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Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.95: CC Beck

Published

5 years ago

July 30, 2021

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No.95: CC Beck

Arriving at Fawcett Publications in the early 1930s, C.C. Beck was assigned to a character called Captain Marvel (originally Captain Thunder) in Whiz Comics when the publisher moved into comics in 1939. Words: Andrew Colman…

From the beginning, the artist brought a clean, slightly cartoony style to the strip, which belied his skills as a draughtsman and above all, a storyteller. After a couple of years, the company had added several more titles to their roster – Captain Marvel Adventures, Captain Marvel Jr, Mary Marvel, Master Comics and the Marvel Family.

Within a few years, he became Fawcett’s artistic director, with all the aforementioned titles coming under his auspices – effectively, with the exception of Mac Raboy’s Captain Marvel Jr and Master Comics, he was the house artist of the publisher. His warm, laid-back pencils became as key to the characters as anything else, which coupled with the light stories aimed at a younger demographic, proved to be staggeringly popular for comics’ wartime readership, outselling, much to their chagrin (and the reason for so many lawsuits filed from them) National’s Superman titles.

Despite being somewhat overlooked by Golden Age collectors, Beck’s deceptively pared down style was of a very high and consistent standard for the era, with many of his covers and interiors superb examples of virtuoso illustration and composition, echoing to a small extent the works of Barks and Herge. One of the old-school masters.