Oskar Lebeck facts for kids
Oskar Lebeck (born August 30, 1903 – died December 20, 1966) was a talented stage designer, illustrator, writer, and editor. He is most famous for helping to create Dell Comics during the 1930s and 1940s, a time often called the Golden Age of Comic Books. He mostly worked on children's books and comics.
Oskar Lebeck's Early Career
Oskar Lebeck was born in Germany. There, he worked as a stage designer, creating the look and feel for plays, for a famous director named Max Reinhardt. In 1930, he moved to the United States and continued his work on Broadway shows for producers like Florenz Ziegfeld and Earl Carroll.
By the mid-1930s, Lebeck started designing textiles and furniture. He also began writing children's books, and sometimes drew the pictures for them too. Most of these books were published by Grosset & Dunlap. Some of his well-known titles include The Diary of Terwilliger Jellico (1935), The Story of the Automobile City (1936), and Clementina the Flying Pig (1939). He also illustrated a shorter version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1939.
How Oskar Lebeck Shaped Dell Comics
In 1938, a company called Western Publishing hired Oskar Lebeck. His job was to be an art director and managing editor. He helped launch their new line of comic books, which were funded and shared by Dell. Lebeck was in charge of Western's editorial office in New York.
He hired many talented people, including Walt Kelly, who later became famous for creating the comic strip character Pogo. Lebeck also chose John Stanley to bring the popular cartoon character Little Lulu into comic books.
Writer Gaylord Du Bois said that Lebeck was a very driven person who could inspire artists and writers to do their best work and be very loyal to him. Du Bois and Lebeck even wrote three adventure novels for children together in 1941: Stratosphere Jim and His Flying Fortress, Rex, King of the Deep, and The Hurricane Kids on the Lost Islands.
Artist and writer Dan Noonan, who worked with Lebeck in the 1940s, remembered him fondly. Noonan said Lebeck was a wonderful boss and a true leader in the comic book world. He noted that Lebeck had a great sense of design, possibly influenced by the Bauhaus art school. Lebeck was open to new ideas and started many successful comic book titles, like Animal Comics, a fairy tale comic book, and Raggedy Ann comics.
Comic book expert Michael Barrier explained that Lebeck wanted to bring the charm of traditional children's books, with their rich and classic illustrations, into comic books. Lebeck also had high hopes for a series called Famous Stories, which adapted classic novels into comics. He hoped these comics would be enjoyed by parents, teachers, and, of course, the kids they were made for.
Interestingly, Oskar Lebeck often held the copyright for many of the original comic book titles Dell published during that time. This was unusual in the comic book industry. Dan Noonan thought this might have been part of Lebeck's reward for helping to boost the sales of Dell's comic book division. It meant he would receive money if the material was used again.
Oskar Lebeck's Later Life
Oskar Lebeck left Western Publishing in 1949, but he continued to work for them as a consultant. Even though he was semi-retired, he teamed up with artist Alden McWilliams to create a science fiction daily comic strip called Twin Earths. McWilliams had illustrated some of Lebeck's earlier books and worked for him at Dell. The strip started on June 16, 1952, and a Sunday version was added on March 1, 1953. It featured the idea of a duplicate Earth and was popular during a time when people were very interested in flying saucers.
In 1957, Lebeck fully retired, and McWilliams took over writing the comic strip. That same year, Dell published a comic book version of Lebeck's Clementina the Flying Pig as part of their Dell Junior Treasury series.
Oskar Lebeck passed away in 1966 at his home in La Jolla, California. Some of his letters with his agent, Toni Mendez, are kept in the Toni Mendez Collection at Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
