Jerry Robinson passed away today, leaving behind a legendary body of work that includes the co-creation of Robin The Boy Wonder and The Joker, arguably the greatest villain to ever appear in a comic book.
Although those two characters alone outstrip the entire output of many creators, Robinson accomplished more in his long and celebrated career than toiling anonymously for Bob Kane.
With his good friend Mort Meskin, Robinson formed a studio that produced some of the Golden Age’s best work for such publishers as Better/Standard/Nedor and Spark.
He also wrote a near definitive history of comic strips and was a tireless advocate of creators rights, campaigning loudly for such hard-luck legends as Bill Finger and - most notably – Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
In tribute to Robinson, The Comics Journal has reposted its epic interview with the creator. The Time Bullet, for its part, is presenting the origin of one of Robinson’s more memorable – if short-lived – super-heroes, Atoman.
Although the comic, and its now-obscure publisher, didn’t last too long, Atoman apparently made enough of an impression on a young Steve Ditko to influence the original character design of this still active super-hero…
From Atoman Comics #1 (Spark Publications, February 1946), here’s “The Making Of The Mightiest Man!”
