Charles J. "Jerry" Grandenetti (April 15, 1926 – February 19, 2010) was an American comic book artist and advertising art director, best known for his work with writer-artist Will Eisner on the celebrated comics feature "The Spirit", and for his decade-and-a-half run on many DC Comics war series. He also co-created the DC comic book Prez with Joe Simon. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 drawing Jet Pilot is based on a Grandenetti comic-book panel on the cover of DC's All-American Men of War #89 (cover-dated Feb. 1962), and Lichtenstein's 1964 triptych "As I Opened Fire" is based on panels by Grandenetti in "Wingmate of Doom" in issue #90 (April 1962). Biography Early life and career Grandenetti was born in the village of Bronxville in the town of Eastchester, New York, a suburb of New York City. While some biographies claim he studied art and architectural drawing at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later named the School of Visual Arts), in Manhattan, Grandenetti confirmed in a 2008 interview that, “No, I never went to the Cartoonist's. I did go to the Pratt Institute” following his World War II military service. Grandenetti joined the U.S. Navy "in 1942 or 1943", he recalled, and after the war attended Brooklyn's Pratt Institute on the G.I. Bill. In either 1946 or 1948 (accounts differ), he was making the rounds of comic-book companies and met Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, publisher of Quality Comics. Arnold had no position for him but sent Grandenetti to Will Eisner, writer-artist of the Sunday-newspaper comic-book section starring Eisner's celebrated character the Spirit. Grandenetti hired on as an art assistant. As The Comics Journal editor-publisher Gary Groth wrote, "By the late '40s, Eisner's participation in the strip had dwindled to a largely supervisory role. ... Eisner hired Jerry Grandenetti and Jim Dixon to occasionally ink his pencils. By 1950, [Jules] Feiffer was writing most of the strips, and Grandenetti, Dixon, and Al Wenzel were drawing them", with Grandenetti penciling as a ghost-artist, under Eisner's byline. "Working for Eisner was exciting", Grandenetti recalled in 2005. "Although there was no such thing as teaching or showing you how to develop your craft. ... Before [the feature's] demise he tried everything. Had me penciling 'The Spirit'. Later on it was Wally Wood", who drew it through to its end in 1952, "but nothing could save 'The Spirit'! Sad, too. It was probably the greatest comic