Kin Platt facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Kin Platt |
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|---|---|
| Born | December 8, 1911 |
| Died | November 30, 2003 (aged 91) New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer, Artist |
| Awards | Edgar Award, 1967 |
Kin Platt (born in 1911, died in 2003) was a talented American writer and artist. He was also a painter, sculptor, and drew funny pictures called caricatures. Kin Platt is most famous for writing funny radio shows and animated TV series. He also wrote many exciting mystery books for kids. One of his mystery novels even won a special prize called the Edgar Award.
Besides his writing, Kin Platt also created and drew comic books. He even invented an early funny-animal superhero character named Supermouse! He also worked on comic strips for newspapers.
Contents
Kin Platt's Life and Work
Early Days and First Jobs
Kin Platt was born to Daniel and Etta Hochberg Platt. In the mid-1930s, he started his career writing funny scripts for radio shows. He wrote for famous comedians like George Burns and Jack Benny. He also wrote for a show called The National Biscuit Comedy Hour of 1936.
Later in the 1930s, Kin Platt wrote for big animation studios like Disney and Walter Lantz. These studios made cartoons for movie theaters. He also wrote the script for a short film called How to Read (1938), which starred Robert Benchley.
Creating Comic Books
Kin Platt began working in comic books by creating funny stories. His first comic book work was for a character named "Happy" in Best Comics #1 (November 1939). He quickly started writing and drawing many different stories for this company.
He also drew characters like "Captain Future" in Startling Comics. He drew "The Mask," a district attorney who became a costumed crimefighter, in Exciting Comics. Kin Platt also drew "Doc Strange" in Thrilling Comics. This character was a bit like Doc Savage, another famous hero.
After serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II (from 1943 to 1946), Kin Platt returned to comics. He worked for companies like Timely Comics, which later became Marvel Comics. For them, he created "Widjet Witch" in Comedy Comics. He also created Supermouse in 1948 for Better/Nedor/Standard comics. Kin Platt even wrote for the Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis comics at DC Comics. For two years, he drew an advertising comic strip called Pepsi Cola Cops.
Newspaper Comics and TV Shows
From 1947 to 1963, Kin Platt wrote and drew the comic strip Mr. and Mrs. for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate. He also worked on another comic strip called The Duke and the Duchess from 1950 to 1954.
Kin Platt also drew theater caricatures for newspapers and magazines. You could see his drawings in The Village Voice and the Los Angeles Times.
In the 1960s, Kin Platt started writing for animated TV shows. He wrote for many popular Hanna-Barbera series. These included The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, and Jonny Quest. For Jonny Quest, he even held the title of "story director." He also wrote for Milton the Monster.
Writing Books for Young Readers
Kin Platt began writing children's books and mystery novels for young adults in 1961. He wrote more than 30 books in total. Some of these were mysteries for grown-ups too.
He sometimes used different names, called pseudonyms, for his books. Some of these names were Guy West, Alan West, Wesley Simon York, Nick Tall, Nick West, Noah Zark, and Kirby Carr. For example, he wrote several books in the "Hitman" series as Kirby Carr.
Around this time, Kin Platt also wrote some stories for DC Comics. He worked on titles like G.I. Combat, Our Army at War, and Star Spangled War Stories in 1964. His last known comic book work was a 48-page adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Marvel Classics Comics #1 (1976).
Later Years and Legacy
In 1973, a movie called Baxter! was made. This psychological drama was based on Kin Platt's book, The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear.
He kept writing books throughout the 1980s. Some of his novels were never published. These writings, along with his unpublished caricatures, were given to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. One of his books, Big Max and the Missing Giraffe, was published after he passed away in 2005.
Awards and Recognition
Kin Platt received several awards for his work:
- 1967 Edgar Award for juvenile mystery, for his book Sinbad and Me.
- 1970 Edgar Award nomination, for The Mystery of the Witch Who Wouldn't.
Children's Books by Kin Platt
- Big Max, illustrated by Robert Lopshire (1965)
- Walt Disney's Snow White and Donald Duck (Whitman, 1967; as Nick Tall)
- Walt Disney's Donald Duck Buried Treasure, illustrated by Anthony Strobl (Whitman, 1968; as Nick Tall)
- Woody Woodpecker and the Busy Beavers (Whitman, 1968; as Nick Tall)
- Mystery of the Coughing Dragon (Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, Book 14) (1970; as Nick West)
- Mystery of the Nervous Lion (Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, Book 16) (1971; as Nick West)
- The Call of the Wild (comic book adaptation by Platt, illustrated by Fred Carrillo (Pendulum Press, 1973)
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (comic book adaptation by Platt, illustrated by Nestor Redondo) (Pendulum Press, 1973)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped (comic book adaptation as Nick Tall, illustrated by Frank Redondo) (Pendulum Press, 1974)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (comic book adaptation as Nick Tall, illustrated by Nestor Redondo) (Pendulum Press, 1974)
- Big Max and the Mystery of the Missing Moose (HarperCollins, 1977)
- Darwin and the Great Beasts (Self-illustrated) (Greenwillow, 1992)
- Big Max and the Mystery of the Missing Giraffe, illustrated by Lynne Cravath (HarperCollins, 2005)
Young Adult Books by Kin Platt
- The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear (Chilton, 1968)
- Hey, Dummy (Chilton, 1971)
- Chloris and the Creeps (Chilton, 1973)
- Chloris and the Freaks (Bradbury, 1975)
- Headman (Greenwillow, 1975)
- The Terrible Love Life of Dudley Cornflower (Bradbury, 1976)
- Run for Your Life (F. Watts, 1977)
- Chloris and the Weirdos (Bradbury, 1978)
- The Doomsday Gang (Greenwillow, 1978)
- Dracula, Go Home (F. Watts, 1979)
- The Ape Inside Me (Crowell, 1980)
- Flames Going Out (Methuen, 1980)
- Brogg's Brain (Crowell, 1981)
- Frank and Stein and Me (F. Watts, 1982)
- Crocker (Lippincott, 1983)
- A Mystery for Thoreau (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)
