Charles Biro

Charles Biro (; May 12, 1911 – March 4, 1972) was an American comic book creator and cartoonist. He created the comic book characters Airboy and Steel Sterling, and worked on Daredevil Comics and Crime Does Not Pay at Lev Gleason Publications.

Biography A New York native, Charles Biro graduated from Stuyvesant High School before studying art at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art and the Grand Central School of Art. He joined the Harry "A" Chesler Shop c. 1936. Working in the multiple roles of writer, artist and later supervisor at one of the earliest comics packaging art studios, Biro moved from the Chesler Shop in 1939 to take up similar roles at MLJ Comics. and Sgt. Boyle, before moving to Lev Gleason Publications, for whom he would work for the next 15 years. Chandler is described by Joe Brancatelli as "a hero, yes, but first a boy... arguably the best-handled boy's adventure feature ever to appear in comics."

Joe Brancatelli, in Maurice Horn's The World Encyclopedia of Comics (2nd ed.) described the pre-Biro Daredevil as "Gleason's top seller and a fine superhero concept in its own right... created by Don Rico and Jack Binder", swiftly taken over by Biro, who then performed a "miraculous job" with the title, through which his "real talent became known."

Biro was joined by writer-artist Basil Wolverton and Dick Briefer in Daredevil Comics.

In October 1955, he wrote and illustrated the first of around 13 issues of a weekly humor book entitled Poppo of the Popcorn Theatre for Fuller, which was "virtually ignored." The title had an instant effect on the marketplace, and is described in The Comic Buyer's Guide Standard Catalog of Comic Books as "the comic book that got the entire crime comics genre rolling—and may have unwittingly contributed to the formation of the Comics Code years later." ), who worked together regularly.

Part of "the allure of the series" was due to Biro's narrator, "Mr. Crime" (a prototype for the more famous EC Comics "GhouLunatic" trio).

The series immediately spawned a plethora of imitators, but "hroughout its run, Crime Does Not Pay was always the best-written, best-illustrated, and best-edited crime title, and it was always the best-selling title, as well." Although it can arguably be said to have been a major factor in the comics witchhunts of the 1950s, it is fair to note that it stood apart from its more tawdry imitators:

Indeed, Brancatelli claims that "for several years during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Boy, Daredevil and Crime Does Not Pay [all Biro-edited and -written titles, largely under Biro covers] were the three best-selling titles in a comic field of over 400 competitors."

Later life and career After parting company with Gleason in 1956, Biro "left the field for television," moving into the field of graphic design. He was employed for the last ten years of his life by NBC as a graphic artist between 1962 and 1972. During the late 1960s, he became curious about a comic book convention and walked from NBC over to the convention hotel. When convention staffers realized who he was, he was handed a microphone and spoke spontaneously about his career for 20 minutes.

He died on March 4, 1972, and was nominated for induction into the Eisner Hall of Fame in both 1998 and 2000, before being formally inducted in 2002.

Quotes Joe Brancatelli (1999):