave me as a child. They were all I had. – Michael": 236–237 Golden age of American animation Tom and Jerry filmography List of works produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions Peace on Earth (remade by Barbera and Hanna as Good Will to Men) Tom and Jerry awards and nominations Cawley, John; Jim Korkis (1990). The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars: From a to (Almost Z). Las Vegas, NV: Pioneer. ISBN 1-55698-269-0. Erickson, Hal (1987). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949–1993. Jefferson City, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-0029-3. Horn, Maurice (1980). The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishing. ISBN 0-87754-088-8. Lenburg, Jeff (2011). William Hanna and Joseph Barbera: The Sultans of Saturday Morning. New York, NY: Chelsea House. ISBN 978-1-60413-837-5. Mallory, Michael (1987). Hanna Barbera Cartoons. Englewood, NJ: Universe. ISBN 0-88363-108-3. Maltin, Leonard (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York, NY: New American Library. ISBN 0-452-25993-2. Joseph Barbera at IMDb Hanna Barbera Studios Joseph Barbera at Find a Grave Mark Evanier's recollections National Public Radio Joe Barbera Obituary by Joe Bevilacqua 1990 WNYC Radio Interview with Joe Barbera by Joe Bevilacqua Joseph Barbera at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television

3. Carl Barks (1901 - 2000)

With an HPI of 63.88, Carl Barks is the 3rd most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. Barks worked for the Disney Studio and Western Publishing where he created Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck (1947), Gladstone Gander (1948), the Beagle Boys (1951), The Junior Woodchucks (1951), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Cornelius Coot (1952), Flintheart Glomgold (1956), John D. Rockerduck (1961) and Magica De Spell (1961). He has been named by animation historian Leonard Maltin as "the most popular and widely read artist-writer in the world". Will Eisner called him "the Hans Christian Andersen of comic books." Beginning especially in the 1980s, Barks' artistic contributions would be a primary source for animated adaptations such as DuckTales and its 2017 remake.

4. Matt Groening (b. 1954)

With an HPI of 62.71, Matt Groening is the 4th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 62 different languages.

Matthew Abram Groening ( GRAY-ning; born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. He is best known as the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama (1999–2003, 2008–2013, 2023–present), and Disenchantment (2018–2023). The Simpsons is the longest-running U.S. primetime television series in history and the longest-running U.S. animated series and sitcom. Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. At its peak, it was carried in 250 weekly newspapers, and caught the attention of American producer James L. Brooks, who contacted Groening in 1985 about adapting it for animated sequences for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening created a new set of characters, the Simpson family. The shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which has since aired 768 episodes. In 1997, Groening and former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. It ran for four years on Fox; was picked up in 2008 by Comedy Central for another 5 years; then was finally picked up by Hulu for another revival in 2023. In 2016, Groening developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018. Groening has won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, 11 for The Simpsons and 2 for Futurama, and a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012.

5. Jack Kirby (1917 - 1994)

With an HPI of 62.32, Jack Kirby is the 5th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 54 different languages.

Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg; August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was an American comic book artist, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics. After serving in the European Theater in World War II, Kirby produced work for DC Comics, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and other publishers. At Crestwood Publications, he and Simon created the genre of romance comics and later founded their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby was involved in Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, which in the next decade became Marvel. There, in the 1960s, Kirby cocreated many of the company's major characters, including Ant-Man, the Avengers, the Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, Thor, and the X-Men, among many others. Kirby's titles garnered high sales and critical acclaim, but in 1970, feeling he had been treated unfairly, largely in the realm of authorship credit and creators' rights, Kirby left the company for rival DC. At DC, Kirby created his Fourth World saga which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, the Fourth World's New Gods have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been called "the William Blake of comics", began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987 he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. In 2017, Kirby was posthumously named a Disney Legend for his creations not only in the field of publishing, but also because those creations formed the basis for The Walt Disney Company's financially and critically successful media franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kirby was married to Rosalind Goldstein in 1942. They had four children and remained married until his death from heart failure in 1994, at the age of 76. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor, and he is known as "The King" among comics fans for his many influential contributions to the medium.

6. Bob Kane (1915 - 1998)

With an HPI of 60.59, Bob Kane is the 6th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Robert Kane (né Kahn ; October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998) was an American comic book writer, animator and artist who co-created Batman (with Bill Finger) and most early related characters for DC Comics. He was inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993 and into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.

7. Steve Ditko (1927 - 2018)

With an HPI of 59.56, Steve Ditko is the 7th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Stephen John Ditko (; November 2, 1927 – June 29, 2018) was an American comics artist and writer best known for being the co-creator of Marvel superhero Spider-Man and creator of Doctor Strange. He also made notable contributions to the character of Iron Man, revolutionizing the character's red and yellow design. Ditko studied under Batman artist Jerry Robinson at the Cartoonist and Illustrators School in New York City. He began his professional career in 1953, working in the studio of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, beginning as an inker and coming under the influence of artist Mort Meskin. During this time, he began his long association with Charlton Comics, where he did work in the genres of science fiction, horror, and mystery. He also cocreated the superhero Captain Atom in 1960. During the 1950s, Ditko also drew for Atlas Comics, a forerunner of Marvel Comics. He went on to contribute much significant work to Marvel. Ditko was the artist for the first 38 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, co-creating much of the Spider-Man supporting characters and villains with Stan Lee. Beginning with issue #25, Ditko was also credited as the plotter. In 1966, after being the exclusive artist on The Amazing Spider-Man and the "Doctor Strange" feature in Strange Tales, Ditko left Marvel for a variety of reasons, including creative differences and unpaid royalties. Ditko continued to work for Charlton and also DC Comics, including a revamp of the long-running character the Blue Beetle and creating or co-creating the Question, the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove. Ditko also began contributing to small independent publishers, where he created Mr. A, a hero reflecting the influence of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Ditko largely declined to give interviews, saying he preferred to communicate through his work. He responded to fan mail, sending thousands of handwritten letters during his lifetime. Ditko was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994. He will be posthumously honored as a Disney Legend in 2024.

8. Don Rosa (b. 1951)

With an HPI of 59.37, Don Rosa is the 8th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Keno Don Hugo Rosa (), known as Don Rosa (born June 29, 1951), is an American comic book writer and illustrator known for his Disney comics stories about Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck, and other characters which Carl Barks created for Disney-licensed comic books, first published in America by Dell Comics. Many of his stories are built on characters and locations created by Barks; among these was his first Duck story, "The Son of the Sun" (1987), which was nominated for a Harvey Award in the "Best Story of the Year" category. Rosa created about 90 stories between 1987 and 2006. In 1995, his 12-chapter work The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck won the Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story. Don Rosa's grandfather, Gioachino Rosa, lived in Maniago, a town at the foot of the Alps in Northern Italy, in the province of Pordenone. He immigrated to Kentucky, the United States, around 1900, established a successful tile and terrazzo company, then returned to Italy to marry and start a family. In 1915 just after the birth of his son Ugo Rosa, Gioachino returned to Kentucky with his wife, two daughters and two sons. Ugo Rosa grew up and was later married in Kentucky. His wife was born to a German-American father and a mother with both Scottish and Irish ancestry. Don Rosa was born Keno Don Hugo Rosa on June 29, 1951, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was named after both his father and grandfather. Gioachino was called "Keno" for short. Don's father was named Ugo Dante Rosa but used the name "Hugo Don" Rosa in America. Rosa's older sister, Deanna, was an avid collector of comics and exposed Don to comics as a storytelling medium at a very early age, teaching him to “read the pictures.” Rosa's favorite comic books while growing up were Uncle Scrooge and Little Lulu comics from Dell Comics, as well as his sister's collection of MAD magazines. At age 12, Rosa discovered the Superman titles of DC Comics, with particular attention to editor Mort Weisinger's period, drawn mostly by Superman artists Curt Swan and Kurt Schaffenberger. Shortly after Rosa started to collect Superman comics, he also began to trade in the comics he had inherited from his older sister for old Superman comics. By the 1970s Rosa's comic trading had ended up with him only having two Barks duck comics issues left from the collection his sister originally passed on to him. One of them being Dell Comics' Four Color Comics #386 (also known as Dell Comics' One shot's) issue titled: "Uncle Scrooge in Only a Poor Old Man", which was unknown to him to be the first issue of the new Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge Title. The second issue is his other favorite Barks Comic from his youth, Dell's Donald Duck in "The Golden Helmet". Later when Rosa became a serious collector of all comics of the post-war years, he particularly enjoyed and collected the classic E.C. Comics of the horror and science fiction genres published in the early 1950s, Will Eisner's The Spirit, Walt Kelly's Pogo, and virtually all other comics from 1945 and onward. Rosa entered the University of Kentucky in 1969. He graduated in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. In 1969, while still in college, Rosa won an award as "best political cartoonist in the nation in a college paper". "I'm not really an editorial cartoonist. I'd much rather be doing comedy adventure. But I must have done something right, for at one point The Journal of Higher Education named me one of the five or six best college newspaper cartoonists in the nation." Rosa's first published comic (besides the spot illustrations in his grade school and high school newspapers) was a comic strip featuring his own character, Lancelot Pertwillaby, titled The Pertwillaby Papers. He created the strip in 1971 for The Kentucky Kernel, a college newspaper of the University of Kentucky, which wanted the strip to focus on political satire. Rosa later switched the strip to comedy-adventure, his favorite style of comics, and drew the story Lost in (an alternative section of) the Andes. (The title is a reference to Lost in the Andes!, a Donald Duck story by Carl Barks, first published in April 1949.) The so-called Pertwillaby Papers included 127 published episodes by the time Rosa graduated in 1973. Meanwhile, Rosa participated in contributing art and articles to comic collector fanzines. One contribution was An Index of Uncle Scrooge Comics. According to his introduction: "Scrooge being my favorite character in comic history and Barks my favorite pure cartoonist, I'll try not to get carried away too much." After attaining his bachelor's degree, Rosa continued to draw comics purely as a hobby, his only income came from working in the Keno Rosa Tile and Terrazzo Company, a company founded by his paternal grandfather. Rosa authored and illustrated the monthly Information Center column in the fanzine Rocket's Blast Comicollector from 1974 to 1979. This was a question-and-answer feature dealing with readers' queries on all forms of pop entertainment of which Rosa was a student, including comics, TV and movies. He also revived the Pertwillaby Papers in this "RBCC" fanzine as a comic book style story rather than a newspaper comic strip from 1976 to 1978. Rosa accepted an offer from the editor of the local newspaper to create a weekly comic strip. This led to his creation of the comic strip character Captain Kentucky for the Saturday edition of the local newspaper Louisville Times. Captain Kentucky was the superhero alter ego of Lancelot Pertwillaby. The pay was $25/week and not worth the 12+ hours each week's strip entailed, but Rosa did it as part of his hobby. Publication started on October 6, 1979. The comic strip ended on August 15, 1982, after the publication of 150 episodes. After three years with Captain Kentucky, Don decided that it was not worth the effort. He retired from cartooning and did not draw a single line for the next four years. Years later, as his fame grew, his non-Disney work was published by the Norwegian publisher Gazette Bok in 2001, in the two hard cover "Don Rosa Archives" volumes, The Pertwillaby Papers and The Adventures of Captain Kentucky. In 1986, Rosa discovered a Gladstone Comics comic book. This was the first American comic book that contained Disney characters since Western Publishing's discontinuation of their Whitman Comics in the 1970s. Since early childhood Don Rosa had been fascinated by Carl Barks' stories about Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck. He immediately called the editor, Byron Erickson, and told him that he was the only American who was born to write and draw one Scrooge McDuck adventure. Erickson agreed to let him send a story, and Don Rosa started drawing his first Duck story, "The Son of the Sun," the very next day. "The Son of the Sun" was a success and Rosa's very first professional comic story was nominated for a Harvey Award "Best Story of the Year". The plot of the story was the same as his earlier story, Lost in (an alternative section of) the Andes. As Don Rosa explained it, he was just "(...) turning that old Pertwillaby Papers adventure back into the story it originally was in my head, starring Scrooge, Donald, the nephews, and Flintheart Glomgold." Rosa created a few more comics for Gladstone until 1989. He then stopped working for them, because the policies of their licensor, Disney, did not allow for the return of original art for a story to its creators. After making some stories for the Dutch publisher Oberon, the publishers of an American Disney children's magazine called DuckTales (based on the animated series of the same name) offered Rosa employment. They even offered him a much higher salary than the one he received at Gladstone. Rosa made just one script (Back in Time for a Dime). The publishers never asked him to make more, and due to problems with receiving the payment, he did not care. After working with the DuckTales magazine, Rosa found out that the Denmark-based International publisher Egmont (at that time called Gutenberghus) was publishing reprints of his stories and wanted more. Rosa joined Egmont in 1990. Two years later, at Rosa's suggestion, Byron Erickson, the former editor at Gladstone also went to work for Egmont and has been working there ever since as an editor and later as a freelancer. In 1991 Rosa started creating The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, a 12 chapter story about his favorite character. The series was a success, and in 1995 he won an Eisner Award for best continuing series. After the end of the original series, Rosa sometimes produced additional "missing" chapters. Some of the extra chapters were turned down by Egmont, because they were not interested in any more episodes. Fortunately, the French magazine Picsou was eager to publish the stories. From 1999, Rosa started working freelance for Picsou magazine as well. All of these chapters were compiled as The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion. During early summer 2002, Rosa suddenly laid down work. As an artist, he could not live under the conditions Egmont was offering him but he did not want to give up making Scrooge McDuck comics either. So, his only choice was to go on hiatus and try to come to an agreement with Egmont. His main issues were that he had no control over his works. Rosa had discovered too often that his stories were printed with incorrect pages of art, improper colors, poor lettering, or pixelated computer conversions of the illustrations. Rosa has never, nor has any other artist working on Disney-licensed characters, received royalties for the use or multi-national reprinting of any of his stories worldwide. Rosa came to an agreement with Egmont in December of the same year, which gave him more control over the stories and the manner in which they were publicized. Rosa, who had poor eyesight since childhood, experienced a severe retinal detachment in March 2008, which required emergency eye surgery. However, the surgery was only partially successful, and Rosa had to undergo further surgery in both eyes, making drawing even more challenging. In an interview at the Danish Komiks.dk fair on June 2, 2008, Rosa announced his decision not to continue creating comics due to various reasons such as his eye troubles, low pay, and the use of his stories by international Disney licensees in special hardback or album editions without payment of royalties or permission for the use of his name. In 2012, Rosa wrote an essay about his retirement for Egmont's 9-volume Don Rosa Collection, which was to be published in Finland, Norway, Germany and Sweden. The essay, posted at career-end.donrosa.de, cites the above reasons, with special emphasis on the "Disney comics system" for paying writers and artists a flat per-page rate, and then allowing publishers around the world to print the stories without payment to the creators. Rosa is more popular with readers in Europe than in his native United States. According to him, even his next-door neighbors do not know his profession. In 1980, Rosa married Ann Payne. Payne is a retired social studies middle school teacher. Don Rosa describes himself as an introvert due to being socially isolated as a child. Also, he thinks of himself as a workaholic. Rosa suffered from depression during the years before he quit. He believes that it was caused by working hard while taking little time for leisure, a result of his self-imposed work regimen due to his enthusiasm for Barks' characters. Rosa is an avid collector of many things, including comic books, TV Guide, National Geographic, and movie magazines, fanzines, books, White Castle memorabilia, pinball machines and movies and more. Rosa also grows exotic chili plants and tends nearly 30 acres of a private nature preserve with wildflower fields and numerous forest trails. That and taking semi-annual European signing tours to visit his fellow BarksDucks fans, takes up all of his time. He is also working to complete his collections of all American comic books published between 1945 and 1970. In Europe, Rosa is recognized as one of the best Disney comics creators. Carl Barks and Rosa are among the few artists who have their name written on the covers of Disney magazines when their stories are published. Rosa enjoys including subtle references to his favourite movies and comics as well as his own previous work. He normally uses about twelve panels per page, instead of the more common eight. Rosa has an especially large following in Finland, and in 1999, he created a special 32-page adventure featuring Scrooge McDuck for his Finnish fans called; Sammon Salaisuus (translates to The secret of the Sampo, but it is officially named The Quest for Kalevala in English), based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The publication of this story created a national sensation in Finland where Donald Duck and the Kalevala are important aspects of culture. It was published in many other countries as well. The cover for the comic book was a spoof of a famous painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The latest work that Rosa has worked on is a cover for the album Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge by Tuomas Holopainen from Nightwish who is a fan of Rosa's comics. With a Bachelor of Arts degree in civil engineering as his only real drawing education, Rosa has some unusual drawing methods, as he writes: "I suspect nothing I do is done the way anyone else does it." Because of being self-taught in making comics, Rosa relies mostly on the skills he learned in engineering school, which means using technical pens and templates extensively. He applies templates and other engineering tools to draw what other artists draw freehand. He usually drew just under a page per day, but that depended on the amount of detail he puts in the picture. Rosa's drawing style is considered much more detailed and "dirtier" than that of most Disney artists, living or dead, and often likened to that of underground artists, and he is frequently compared to Robert Crumb. When Rosa was first told of this similarity, he said that he "drew that bad" long before he discovered underground comics during college. He went on to explain these similarities to underground artists with a similar background of making comics as a hobby: "I think that both my style and that of Robert Crumb are similar only because we both grew up making comics for our personal enjoyment, without ever taking drawing seriously, and without ever trying to attain a style that would please the average comics publisher. We drew comics for fun!" "I want to take everything Barks wrote and forge it into a workable timeline. My original dream was to become the new Carl Barks. I wanted to write, draw, and letter all my own stories. People tell me that my pencils look just like Barks, but my inks are pure Rosa, and I can't letter properly! So I'll have to settle for being Don Rosa." – Don Rosa in 1987 "Don Rosa has often been called the heir of Carl Barks, especially for the way in which he has carried on the Ducks' Family Saga. But I don't think so: in my opinion Don Rosa [...] is an author who has used Barks' characters to make stories that are completely new, 'Donrosian' rather than 'Barksian', just like Barks can't be considered the heir of Al Taliaferro only because he has worked on the Ducks after him." – Carlo Chendi, Italian Disney comics writer Rosa's idol when it comes to comics is Carl Barks. Rosa builds almost all his stories on characters and locations that Barks invented. Many of Rosa's stories contain references to some fact pointed out in a Barks story. At the request of publishers in response to reader demands, Rosa has even created sequels of old Barks stories. For example, his Return to Plain Awful is a sequel to Lost in the Andes!, where the Ducks return to the same hidden country. To add more to his admiration and consistency to Barks and Barks' stories, Rosa makes all his ducks' stories set in the 1950s. This is because Barks writes most of the stories about Scrooge, Donald and all people of Duckburg in the 1950s (it also conveniently resolves potential continuity problems, such as Scrooge's age). As explained in text pages in the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and its companion volume, Rosa does intense research of time periods to ensure not only that he gets the physical details right, but also to ensure that all characters could have been present. Barks either created most of the characters used by Rosa or is credited for greatly developing their personalities. Rosa thus feels obliged to make his stories factually consistent. He has spent a lot of time in making lists of facts and anecdotes pointed out in different stories by his mentor. Especially The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was based mostly on the earlier works of Barks. Rosa admitted however that a scene of the first chapter was inspired by a story by Tony Strobl. As most of the characters Rosa uses were created by Barks, and because Rosa considers Scrooge rather than Donald to be the main character of the Duck universe, he does not regard himself as a pure Disney artist, nor the characters really as Disney's. "Rosa prefers to say that the characters he uses are Barks's, Barks having reshaped Donald Duck's personality and creating everything else we know of Duckburg while working as a freelancer in 1942–1967 for an independent licensed publisher (Dell/Western Comics). Barks even claimed to have also created Huey, Dewey, and Louie while working as a writer on Donald Duck animated cartoons in 1937." Because of his idolization of Barks, he repeatedly discourages his fans to use an absolutist way of saying his clearly different drawing style would be better than Barks's, and he found that notion confirmed when Barks himself spoke about Rosa's style in a critical tone though it is uncertain whether those comments were Barks's or those of his temporary "business managers" who filtered his communications. "I usually don't like my stories. I mean I try really hard, but I know I don't draw that well. I know people like it because it's got lots of extra details, but art directors know good artwork, and they know mine is not good artwork. Now, people always say, 'You're being too modest, you're being too modest', and I say, 'What?' They just have to ask me the right question. I know it's not good artwork and I don't know if it's well-drawn, but I know it's entertaining." – Don Rosa, Torino Comics Festival, April 2011 "Don Rosa has a style that is a little bit different from the Disney style. I know that there is a great deal of people that like that style, which is extremely detailed. So, there is room in the business for artists like Don Rosa and for others like Van Horn. They have a different style. But if they have a good story and tell it properly, then people are going to like it." – Carl Barks, interview given at Disneyland Paris, July 7, 1994 Beside Rosa's constant effort to remain faithful to the universe Barks created, there is also a number of notable differences between the two artists. The most obvious of these is Rosa's much more detailed drawing style, often with many background gags, which has been credited as being a result of Rosa's love of the Will Elder stories of MAD comics and magazines. While Barks himself discouraged the use of extreme grimacing and gesturing in any other panel for comical or dramatic effect, Rosa's stories are rich with exaggerated facial expressions and physical slapstick. Barks had over 600 Duck stories to his name while Rosa only created 85 until his eye trouble set in, but whereas Barks made many short one and two-pagers centered around a subtle, compact gag, Rosa's oeuvre consists almost exclusively of long adventure stories. Andrea "Bramo" Bramini identifies the following four differences between Barks's and Rosa's way of storytelling: Rosa follows a very strict continuity, while Barks paid very little attention to continuity between stories. Rosa's characterization of Scrooge is that of a much more sentimental person for often relishing his memories of past adventures. Barks situated his stories in the present day of when he was creating them and had a penchant for satire. Rosa strictly writes stories taking place in an era at least half a century prior to their creation, and mostly abstains from any political or social commentary. With his engineering degree, Rosa often goes to great lengths to give scientifically plausible explanations within his stories, whereas Barks never cared much for any detailed scientific rationalizations to his stories. Most of Rosa's stories have the letters D.U.C.K. hidden within either the first panel or, if Rosa has created the cover art, within the cover art itself. D.U.C.K. is a backronym for "Dedicated to Unca Carl from Keno" (Carl being Carl Barks and Keno being Rosa's given first name). Due to Disney's refusal to allow artists to sign their work, early Rosa dedications to Barks were deleted as they seemed to be a form of a signature. Later Rosa began hiding the dedication acronym from his editors in various and unlikely places within his drawings. Rosa has drawn covers for reprints of Carl Barks stories and has included his D.U.C.K. dedication within them as well. Another curiosity is his Hidden Mickeys. Rosa is only interested in creating stories featuring the Duck family, but he often hides small Mickey Mouse heads or figures in the pictures, sometimes in a humiliating or unwanted situation. An example of this is in the story The Terror of the Transvaal where a flat Mickey can be seen under an elephant's foot. Rosa has admitted to neither liking nor disliking Mickey Mouse, but being indifferent to him. In the story Attack of the Hideous Space-Varmints, the asteroid with Uncle Scrooge's money bin on it crashes into the Moon along with two missiles, creating a large Mickey Mouse head on the surface. When Huey, Dewey, and Louie tell Donald that the missiles hit the "dark" (far) side of the Moon, Donald is thankful no one is going to see it — "For a minute there, I thought we were going to have some legal problems." In the second Rosa story featuring The Three Caballeros, Donald Duck is shocked by the sight of a capybara standing on its hind legs, with shrubs, leaves and fruit in front of its body, coincidentally making it look like Mickey Mouse. José Carioca and Panchito Pistoles, never having seen Mickey Mouse, ask Donald what is wrong, but Donald replies he is just tired. Later in the same story, the Caballeros free several animals from a poacher. One panel shows the animals fleeing; Mickey can be seen among them. In The Quest for Kalevala this running gag can be seen on the original, Akseli Gallen-Kallela-inspired cover art. In the original work, Louhi is depicted as bare-chested, but the Disneyfied version has been drawn a top, of fabric patterned with Mickey Mouse heads. His work has won Rosa a great deal of recognition in the industry, including nominations for the Comics' Buyer's Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Heidi MacDonald of Comics Buyer's Guide also mentioned Rosa's 1994 story Guardians of the Lost Library as "possibly the greatest comic book story of all time". In 1995, Rosa was awarded the Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story for The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. In 1997 he won an Eisner for Best Artist/Writer – Humor Category. He was awarded the Inkpot Award in 2014. Rosa's story The Black Knight GLORPS Again! was nominated for the 2007 Eisner Award in the category Best Short Story. While The Prisoner of White Agony Creek, Rosa's latest Duck story to-date, was published in 2006, he was also nominated for the 2007 Harvey Awards in five categories (more than any other creator was that year) for his Uncle Scrooge comics: "Best Writer", "Best Artist", "Best Cartoonist", "Best Cover Artist", and "Special Award for Humor in Comics." In 2013 Rosa received the Bill Finger Award which recognizes excellence in comic book writing for writers who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition. International "Best Cartoonist of the Year" awards include: Germany: International Grand Prize 2005 (Frankfurt Book Fair). Denmark: ORLA Award (DR Television Network). Sweden: Svenska Serieakademins (Swedish Comics Academy). Seriefrämjandets Unghunden (Swedish Comics Association). Norway: Sproing Award (Norsk Tegneserieforum / Norwegian Comics Forum). Italy: Yambo Award (Lucca Comics Festival). 2005 Premio U Giancu's Prize (U Giancu & Rapallo Comics Festival). Spain: Haxtur Award (Gijon Comics Festival). In 1997 the Italian publishing house Editrice ComicArt published a lavish volume about Rosa's biography and work related to the Disney characters. It was titled Don Rosa e il Rinascimento Disneyano ("Don Rosa and the Disneyean Renaissance") and written by famous Disney and Rosa scholars, Alberto Becattini, Leonardo Gori and Francesco Stajano. This work not only discusses all of Rosa's creative life up to 1997, but it also gives a comprehensive biography, lists up to that date his Disney work and presents an extensive interview with Rosa. In 2009, Danish director Sebastian S. Cordes shot a 75-minute documentary called The Life and Times of Don Rosa, consisting of exclusive interviews with Rosa himself on his farm near Louisville, Kentucky. According to the project's Facebook group, the English-language DVD was released in Denmark on April 16, 2011. In 2011, Italian Disney fan forum papersera.net published Don Rosa: A Little Something Special (edited by Italian Rosa fan Paolo Castagno), a large folio format, bilingual (Italian and English) book about Rosa's life and work, containing interviews with Rosa and articles by many Italian and European Disney artists, Disney scholars, and established art critics commenting on Rosa's work and career, also including many exclusive, rare Rosa drawings and illustrations. The book was originally made as a gift by papersera.net for Rosa himself upon the occasion of Rosa's April 2011 visit to Turin, Italy. In 2017 the book, I Still Get Chills!, featuring text by German journalist Alex Jakubowski and photographs by Lois Lammerhuber, was published by Edition Lammerhuber in honour of Rosa's 66th birthday and the 70th anniversary of the first appearance of Scrooge McDuck. A feature documentary about Don Rosa and Scrooge McDuck by French director Morgann Gicquel titled The Scrooge Mystery was released in December 2017 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2018. The Don Rosa Classics — The Pertwillaby Papers The Don Rosa Classics — The Adventures of Captain Kentucky The Don Rosa Classics — The Early (So-Called) Art of Don Rosa The Don Rosa Library of Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color Vols. 1–8 The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion The Barks/Rosa Collection Vols. 1–3 Walt Disney Treasury: Donald Duck Vols. 1–2 Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: The Don Rosa Library Vols. 1–10 Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Artist's Edition Vols. 1–2 The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Vols. 1–2 Apart from the Don Rosa Collection in Germany and Don Rosas Samlade/Samlede Verk and Don Rosan kootut in the Nordic nations, the following collections only contain Rosa's work for Disney. List of Disney comics by Don Rosa Donaldism Donald Duck universe Clan McDuck List of people from the Louisville metropolitan area Don Rosa at Inducks Don Rosa at the Comiclopedia DuckMania German fansite Don-McDuck German fansite Duckhunt German fansite DuckMaster Finnish fansite Don Rosa about Don Rosa Life and Times of Don Rosa Documentary (2010) The Scrooge Mystery Documentary (2018) Don Rosa's official Facebook page

9. Winsor McCay (1867 - 1934)

With an HPI of 58.22, Winsor McCay is the 9th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 44 different languages.

Zenas Winsor McCay (c. 1866–1871 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–1914; 1924–1927) and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines. In 1903 he joined the New York Herald, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905 his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted—a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for twenty-two months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915 of the RMS Lusitania. Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films, and McCay's later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations. In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of linear perspective, particularly in detailed architecture and cityscapes. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching, and made color a central element in Little Nemo. His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay's animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until the work of Fleischer Studios in the late 1920s, followed by Walt Disney's feature films in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard.

10. Will Eisner (1917 - 2005)

With an HPI of 57.42, Will Eisner is the 10th most famous American Comic Artist. His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

William Erwin Eisner (; March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

People

Pantheon has 66 people classified as American comic artists born between 1863 and 1992. Of these 66, 34 (51.52%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American comic artists include Matt Groening, Don Rosa, and Frank Miller. The most famous deceased American comic artists include Stan Lee, Joseph Barbera, and Carl Barks. As of April 2024, 9 new American comic artists have been added to Pantheon including Rose O'Neill, Jim Starlin, and Peter Laird.