Dick Briefer

Richard ‚Dick‘ Briefer (1915–1980) trained at the Art Students League in New York and entered comics in 1936 through the Eisner-Iger studio. His New Adventures of Frankenstein, which began in Prize Comics number 7 in December 1940, is generally cited as the first ongoing American comic book series squarely in the horror genre.

His line is loose and brushy rather than slick, and he was unusual in being equally fluent in genuine menace and broad slapstick. Critics have noted that with Briefer the drawing itself is funny – the linework carries the gag before the caption does.

His monster changed genre twice in print. It began as a rampaging horror in 1930s New York, was turned handsome by a scientist in 1943 and sent to grade school, was brainwashed by Nazis in 1944, and in 1945 became the Merry Monster, a genial small-town neighbour having comic adventures with Dracula and the Wolfman. Briefer reverted it to full horror in 1952, shortly before the Comics Code ended the book. Very few artists have run one character through that arc.