The Daily Cartoonist reports veteran comic book writer and editor Sid Jacobson died on Saturday, July 23, aged 92. According to his son Seth, “He went peacefully after suffering a major stroke during a seemingly mild bout of Covid.” Jacobson, whose credits included a three-decade stint as an editor at Harvey Comics, was best known in later life for authoring non-fiction graphic novels like “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation,” and “Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography,” with the late Ernie Colón.
Sidney Jacobson was born into a Russian Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, on October 20, 1929. He majored in journalism at New York University, and joined Harvey Comics in 1952, where he oversaw classic children’s comics like “Richie Rich,” “Casper the Friendly Ghost,” and “Sad Sack.” He also penned satirical, adult-aimed titles outside Harvey, like “The Colored Negro Black Comic Book” (drawn by Colón, whom he met at Harvey), and “The JFK Comic Book,” as well as the Jewish superhero strip “Captain Israel and Boychick,” which he wrote under the pseudonym Eric Reuben.
When Harvey closed up shop in 1982, Jacobson moved to Marvel Comics, where he was appointed editor of the children’s imprint Star Comics. While at the company, he wrote graphic novelizations of movies like Santa Claus: The Movie, Labyrinth, and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Star folded by 1988, and Jacobson returned to the revived Harvey in the early ’90s, where he headed up a line of comics based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Jacobson and Colón reteamed on “The 9/11 Report,” a graphic representation of the 9/11 Commission Report, in 2006, and subsequently created “After 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2001- ),” “Che: A Graphic Biography,” “Vlad the Impaler: The Man Who Was Dracula,” and “Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography.” Their last book together, before Colón’s death in 2019, was “The Torture Report,” an adaptation of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 examination of the CIA’s use of torture.
As well as comics, Jacobson was also a songwriter, penning lyrics for the likes of Frankie Avalon and Johnny Mathis, and branched into animation in 1967, co-creating the obscure, syndicated sci-fi series Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero. He wrote the 1985 prose novel Streets of Gold, a fictionalized history of his family’s immigration story, and 1989’s Depression era tale Another Time, as well as 2004’s biography Pete Reiser: The Rough-and-Tumble Career of the Perfect Ballplayer.
Jacobson was recognized during his lifetime with an Inkpot Award in 2003. He is survived by his two children, Seth and Kathy; you can read their remembrances of their father respectively at Legacy.com, and on Facebook.
