Ramona Fradon

Ramona Dom Fradon (; October 2, 1926 – February 24, 2024) was an American comics artist known for her work illustrating Aquaman and Brenda Starr, Reporter, and co-creating the superhero Metamorpho. Her career began in 1950 and lasted until her retirement in January 2024.

Early life Ramona Dom was born on October 2, 1926, in Chicago to Irma H. (née Haefeli) and Peter Dom, whose family name was shortened from Dombrezian. Her father was Armenian and her mother was Swiss. When she was five, the family moved to New York and she grew up on the outskirts of New York City in Westchester County. Her father was a well known commercial lettering man and designed logos for Elizabeth Arden, Camel, and Lord & Taylor as well as the typeface Dom Casual. Fradon also had an older brother and uncle in the lettering business. Her brother worked as a technician for the Air Corps overseas and eventually died of alcoholism. Her mother fell ill and died in 1952. She never read comic books growing up but she had a love for newspaper strips. Fradon's father was the one that encouraged her to go to art school.

Career 1959–1965 Ramona Fradon broke into the industry just after graduating from the Parsons School of Design. Soon after she left art school, she married her husband, New Yorker cartoonist Dana Fradon, who encouraged her to try cartooning. Comic-book letterer George Ward, a friend of her husband, Her first regular assignment was illustrating an Adventure Comics backup feature starring Aquaman. This included a revamping of the character for the Silver Age of Comics in Adventure Comics #260 (May 1959). Alongside said revamp, she and writer Robert Bernstein co-created the sidekick Aqualad in Adventure Comics #269 (February 1960).

Following her time with Aquaman, Fradon returned to co-create Metamorpho. She drew the characters to try-out appearances in The Brave and the Bold and the first four issues of the eponymous series and returned briefly to design a few covers for the title. She later commented, "I think [writer Bob Haney and I] both felt that Metamorpho was our baby. I never had an experience like I had working with Bob Haney on Metamorpho. It was like our minds were in perfect synch ... it was one of those wonderful collaborations that doesn't happen very often." Fradon drew The Brave and the Bold #59 (April–May 1965), a Batman/Green Lantern team-up, the first time that series featured Batman teaming with another DC superhero.

Bob Haney and Metamorpho Based on an idea by DC editor George Kashdan and co-created by Bob Haney and Fradon, the character Metamorpho first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #57 and 58 in January and March 1965 before headlining a 17-issue run of the character's self-titled series from August 1965 through March 1968. Kashdan's concept involved a character made up of four elements who could change into different chemical compounds. Haney fleshed out the idea with a "deliciously overdrawn" cast. In 1972, she returned to DC where later in the decade she would draw Plastic Man, Freedom Fighters, and Super Friends which she penciled for almost its entire run. Fradon recounted: First of all, I was really rusty. And [on The Cat #5] I was totally confounded by not drawing from a script. They gave me this one paragraph and said go draw this 17-page story. I don't think I did my best work by any means. I think I had a script on Fantastic Four, but I just don't think they were satisfied with my work. Then I went back to DC and started doing mysteries with Joe Orlando. I really had a lot of fun doing that. It suited my style, I think.

Fradon died of heart failure at her home in Ulster County, New York, on February 24, at the age of 97.

Style and industry equality Feeling "like a fish out of water" in the male-dominated superhero field, she reflected on her style in a 1988 interview:[Trina Robbins] made the observation that most women tend to have a more open style, use less shadow, and work in bigger open patterns. I think that's probably true—at least I always did (work in that style). I thought that was a big failing of mine, that I couldn't emulate that kind of photographic reproduction style. When I read that this seemed to be a characteristic of women cartoonists, it made me feel a bit better about it. ... Something that always jarred my eyes is to see the kind of heaviness and ugliness about most comic art. There's not much sweetness to it. It's the tradition, and I don't think it has anything to do with the individual artists. It's just the tradition ... the look. That always troubled me.

Awards Fradon received the Inkpot Award in 1995.

She was inducted into the Women Cartoonists Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.