Photo by Luigi Novi
Per her agency Catskill Comics, veteran comics artist Ramona Fradon passed away yesterday, aged 97. The news comes shortly after Fradon, who had remained active as an artist, continuing to take commissions from fans and create covers for DC, announced her retirement at the start of the year. Fradon was one of the few women active as an artist during the Golden Age of Comic Books, and was best known for her work at DC Comics and on “Brenda Starr, Reporter,” including creating the superheroes Aqualad, Fire, and Metamorpho.
Fradon was born Ramona Dom in Chicago on October 2, 1926, and grew up in New York’s Westchester County. Her father, Peter Dom, was a commercial letterer and logo designer, who encouraged her to go to art school. She studied at Parsons School of Design, and married New Yorker cartoonist Dana Fradon in 1948. Mr. Fradon encouraged her to go into comics, and she made her debut in 1949 with the DC title “Gang Busters,” a series based on the true crime radio program of the same name.
She was assigned Aquaman’s adventures in “Adventure Comics,” which she would pencil for a whole decade from 1951 to 1961. Over the course of her run, Aquaman’s origin story was revamped, establishing his real name as Arthur Curry, while characters like his parents Tom and Atlanna, the octopus sidekick Topo, and the original Aqualad (Garth) were introduced. She would continue to draw Arthur’s series, which moved to the pages of “World’s Finest Comics,” from 1962 to 1964.
She and Bob Haney introduced Metamorpho (Rex Mason), the Element Man, in 1965’s “The Brave and the Bold” #57. The character, who was conceived as a self-parody of DC’s more bizarre characters, proved popular enough to gain his own series. That year also saw Fradon draw a Batman/Green Lantern story in “Brave and the Bold,” which marked the first appearance of a Batman team-up in the title. However, she decided to leave comics to focus on raising her daughter, leaving the solo “Metamorpho” comic after four issues.
Fradon returned to comics in 1972, taking on work for Marvel as well as DC; however, she only penciled “Fantastic Four” #133, and an unpublished issue of “The Cat” (starring the character who later became Tigra), stating she was “totally confounded” by the Marvel method of drawing from story outlines instead of full scripts. Back at DC, she drew “House of Mystery,” “House of Secrets,” “Plastic Man,” “Freedom Fighters,” and the “Super Friends” tie-in series, which she worked on for most of its run from 1977 to 1981. There, she became the first artist to draw the Wonder Twins in a comic, and introduced the first version of Fire (Beatriz da Costa).
In 1980, she took over as artist on the “Brenda Starr” comic strip. She worked from creator Dale Messick’s scripts for the first two years, and continued running it until 1995 with his successors Linda Sutter and Mary Schmich. She also went back to college in 1980, to study psychology and ancient religions at New York University. Her later work included contributions to the 2010 graphic novel “The Adventures of Unemployed Man,” 2012’s “The Dinosaur That Got Tired of Being Extinct,” and a pair of “SpongeBob Comics” issues from 2011 to 2013 (where she applied her experience with Aquaman to Mermaid Man.)
Ramona was married to Dana Fradon until their divorce in 1982. She was recognized during her lifetime with an Inkpot Award in 1995, and an induction into the Eisner Awards’ Hall of Fame in 2006. Her passing has prompted much mourning on social media, with Gail Simone, Ron Marz, Jerry Ordway, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jeff Parker, Brittany Holzherr, Chris Ryall, Joe Illidge, Francesco Francavilla, Zack Davisson, and Zach Rabiroff among those paying tribute to her. Simone described her as a “brilliant artist, lovely human being,” and a “champion to the end,” while Marz commented the word “‘legend’ is thrown around too much,” but it was entirely appropriate in her case. Catskill Comics states condolences can be sent to Fradon’s family via the address Catskill Comics “Fradon Family,” Po Box 264, Glasco, NY 12432.
