Frank McLaughlin

Frank Mclaughlin is an American comics artist who co-created the comic book character Judomaster, drew the comic strip Gil Thorp, and assisted on such strips as Brenda Starr, Reporter and The Heart of Juliet Jones; he also wrote and illustrated books about cartooning and comic art.
Following McLaughlin's final Charlton work, penciling the cover and both penciling and inking the seven-page story "The Living Legend" in the comic strip spin-off comic book The Phantom #30 (Feb. 1969), McLaughlin began to freelance. After a smattering of work that including inking an eight-page teen humor story in DC Comics' Debbi's Dates #10 (Nov. 1970) and a seven-page story in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Eerie #34 (July 1971), McLaughlin circa 1971 began assisting comic-strip artist Stan Drake on the naturalistic soap-opera strip The Heart of Juliet Jones.[8] McLaughlin, at Giordano's suggestion, had shown samples of his work to the Westport, Connecticut-based Drake, who hired him to succeed assistant Tex Blaisdell, who had left to draw Little Orphan Annie. "I would pencil and ink just about everything that wasn't a main figure," McLaughlin said.[3]

The following year, McLaughlin began to work steadily for industry leaders DC Comics and Marvel Comics. His first work for the former was inking Win Mortimer on a Zatanna story in Adventure Comics #421 (July 1972), and his first for the latter was inking Jim Mooney on a romance comics story in Our Love Story #18 (Aug. 1972).[6]

Settling into his career as an inker, McLaughlin became ensconced at Marvel, inking the likes of Wayne Boring on Captain Marvel and Sal Buscema on both Captain America and The Defenders before becoming primarily a DC inker. Throughout the 1970s, McLaughlin inked backup stories featuring the Atom, Black Lightning, Zatanna, and "The Fabulous World of Krypton", among others. He became the regular series inker for penciler Dick Dillin's Justice League of America, and for some issues of penciler Ernie Chan's Batman stories in Detective Comics, and Joe Staton's Green Lantern. Concurrently, he wrote martial-arts articles for Marvel's black-and-white comics magazine The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.[6]

In the 1980s McLaughlin was regular inker on penciler Carmine Infantino's The Flash, Gene Colan's Wonder Woman, and Dan Jurgens' Green Arrow, among other assignments. He also inked Steve Ditko on the first two issues of A.C.E. Comics' short-lived series What Is...The Face? (Dec. 1986 and April 1987), and for the same company wrote, co-penciled and co-inked the single issue of Big Edsel Band (Sept. 1987), starring the modern-day retro-1950s band.[6][9] During the following decade, while continuing to draw for DC, McLaughlin expanded to Acclaim Comics and Broadway Comics. His last known comics work is Broadway's Fatale #6 (Oct. 1996), inking J. G. Jones.[