Ed Winiarski

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Ed Winiarski is an American comic book writer-artist known for both adventure stories and funny-animal cartooning during the late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age of comic books.

A former animator, Winiarski was one of the first generation of comic-book professionals, contributing in the mid-1930s to National Allied Publications, one of the companies that would evolve into DC Comics. He later worked for Timely and Atlas — the 1940s and 1950s forerunners, respectively, of Marvel Comics — as well as for Hillman Periodicals and Prize Comics.

Winiarski's earliest known feature is the four-part story "Jungle Fever", which he wrote and drew across New Adventure Comics #14-16 (March, May-June 1937) and More Fun Comics #22 (July 1937). He additionally drew and probably wrote the "Charlie Chan"-like Asian private eye feature "Mr. Chang" in Detective Comics #2 (April 1937). These were among the first of 100 story credits he would compile for the future DC.

His first known credit for Timely was art for the two-page text filler "All Winners" — a story that was also one of future Marvel legend Stan Lee's first comic works — in All-Winners Comics #1 (Summer 1941). This was reprinted in Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age All-Winners Comics, Volume 1 (Marvel, 2006; ISBN 0-7851-1884-5). He created the early superhero-humor feature "The Vagabond" in USA Comics #2 (Nov. 1941) — continuing it in the next two issues and in Young Allies Comics #4 and Comedy Comics #11 — as well as the single-appearance crusading-journalist feature "Powers of the Press", starring reporter Tom Powers (USA Comics #3). Winiarski also wrote and drew such humor features as "The Creeper and Homer" (in Krazy Komics), "Oscar Pig" (in Terrytoons Comics), and Millie the Model.

For Atlas in the 1950s, he wrote horror and suspense stories for anthologies including Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery, while also penciling, inking and probably writing the antics of trouble-prone "Buck Duck" in that funny animal's namesake comic and its predecessor, It's a Duck's Life.

Winiarski's last recorded credits are as penciler and inker of the four-page story "He Wore a Black Shroud" in Strange Tales #66 (Dec. 1958).

At least two Winiarski stories surfaced in latter-day reprint comics: "It Came from Beneath the Earth" in Weird Wonder Tales #1 (Dec. 1973; original source n.a.), and "The Slave" in Dead of Night #8 (Feb. 1975), from Uncanny Tales #3 (Oct. 1952).