I was saddened earlier today to read of the passing of veteran comic book and strip artist Tom Gill at the age of 92. If you go over to Mark Evanier’s site you’ll find a much better written and researched obit on Mr. Gill. What I have here was actually written for a recent mailing of the comics apa Capa-Alpha dealing with the western genre.

Tom Gill was one of the nicest gentlemen, in or out of the industry, that I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with. He was genuinely happy to chat with fans, both old and young. When I met him he was already in his eighties, but was still capable of doing some very nice sketches of the Lone Ranger and associated characters. I’m lucky enough to own several and would never think of parting with them.

My deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and hundreds of fans.
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Back when I was attending just about every NYC con (back in an other life) I often had the opportunity to chat with the Silver Age artist Tom Gill (best known as the artist on Dell’s LONE RANGER and other western titles, but also the artist for Gold Key’s short-lived attempt to bring back the super-hero THE OWL during the 1960s). Mr. Gill had retired from doing comics and was at the time teaching art at a New York college. He generally would set up his table at these conventions, doing sketches and signing prints of his Lone Ranger art for several dollars a piece. He’d also take requests for larger or personalized sketches which he would mail to you upon completion. As he became more comfortable around me, he would sometimes allow me to sit at his table while he took breaks or went to visit with other artists at the convention. The stories he had to tell about working for Dell/Gold Key and the different editors & writers with whom he worked were fascinating and I now regret not getting some of those tales on tape or video.

{Aside: I was able to buy copies of both issues of THE OWL to have Mr. Gill sign. He glanced through them and told me a theory he had about artists. He claimed that you could tell when an artist was getting too old to be interested in women by looking at how he would draw them during his career. When the heroine started to look matronly it was a clear sign that interest lagged. After noting how OWL GIRL looked, he remarked that he must have still been interested at the time he drew her.)

During one memorable convention Tom was able to share a table with the extremely prolific Paul S. Newman. Mr. Gill had drawn dozens of scripts written by Newman, but neither could remember ever actually meeting face to face until years later. Back then, as you all know, it was more typical of artists to come into the editorial office to drop off one assignment and pick up whatever was next scheduled. It was different from the collaboration that became standard at Marvel, or the way in which most creators work in today’s industry.

At the con, both men were selling & signing the item that I’ve reprinted here. I apologize for the faintness of the reproduction on the art, but I was trying to save a few bucks on copying. I’ve scanned the art (photocopies of the comic itself) and will send the individual pages as attachments to anybody interested. My goal was to show how Gill interpreted the script and to show the corrections and changes made to the script in Mr. Newman’s own hand.

Personally I think the script is a great example of the type of short tales that filled the back pages of hundreds of Silver Age westerns. There really isn’t anything extraordinary about the story, but you do get to see the Ranger & Tonto in action.

Gill and Newman did hundreds of pages of this type of thing for years, with both being the main artist & writer respectively on the main Lone Ranger feature and the various spin-off tales involving Silver or Tonto in solo adventures. I had to wonder if Newman would recycle his stories, changing the names of characters and placing them in similar situations months or years later, but didn’t feel I was comfortable asking him such a question. Given the thousands of scripts he must have cranked out it probably would not have been beyond the realm of possibility.

It’s unfortunate that the last few incarnations of the Ranger haven’t been what we fans would have liked. DC’s “Dark Ranger” was interesting, but I don’t consider it the real LR, rather an alternate reality version. The latest television film and doomed pilot took so many liberties with the legend that it too really wasn’t my idea of the real LR. Why, for instance was the family name changed from Reed? Surely this wouldn’t have anything to do another company having the rights to the Green Hornet, would it?