Paul Gustavson née Karl Paul Gustafson (August 16, 1916 – April 1977) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-immigrant comic-book writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

. His most notable creations during the Golden Age of Comic Books

Golden Age of Comic Books

The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s...

 were The Human Bomb

Human Bomb

The Human Bomb is a fictional superhero published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Police Comics #1 , and was created by writer and artist Paul Gustavson.-Publication history:...

 for Quality Comics

Quality Comics

Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1939 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books....

, and the Angel, who debuted in Marvel Comics

Marvel Mystery Comics

Marvel Mystery Comics is an American comic book series published during the 1930s-1940s period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic Books...

 #1 (Oct. 1939), the first publication of Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

 forerunner Timely Comics

Timely Comics

Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....

. The Angel would star in more than 100 stories in the 1940s. The Human Bomb would later be acquired by DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 and make sporadic appearances as late as 2005.

Early life and career

Gustavson was born in Åland, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

.
Emigrating to the U.S. with his family at age five, Gustavson (who modified his name when he entered comics) graduated from Quentin High School in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and studied civil engineering

Civil engineering

Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...

 at Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

's Cooper Union

Cooper Union

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

. Seguing to art at about age 17, he spent two to three years apprenticing under cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 Frank Owen

Frank Owen

Frank Malcolm Owen was a pitcher in Major League Baseball who played eight seasons with the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox....

, the husband of one of Gustavson's childhood friends in Finland. Gustavson assisted on Owen's Collier's Magazine humor spot, "Filbert".

Gustavson began working in the studio of the quirkily named Harry "A" Chesler, a "packager" of comic books for publishers testing the waters of the emerging medium

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

. "I started at $12 a week", he told historian Jim Steranko

Jim Steranko

James F. Steranko is an American graphic artist, comic book writer-artist-historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator....

, who interviewed him in the early 1970s. "It wasn't much but in those days it was enough for me. I stayed with Chesler for about two years and, during that time, worked with people like Jack Cole

Jack Cole (artist)

Jack Ralph Cole was an American comic book artist and Playboy magazine cartoonist best known for creating the comedic superhero Plastic Man....

, Mort Meskin

Mort Meskin

Morton "Mort" Meskin was a prolific American comic book artist best-known for his work in the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, well into the late-1950s and 1960s Silver Age.-Early life:...

, Gill Fox

Gill Fox

Gilbert Theodore "Gill" Fox was an American political cartoonist, comic book artist and editor, and animator.-Biography:...

, Fred Guardineer

Fred Guardineer

Frederick B. Guardineer was an American illustrator and comic book writer-artist best known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s during what historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books, and for his 1950s art on the Western comic-book series The Durango Kid.A pioneer of the medium...

, Charlie Biro

Charles Biro

Charles Biro was an American comic book creator and cartoonist. He is today chiefly known for creating the comic book characters Airboy and Steel Sterling, and for his 16-year run on the acclaimed 1940s series Daredevil Comics for Lev Gleason Publications.-Biography:Charles Biro studied art at...

, and Bob Wood".

Creating characters

After getting married and beginning a family, Gustavson began working for another comics packager, Funnies, Inc., which supplied publisher Martin Goodman

Martin Goodman (publisher)

Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....

 with the contents of Marvel Comics #1. The packager also supplied Centaur Publications

Centaur Publications

Centaur Publications was one of the earliest American comic book publishers. During their short existence, they created several colorful characters, including Bill Everett's Amazing Man....

, for which Gustavson created A-Man, the The Arrow

Arrow (comics)

The Arrow is a fictional character, a superhero originally published by Centaur Publications. The character first appeared in 1938 in Funny Pages #21 . After Centaur Publications went out of business, the Arrow, along with most other company properties, lapsed into public domain...

, Fantom of the Fair

Fantom of the Fair

The Fantom of the Fair was one of the earliest published Golden Age superheroes. He debuted in Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol 2 #7 , July 1939, Centaur Publications. He premiered, according to cover dates, the same month as DC Comics' Sandman and Fox Publications' The Flame, and Centaur's The Masked...

, and Man of War. Other notable work includes humor features in five early issues of DC's Action Comics

Action Comics

Action Comics is an American comic book series that introduced Superman, the first major superhero character as the term is popularly defined...

, starting with issue #5 (Oct. 1938), and the two-page humor piece "Major Bigsbee an' Botts" in the oft-reprinted Batman

Batman

Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...

 #1 (Spring 1940).

He later joined Quality Comics, one of DC's predecessors, where publisher "Busy" Arnold offered $25 a page. There Gustavson created the Human Bomb (premiering in Police Comics #1, Aug. 1941), aigning the earliest episodes with the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Paul Carroll. He wrote and drew the feature through September 1946. Gustavson also wrote/drew characters including Magno

Magno (Golden Age)

Magno is a fictional superhero originally published by Quality Comics. He was created by Paul Gustavson. His first appearance was in Smash Comics #13 . He was one of the characters that were purchased by DC Comics when Quality Comics sold their assets. However, the copyright on these comics...

 (premiering in Smash Comics #13, 1940); the Spider (premiering in Crack Comics #1, 1940); the Jester (in Smash Comics); and Rusty Ryan (in Feature Comics), whose uniform strongly evoked that of Captain America

Captain America

Captain America is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 , from Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...

.

Gustavson, whose delicate, fine-line art resembles that of fellow Golden Age cartoonist Lou Fine

Lou Fine

Louis Kenneth Fine was an American comic book artist known for his work during the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, where his quality draftsmanship became an influential model to a generation of fellow comics artists....

, also worked on Blackhawk

Blackhawk (comics)

Blackhawk, a long-running comic book series, was also a film serial, a radio series and a novel. The comic book was published first by Quality Comics and later by DC Comics. The series was created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, and Bob Powell, but the artist most associated with the feature is Reed...

, Kid Eternity

Kid Eternity

Kid Eternity is a comic book superhero who first premiered in Hit Comics #25, published by Quality Comics in December, 1942. The character - as well as all of Quality's intellectual properties were sold to DC Comics in 1956...

, Uncle Sam

Uncle Sam (comics)

Uncle Sam is a fictional character, a DC Comics superhero based on national personification of the United States, Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam first appeared in National Comics #1 and was created by Will Eisner.-Quality Comics:...

 and other characters.

From 1942 to 1945, Gustavson did his World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 military service

Military service

Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...

 in the Air Tech Training Command, concurrently studying aerodynamics

Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...

 at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

. He returned to work for Quality afterward, and in early 1950s for the American Comics Group

American Comics Group

American Comics Group was a New York City-based comic book publisher which operated during the Golden and Silver Age of comic books. ACG published one of the first horror comics titles, Adventures into the Unknown. Another of ACG's claims to fame was the character of Herbie Popnecker, who starred...

 (AGC), doing humor features. Later that decade, he left the field to become a surveyor and civil engineer for New York State.

His brother Nils collaborated with him on Centaur's Man of War.