Ken Bald, Master Artist of the Golden Age of Comics
By Gary D. Rhodes
Born on August 1, 1920, Ken Bald was an American institution. Prior to his death at the age of 98 in 2019, The Guinness Book of World Records acknowledged him as the “oldest comic artist,” as well as the “oldest comic artist to illustrate a comic book cover.”
Beginning in 1946, Ken began a short, but illustrious career at Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel, illustrating the adventures of Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Destroyer, Venus, and the Blonde Phantom. In 1948, he co-created the characters Namora and Sun Girl.
Near the end of his life, comic historians and fans regularly asked Ken about his legendary career, focusing on the superheroes he brought to life in the Golden Age of comics, the same characters that have returned in the form of Hollywood blockbusters.
But Ken’s long and fascinating career encompassed far more than superheroes. For this interview, conducted in 2016, we discussed the Golden Age of horror comics, as well as his later work (under the pseudonym K. Bruce) on the Dark Shadows newspaper strip in 1971.
GARY D. RHODES: Before your days at Timely/Marvel, where did you get your start?
KEN BALD: I went from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where I graduated in 1941, May I think it was, and I went to Jack Binder Studios [that same year] with about eight to ten other guys from school. A fraternity brother had gone there a year before, and I was lucky enough that the art director hired me. He had this big large barn and that was our studio, and we were right across from a ball field. We’d take a lunch, and we’d work late at night. Sometimes there was a rough layout with several of us working on it, pencils, backgrounds, secondary features, lettering man, inker, and so forth.
[After working at Jack Binder, Ken illustrated for Fawcett and Street & Smith, drawing such characters as Captain Marvel, Captain Midnight, Doc Savage, and Bullet Man and Bullet Girl.]
GDR: Your first worked on horror comics at American Comics Group (ACG) in 1951. How did you get that job?
KB: It worked out well. I went to ACG in hopes of getting work, and they immediately gave me a couple of covers to do. I did most of their horror covers, their love stories, their military stories, and oh, some westerns too.
GDR: Do you remember the first horror comic cover you drew for them?
KB: I don’t remember all of the covers, to be honest, but I did them for several years.
GDR: Did you enjoy horror and ghost stories as a kid?
KB: Yes, I loved them. All of my five children, my wife, also love them. We don’t care for gore, but all of us like to be scared. And there’s one great-grandchild that likes them, too. So doing the horror comics was great fun.
GDR: What about horror movies? Your time at ACG came just after the heyday of Hollywood horror, Lugosi and Karloff and the rest.
KB: Oh, I loved them. I loved the B and B boys, as I called them, Bela and Boris. I saw them as a kid, like eleven or twelve years old. They were tremendous, really. My kids loved them too, at the drive-in movies. We’d take a station wagon loaded with kids to see them. Those were great times, great movies.
GDR: Most comic fans recall all of the great covers you did for Adventures into the Unknown, which was the first real horror comic series. Would ACG tell you what they needed for each cover? How specific were they?
KB: No, the editors there weren’t specific, but they would suggest a particular storyline in the comic that they might want on the cover, but usually they even left that up to me. I never had to show them pencils or even tell them in advance exactly what I was doing.
GDR: Along with Adventures into the Unknown, you also drew covers for ACG’s Forbidden Worlds, Out of the Night, and Skeleton Hand. Did those work the same?
KB: All of those titles worked pretty much the same. They left it up to me. Only a couple did they suggest something where they had a Frankenstein thing or something they really wanted, but most of the time they left everything up to me.
GDR: What were the people at ACG like?
KB: They were great to me. The owner, Ben Sangor, was wonderful, having my wife and I over for dinner at their place, which was near Central Park in New York, and we’d go out to dinner, and so, yes, they treated me well. Even their Christmas parties, which they held on Fridays. They were gracious… always made enough fish, since we were Catholic, and they always gave me a good Christmas present. I enjoyed their company. We had a good working relationship until my advertising work got so big, and that kept me busy. ACG paid well for what it was, but not enough. So I did move into commercial work.
GDR: What were the other artists at ACG like?
KB: I didn’t really meet the guys who were writing the stories or the other artists. I don’t remember them. The editors were great, the very best, like I said. The secretary was delightful, and they were all fine.
GDR: In general, it seems like you avoided using films as an inspiration and approached the characters in a very unique manner. There were a couple of exceptions, like the cover of Adventures into the Unknown 25 (November 1951), which has a Frankenstein Monster that resembles Karloff’s makeup. Forbidden Worlds 4 (February 1952) has a werewolf that’s a dead ringer for Lon Chaney. And Forbidden Worlds 6 (June 1952) is a King Kong clone climbing up the Empire State Building. But those were rare.
KB: I did a couple based on Boris’s Frankenstein or Chaney’s Wolf Man or so forth, but it was a definite thing on my part, trying to be different, and so I think only a couple I did were based on actual movies or sources like that. It was more that I was trying new approaches, trying to use my own imagination, than ACG telling me to avoid the likenesses of horror stars.
GDR: Along with vampires and werewolves, some of the other most common characters you drew for ACG were reanimated skeletons and ghouls. Did ACG ever say which were the most popular? And did you have any favorite characters?
KB: I don’t remember ACG talking about any particular characters, but my favorite were the half-bat, half-men that I drew. The Bat-Men I called them, like half bats and half humans, very different than anything you saw in films. I did draw more covers with the Bat-Men on them than with any others.
GDR: My own favorite is a particular ghoul you drew on several covers, specifically Adventures into the Unknown 27 (January 1952), Forbidden Worlds 7 (July 1952), Out of the Night 12 (January 1954), and Skeleton Hand 1. He’s really a memorable character. How did you come to think of him?
KB: I remember him! Yes, I did use him in several covers. He was just something I thought of, not something I’d seen before. He was really my idea of a zombie-like character, walking dead character.
GDR: In a few cases, it seems like the covers were trying to be current. The giant vampire spider on the cover Adventures into the Unknown 50 (December 1953) came when atomic insects were starting to appear in Hollywood. And Out of the Night 14 (May 1954) has a dinosaur coming right out of the screen in a movie theatre screen, a kind of spooky version of 3-D . Was this your idea?
KB: I guess that came from the writers, perhaps. The stories gave me the inspiration, really, so that was where it came from. Now, on Out of the Night 14, I went all out for that dinosaur. There are wings on him! [Laughing] That must have been inspired by one of the stories. But also what was happening at the movie theatres, the 3rd-Dimension stuff.
GDR: Your best remembered horror cover might well be Out of the Night 1 (February 1952). It really is one of the greatest comic covers ever. Do you remember drawing that one?
KB: That’s one with the car and another of my bat-men. I remember it! That worked out well. I love that. It has been popular, I guess, because I’ve recreated it for more than one person.
GDR: Your initial work in horror comics came not too long after your famous career at Timely/Marvel. Did you have a preference for superheroes or horror characters?
KB: I’ve been doing both for so many decades, and of course the superheroes are popular again. Looking back on everything, I enjoyed doing the horror stories comics as much as anything. I still prefer horror over the superheroes. I prefer the weird stuff, including the villains on the superhero covers. Course I loved Captain America, too!
GDR: Did you ever read the stories that accompanied your covers?
KB: I read some of them. Sometimes I didn’t have enough time. I definitely read the stories that the editors preferred for the covers, but that was rare.
GDR: What do you remember about the controversy over horror comics in the fifties?
KB: A lot of nonsense, but that doctor [Fredric Wertham] caused quite a bit of trouble. But by then, the middle fifties, I was practically out of business. The advertising pay was so much better.
GDR: Did you watch the Senate hearings on television about horror comics, or keep up with them in the press?
KB: Yes, I definitely kept up with it. You see, Stan Lee and I have been real good friends since the forties, when we met after I was in the Marines, and we used to travel. Every January, February, or March we used to go out to his home. Our wives have been friends for so long. And so even though I wasn’t working in comics, I was very interested in how Stan handled it, and I thought he did a fine job. We have seen Stan each other at Comic Cons in New York, Boston, and Baltimore.
GDR: Do you still stay in touch with Stan?
KB: Oh yes. We see each other at comic cons, but I don’t go to many any more, outside of New York and New Jersey. I need a cane or a walker to go any distance.
GDR: After ACG, your next major work in horror came with the cartoon strip of Dark Shadows. How did that come about?
KB: I was doing the Dr. Kildare strip, and the writer for it was Elliot Caplin, the brother of Al Capp [creator of Li’l Abner]. Dan Curtis [the producer of Dark Shadows] contacted Capp, and then he asked me to meet with Curtis, and so I signed for one year with him.
GDR: Were you a fan of the television show?
KB: Yes, I did like it. I think the only one who worked on the show that I didn’t meet was Jonathan Frid, and he wasn’t there, I think he was ill, when all of us got together in New York once.
GDR: How did the Dark Shadows strip work? Did they give you the narrative and dialogue in order to do the art, or just a vague idea of the story?
KB: They gave me a script for each day’s work and told me what the dialogue was, and described the action. Just a script, but no real directions on the art.
GDR: Did you enjoy doing it?
KB: Yes, I did, very much. But the problem was that I didn’t have a day off. For one year. Every single day. And I just didn’t make enough money at it. The strip did well in L.A. and New York and Chicago and Detroit and other big cities, but in the Bible Belt, the papers didn’t want a vampire hero.
GDR: Didn’t you design some movie posters?
KB: Yes, I did movie posters. Several. One with Alan Ladd and Edward G. Robinson, Hell on Frisco Bay [1955] And then I did a couple of Mario Lanza films, Serenade [1956], and I forget the other one. Those I actually have copies hanging in my studio. Back then they didn’t pay enough to continue. And I was a commercial artist. I had five kids, and so you need money, better than the posters or comics paid.
GDR: Did you prefer doing cartoon stips or comic book covers?
KB: I drew Dr. Kildare for over twenty years [from 1962 to 1984], and I was always trying to catch up with the script, always busy, when I wasn’t doing commercial art. That’s why I gave Dr. Kildare up. They got me for six months longer than I wanted and gave me a bonus. So, I guess I prefer doing comic covers.
GDR: You’ve had a major comeback in recent years, making news with The Guinness Book of World Records and appearing at many conventions. Did you ever think some of your early work would have such longevity?
KB: No, I didn’t. [Laughing.] It was just a way of making money, that’s all. Never crossed my mine, such longevity. [Laughing.] After all, I ended up making the most money in the latter years doing storyboards for commercials. They paid well. I made what we’re living on now from them.
[Among Ken’s memorable work for commercials was the first drawing of the AFLAC duck, as well as storyboards for the famous Coca-Cola Superbowl commercial with “Mean” Joe Greene.]
GDR: I know you still do some wonderful commissions for comic book fans.
KB: When I was 84 years old, fans in Germany, Belgium, France, and England began contacting me for commissions. And my son-in-law got enough requests that I started going to comic cons.
GDR: What are some of the most popular art commissions you get these days?
KB: Captain America is really popular. I recently did Sub-Mariner fighting a crocodile. In pencil. Sometimes the fans have another artist ink them, but keep the original pencil. I used to ink my artwork, but I just do pencils now. Mostly I do 11x14 of covers that I’ve done in the past. I’ve just done the first three Sun Girls, and also the first Venus cover. I’ve got more two more to do right now, including the first two Namora covers.
GDR: You’ve now been doing art for over seven decades. Do you plan to keep at it?
KB: Oh yes, I love it. I work a couple of days a week on commissions, sometimes more. You see, I’ve had a really great life, and it’s still great. And it’s wonderful to meet the fans who love these old comics so much.
Ken Bald passed away on March 17, 2019. The autbor would like to thank Rick Dee at Creative Juice for his kind assistance in arranging this interview.
