Number 571


The doctor is in!


Sometime in the mid-1970s my friend, Del, drove over 40 miles from his home to show me something he had bought. "I've found an undiscovered Will Eisner story! He was drawing another character under a pen-name, Jerry Grandenetti!" he announced, showing me a copy of Fiction House's The Monster #1.

Poor Del. He wouldn't have bought the comic had he known the story was not by Eisner. Del was a bit of an art snob, only collecting artists he thought were the very top of the comics A-list: Raymond, Foster, Eisner, the EC comics artists, etc. I had to tell him it wasn't Eisner, and that Jerry Grandenetti was indeed a real person using his real name. It was worth it to break his heart, because he sold me that copy of The Monster for what he paid, $2.50.

Jerry Grandenetti had quite a comic book career, including a stint as one of Will Eisner's assistants on The Spirit. As far as I'm concerned he's on the comics A-list I keep in my head.

The story, reprinted in The Monster #1, 1953, originally appeared in Rangers Comics #48, 1949.