Legenday Inker Joe Sinnott Passes Away

Farewell To A Master

Legendary comics inker Joe Sinnott just passed away and Tripwire’s senior editor Andrew Colman offers his tribute…

One of the industry’s most beloved and highly regarded inkers, Joe Sinnott passed away yesterday at the age of 93. Continually cited by fans and pencillers alike as the best at his craft during the Silver Age and beyond, Sinnott quickly found his place in the industry after serving in World War 2. After brief stints at other publishers, he arrived at Atlas Comics (Marvel’s Atom Age iteration) at the beginning of the 1950s and was immediately given work by Editor Stan Lee.

Like many artists at Atlas throughout the era, Sinnott worked across all genres, from horror, science-fiction, adventure, to war and western, developing his style while attending art school, a short bus ride from the Marvel offices downtown. Due to downsizing brought on by the Atlas Implosion in the late 1950s, Sinnott was briefly let go by publisher Martin Goodman from the company, before returning to ink the classic pre-hero monster stories in titles such as Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish. By 1960 he tentatively began his celebrated collaboration with Marvel’s co-creator Jack Kirby, the artist he is consistently identified with – in Journey into Mystery 58 and Tales to Astonish 10. Two years later he inked Kirby’s work on the seminal Fantastic Four 5, featuring the first appearance of the group’s arch-enemy, Dr. Doom. Despite being immediately taken by the book and Kirby’s efforts, circumstances prevented him from becoming the series’ regular.

By 1963, Sinnott, who was still moonlighting at other companies, had already inked the first appearance of Thor in Journey into Mystery 83, when he both pencilled and finished five issues of the title – a rare bit of illustration for Marvel. By 1965, as luck would have it, Sinnott returned to the Fantastic Four with number 44, inking Kirby’s pencils for the following 58 issues. Although the title had already picked up a head of steam prior to his tenure, Sinnott was around for the key period of the book, which introduced some of the best and most historically important characters from Marvel – the Inhumans, Silver Surfer, Galactus, Black Panther, Him (later Warlock) and many others. His beautifully delineated and painstaking work, using layered inks to add depth, became a touchstone of the company’s iconography, with Kirby and Sinnott’s work from this time ending up on sought-after black light posters, as well as plenty of other merchandise.

Along with his Fantastic Four run, Sinnott also inked John Buscema’s pencils for another Marvel classic – Silver Surfer 1. In the 1970s, “Joltin” Joe Sinnott, as he was known in the bullpen bulletin pages of Marvel books (alliterative nicknames were mandatory back then) continued to ink many titles in the publisher’s catalogue, until his retirement from the company in 1992 (DC never managed to poach him back, like they did with Kirby). He still worked on Marvel’s Spider-Man in a Sunday strip, while taking commissions from fans – never fully retiring from inking or illustrating, he worked until the end of his life, regularly attending conventions as one of fandom’s favourites among Marvel alumni. An unassuming man who always had time for the fans, Sinnott was one of the last surviving Marvel legends and a cornerstone of the publisher. He will be hugely missed.