sheldon moldoff (; april 14, 1920 – february 29, 2012) was an american comics artist best known for his early work on the dc comics characters hawkman and hawkgirl, and as one of bob kane's primary 'ghost artists' (uncredited collaborators) on the superhero batman.he co-created the batman supervillains poison ivy, mr.freeze, the second clayface, and bat-mite, as well as the original heroes bat-girl, batwoman, and ace the bat-hound.moldoff is the sole creator of the black pirate.moldoff is not to be confused with fellow golden age comics professional sheldon mayer.'i was drawing in chalk on the sidewalk—popeye and betty boop and other popular cartoons of the day—and he came by and looked at it and said, 'hey, do you want to learn how to draw cartoons?'i said, 'yes!'he said, 'come on, i'll show you how to draw.''he was of jewish background.moldoff sold his first cartoon drawing at age 17.'my first work in comic books was doing filler pages for vincent sullivan, who was the editor at national periodicals', one of the three companies, with detective comics inc. and all-american publications, that eventually merged to form the modern-day dc comics.moldoff's debut was a sports filler that appeared on the inside back cover of the landmark action comics #1 (june 1938), the comic book that introduced superman.his work includes the first cover of the golden age green lantern, on issue #16 (july 1940) of all-american's flagship title all-american comics, featuring the debut of that character created by artist martin nodell.moldoff created the character black pirate (jon valor) in action comics #23 (april 1940), and became one of the earliest artists for the character hawkman (created by gardner fox and dennis neville, though sometimes misattributed to moldoff).moldoff drew the first image of the formerly civilian character shiera sanders in costume as hawkgirl in all star comics #5, based on neville's hawkman costume design.beginning with flash comics #4 (april 1940), moldoff became the regular hawkman artist, following neville's departure from the feature the issue before.he drew the hawkman portions of the justice society of america stories published in all star comics as well.moldoff recalled in 2000 that all-american publisher max gaines  ...took a shine to me....he's the one who said, 'we're going to put you on 'hawkman', and do whatever you want with it.do a good job; i know you can do it.'and that was it!...but when i looked at 'hawkman' and read a couple of stories, i said to myself, 'this has to be done in a[n alex] raymond style.'i could just feel it....i [had] saved [raymond flash gordon] sunday [comic strip] pages and the daily papers for years!... [gaines] liked my style; he liked the realism.we were competing with the newspapers.when he picked up the sunday papers, he saw flash gordon, prince valiant, terry and the pirates.when he picked up a comic book, there was a tremendous difference in the quality of the art.and then, all of a sudden, he saw me—an 18-year-old coming around, and i'm almost a student of raymond, and by god, the stuff looks good—it looks like raymond!we all leaned on these guys to learn—and we were very lucky, because while we were learning, we were selling the product...i spent a lot of time on it.i had books on anatomy and shadows and wrinkles; i studied, and i worked very hard on it, and i think it showed.drafted into world war ii military service in 1944, moldoff returned to civilian life in 1946, drawing for standard, fawcett, marvel and max gaines' ec comics.
sheldon moldoff | nationality | americans <tsp> black pirate | creator | sheldon moldoff <tsp> sheldon moldoff | award | inkpot award <tsp> black pirate | alternativename | jon valor
moldoff is the sole creator of the black pirate.moldoff created the character black pirate (jon valor) in action comics #23 (april 1940), and became one of the earliest artists for the character hawkman (created by gardner fox and dennis neville, though sometimes misattributed to moldoff).