Martin Nodell

Martin Nodell (; November 15, 1915 – December 9, 2006) was an American cartoonist and commercial artist, best known as the creator of the Golden Age superhero Green Lantern. Some of his work appeared under the pen name Mart Dellon.

Biography Early life Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Nodell was the son of Jewish immigrants. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago. When he was 18 years old, he moved to New York City, where he attended Pratt Institute.

As Nodell himself described in 2000:

The first adventure, drawn by Nodell (as Mart Dellon) and written by Bill Finger, appeared in All-American Comics #16 (July 1940). Nodell continued to use the pseudonym through at least All Star Comics #2 (Fall 1940). He said in 2000 he had used the pen name since, "Comics were a forbidden literature, culturally unacceptable. It wasn't something you were proud of." Nodell penciled and virtually always self-inked Green Lantern stories in All-American and All Star until the character got his own title, the premiere issue cover-dated July 1941. He would continue with it through to #25 (May 1947), very rarely drawing the covers, before being succeeded by a variety of artists including Howard Purcell, Irwin Hasen, and Alex Toth.

Timely Comics

Nodell left All-American in 1947 and joined Timely Comics, the 1930s–40s forerunner of Marvel Comics, where he drew postwar stories of Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner. His work there was rarely signed, making identification difficult, though comics historians have confirmed that Nodell drew two well-known covers: the first issue of Marvel Tales, Timely's horror-comics revamp of the company's flagship series Marvel Mystery Comics; and the penultimate issue (#74) of Captain America's book, which for its last two issues became the horror-oriented Captain America's Weird Tales.

Post-1950s career In 1950, Nodell left comics to work in advertising and later joined the Leo Burnett Agency in Chicago as an art director. In 1965, Nodell's design team developed the long-running flour-company mascot the Pillsbury Doughboy.

His only known comics work in the interim are penciling the story "The Glistening Death" in the Avon Comics one-shot City of the Living Dead (1952), reprinted two decades later in the Skywald horror-comics magazine Psycho #1 (Jan. 1971); and "Master of the Dead" in Avon's Eerie (1951 series) #14, reprinted in Skywald's Nightmare #1 (Dec. 1970). and a one-page illustration of Scott and Superman in the one-shot Superman: The Man of Steel Gallery #1 (Dec. 1995). At 80, Nodell penciled his final comic-book work, the whimsical, 10-page Harlan Ellison adaptation "Gnomebody", scripted by John Ostrander and Ellison and inked by Jedediah Hotchkiss, in Dark Horse Comics' Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor Quarterly #1 (Aug. 1996).

Personal life Nodell met his future wife, Carrie, at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, in September 1940. They were married December 1, 1941, and afterward moved to Huntington, Long Island, to move in with Nodell's brother Simon, an engineer at Republic Aviation. They lived there for two years before moving back to Brooklyn, New York City. Nodell died on December 9, 2006, in a nursing home in Muskego, Wisconsin, of natural causes at the age of 91. They had two sons: Spencer, who lived in Waukesha, Wisconsin at the time of his father's death, and Mitchell.

Awards Nodell received the Inkpot Award in 1986. In 2011, Nodell was nominated as a Judges' Choice for The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.