under the jokey pseudonym E. Lectron) in Smash Comics; "Uncle Sam" (for which Eisner & Iger co-founder Will Eisner received credit) in National Comics; and "Stormy Foster" in Hit Comics. Fine became particularly prominent as a cover artist. Fine, along with Plastic Man creator Jack Cole, was a ghost artist on Will Eisner's celebrated Sunday-supplement newspaper comic book The Spirit during Eisner's World War II military service, Fine inking over Cole's pencil work. Some of these were reprinted in Quality's Police Comics and The Spirit comic book, where Fine's work continued to appear through 1949, five years after Fine had left comics. Joe Simon, an artist and the first editor of Marvel Comics, called Fine his "favorite artist.... He was also Jack Kirby's favorite artist. I know that Jack was a fan of and greatly influenced by Fine's work". Fine is credited with being the first comics artist to draw a line of saliva running between the upper and lower teeth in a character's open mouth (a device commonly associated with Kirby). Advertising and comic strips Leaving comic books in 1944, Fine segued into newspapers by drawing Sunday advertising comics. Starting out at Johnstone and Cushing, he formed his own company with Don Komisarov, whom he had met doing The Throp Family for Liberty in 1946. He had many accounts, but his two most enduring were the series he did for Philip Morris USA and the Sam Spade strip for Wildroot Cream-Oil. He later drew the comic strips Taylor Woe (1949), Adam Ames (1959) and Peter Scratch (1965). In a single return to comic books, he contributed to a toy company's custom one-shot, Wham-O Giant Comics (1967), illustrating a two-page story, "The Man From Aeons", starring a prehistoric man who, though named "Tor", was not the same-name caveman character created in the 1950s by Joe Kubert. Fine also worked on the strip Space Conquerors in the magazine Boys' Life from the late 1960s until his death. He and writer Gill Fox, whom he had met during his time with Eisner & Iger and remained in contact with, were developing new comic strips when Fine was found dead of a heart attack in his studio. Later life By the late 1960s, Fine lived in Lido Beach, New York, on Long Island, owning two houses there. Collections Fine's Spirit work has been reprinted in DC Comics' hardcover collections The Spirit Archives vols.