Howard Chaykin

Howard Chaykin started at nineteen as a gofer for Gil Kane, then assisted Wally Wood, Neal Adams and Gray Morrow before turning professional in 1971. He drew Marvel's comics adaptation of the first Star Wars film and Denny O'Neil's DC adaptation of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and he created Dominic Fortune and Cody Starbuck. American Flagg!, which he wrote and largely drew for First Comics from 1983, brought him and the book seven Eagle Awards between them in 1984 and fixed his reputation for dense, satirical science fiction. The four Shadow issues DC published between May and August 1986, collected as Blood and Judgment, are his own script and art: they pull the pulp avenger out of the 1930s into contemporary New York, hand him a pair of Uzis and play the result as black comedy, which divided the character's older readership sharply. Chaykin also worked in television, on The Flash, Mutant X and Earth: Final Conflict, and was voted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2022.