Happy Birthday to comic book artist Don Perlin, born August 27, 1929.
The reward for reaching age 90 is The Daily Cartoonist Senior Strippers Plaque:
No, wait! There is no such Daily Cartoonist honor, that’s Don getting
the National Cartoonists Society’s divisional Comic Book Award in 1997.
Don began his comic book career about 70 years ago;
and since has worked for most of the major companies across all genres.
Perhaps most famously being the artist that introduced Moon Knight to the world.
Don did work for National Lampoon, for a while.
Though his NatLamp association didn’t end well:
Joe Orlando put me onto that magazine…National Lampoon. I did a number of stories for them and then one time they called me up and wanted to give me a story called “The Kennedy They Couldn’t Kill.” It was a spoof of the Kennedy family and I figured it would be okay. Politicians are supposed to have thick skins. So I went down there and I got the script and I took it home and read it and I discovered it wasn’t about any of the Kennedy politicians. It was about the sister that was retarded. They wanted to portray her with the hanging down stockings and all, and I couldn’t get into it. I said, “No”. I thought this story would be poking fun at politicians, but this was a woman with problems and not a very happy life. I turned it back in and told them I couldn’t do it. They took it back and never spoke to me again.
Tom Batiuk even got Don to do a couple Sunday comic strip pages.
Lambiek and Wikipedia have much more about Don.
Don’s Facebook page recently updated a photo,
which makes me second guess that Don Karlen’s profile birth date of August 21, 1929 may be correct.
Either way, we wish Don a very Happy Birthday.
