Carl Wessler

Carroll O. Wessler (May 25, 1913 – April 9, 1989), better known as Carl Wessler, was an American animator of the 1930s and a comic book writer from the 1940s though the 1980s for such companies as DC Comics, EC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Warren Publishing.

Wessler was one of at least five staff writers (officially titled editors) under editor-in-chief Stan Lee at Marvel's 1950s forerunner, Atlas Comics.

Biography Early life and career Wessler began as an animator in the 1930s, working on Musical Memories and other theatrical cartoon short films for the Fleischer Studios in New York City. The studio fired him on March 30, 1937, for labor union organizing; after a subsequent strike by studio staff, lasting from May 7 to October 13 of that year, the studio settled, and Wessler and others were rehired. Wessler followed Fleischer when it relocated to Florida the following year.

While continuing to work as an animator, Wessler began doing freelance art for comic books in 1943, through the studio Sangor-Hughes, a packager that produced outsourced comics for publishers entering the then-new medium.

Atlas and EC Wessler began writing for Atlas Comics in November 1950 with the six-page story "The Mad Monk" about the historical figure Grigori Rasputin, published in Amazing Detective Cases #6 (May 1951). He soon became Atlas' primary crime fiction writer, often scripting entire issues of All-True Crime, Amazing Detective Cases, Crime Can't Win, Crime Exposed, Crime Must Lose, Justice, and Kent Blake of the Secret Service. Going on staff in 1952, he became a member of the Atlas bullpen with fellow writers Hank Chapman, Ernie Hart, Paul S. Newman, Don Rico and, on teen humor comics, future Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee. Wessler wrote horror/fantasy stories for such titles as Adventures into Terror, Adventures into Weird Worlds, Astonishing, Mystic, and Suspense, later adding to his body of work such war comics as Battle, Battle Action, Battlefield, Combat, and Men's Adventures. As well, in the 1960s, his work appears in a range of titles including Charlton Comics' Billy the Kid, DC Comics' American Revolutionary War-era adventure series Tomahawk, and Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.

At DC Comics, Wessler wrote numerous stories for the supernatural-fantasy anthologies Ghosts, House of Mystery, The Unexpected, and The Witching Hour from 1967 to 1985. He contributed additional stories to Eerie, and returned to his old home at the former Atlas, now Marvel Comics, with work appearing in Giant-Size Chillers vol. 2, #1 (Feb. 1975), and in the black-and-white horror-comics magazine Tales of the Zombie #7 and 10 (Sept. 1974 and March 1975). His last recorded credit is the story "Hellfire by Night" in G.I. Combat #278 (July 1985). Wessler was a resident of Miami, Florida, when he died on April 9, 1989.