Ernesto Colón Sierra (July 13, 1931 – August 8, 2019) was a stateside Puerto Rican comics artist, known for his wide-ranging career illustrating children's, superhero, and horror comics, as well as mainstream nonfiction. Early life Colón was born July 13, 1931, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Ernesto Colón, a police detective, and Isabel Sierra, a textile worker and bank teller. He has eight siblings, all sisters. Raised in the mainland US from age 10, he listed among his early influences the newspaper adventure-strip writer-artists Milton Caniff and Will Eisner, and the lighthearted 1940s Fawcett Comics superhero Captain Marvel, saying, ”I never enjoyed superheroes – with the exception of the early Captain Marvel. That character had humor and didn't take itself as seriously as all the other snarling, furious products of DC and Marvel,” Colón said in 2011. He attended high school at what was then New York City's School of Industrial Art. Career 1950s to 1970s In 1955, cartoonist Ham Fisher hired Colón to ink backgrounds on the long-running comic strip Joe Palooka, an assignment that ended after approximately one month following Fisher's suicide that December. Colón began his career in earnest at Harvey Comics, recalling in 2011, Working uncredited at Harvey Comics for much of that time, Colón met editor Sid Jacobson, who became his frequent creative partner. Colón' earliest attributed work appears in two comics each cover-dated December 1960: the 15-page story "Spellbound" in Harvey's The Friendly Ghost, Casper #28, and, in a one-off for Archie Comics, the two-page featurette "Madhouse Stamps for Teens" in Archie's Madhouse #9. In addition to much work for Harvey in the 1960s and 1970s, Colón also drew and possibly wrote the two-page story "Kaleidoscope of Fear" in Wham-O Giant Comics #1 (April 1967), published by the toy company Wham-O). drew three issues of Gold Key Comics' Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom (#24–26, July 1968–Jan. 1969), and contributed to Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. Under the pen name Jack Purcell, he drew and lettered a story for rival Skywald Publications' Psycho #3 (May 1971). In 1979, he collaborated with writer Roger McKenzie on an adaptation of Battlestar Galactica for Marvel Comics. 1980s-on At DC Comics, Colón co-created the historical fantasy Arak, Son of Thunder with writer Roy Thomas, with the character introduced in a special insert in The Warlord #48 (Aug. 1981). Two years later,