Tom Sutton

Thomas F. Sutton (April 15, 1937 – May 1, 2002) was an American comic book artist who sometimes used the pseudonyms Sean Todd and Dementia.

He is best known for his contributions to Marvel Comics and Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines, particularly as the first story-artist of the popular character Vampirella.

Tom Sutton was born and raised in North Adams, Massachusetts, where father Harry was a plumbing, heating and air conditioning shopkeeper, and a machinist and gunsmith for General Electric and others.

He had a half-sister "seven or eight years older than I am" from his widower father's first marriage.

For Skywald's short-lived line of color comics, Sutton wrote and drew stories for the Western title Butch Cassidy and the horror title The Heap (no relation to the 1940s–50s Hillman Periodicals character later revived by Eclipse Comics).

He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school in 1955, and worked on art projects while stationed at Fort Francis E. Warren, near Laramie, Wyoming.

Later, stationed at Itami base in Japan, Sutton created the Caniff-style adventure strip F.E.A.F Dragon for a base publication.

Sutton's first professional comics work, it led to a long-hoped-for placement on the military's Stars and Stripes newspaper.

At the Tokyo office of Stars and Stripes, he drew the comic strip Johnny Craig, a character name inspired by the EC artist Johnny Craig.

Sutton recalled that he worked on this strip "for two years and some odd months. I did it seven days a week, I think. It was all stupid. It was a kind of cheap version of [Frank Robbins'] Johnny Hazard, I think it was".

On his return to civilian life in 1959, Sutton lived and worked in San Francisco, where, he said, "There were some publications ... that I sold or gave artwork to."

After six months he moved to Jacksonville, Vermont, where his parents were at the time.

In about 1960 he began attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on either a scholarship or the G.I. Bill – Sutton was unclear on this in a 2001 interview – and studied there for two-and-a-half years while freelancing in commercial art for the likes of small ad agencies.

Sutton became an art director at a company called AVP, and was the animation director for Transradio Productions, among many other jobs that included graphics work on a Radio Shack catalog.

He married his first wife, Beverly, in the early 1960s and his two sons were born soon thereafter; the marriage lasted approximately five years.

After the divorce his wife remarried and Sutton lost contact with his sons; he later reconnected with one of them, Todd.

During the late 1960s, Sutton was living in Boston's North End.

His first sale, "The Monster from One Billion B.C.", was published in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967), though it was originally commissioned for Famous Monsters of Filmland (where it was reprinted four months later).

He also illustrated the five-page anthological Western story "The Wild Ones", written by Sol Brodsky, in Marvel's Kid Colt, Outlaw #137 (Sept. 1967).

That distinctive style helped establish the popular supernatural character Vampirella from her first story, "Vampirella of Draculona", written by Forrest J. Ackerman, with costume design by artist Trina Robbins, in Vampirella #1 (Sept. 1969).

Later, with writer Archie Goodwin, Sutton helped transition Vampi from cheeky horror hostess to serious dramatic character in the 21-page story "Who Serves the Cause of Chaos?"

He married second wife Donna and in 1970 they moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Later Sutton lived in Newburyport with his third wife, Charlotte, who ran a Montessori school for little people in the first floor of their Victorian house.

It was one of many Westerns he drew for the company, including the introduction of the short-lived feature "Renegades"—The Fugitive times four, in the Old West—in Western Gunfighters #1 (Aug. 1970).

As Sutton recalled his breaking into Marvel, editor-in-chief Stan Lee

"...looked at the stuff that I had brought in, [which was] stuff that I had done in the service for Stars and Stripes in Tokyo. I think he was rather impressed by the fact that I had actually done a daily comic strip for two years. He didn't get many people who had done that. ... He just reached over and he pulled off this huge pile of blank paper. And he said, 'OK, do me a couple of Westerns and I'll see you next week. Have fun.' I remember that very well. 'Have fun.'"

Sutton soon developed a trademark frantic, cartoony style that, when juxtaposed on dramatic narratives, gave his work a vibrant, quirky dynamism.

in issue #8 (Nov. 1970, reprinted in color in Harris Comics' 1995 Vampirella Classics series).

Though well-suited to horror stories, Sutton was also admired for his work on such science fiction series as Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine and First Comics' Grimjack and Squalor, and for the humor title Not Brand Echh, on which he appeared in nearly every issue with parodies of Marvel's own characters.

He was not especially equipped to do superheroes, either by art style or temperament, once calling them "fascist".

While he lent a hand very occasionally, Sutton stayed mostly on Marvel's supernatural heroes: Werewolf by Night, Ghost Rider, and Doctor Strange (in the 1970s series, plus Baron Mordo backup stories in the 1980s Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme).

A series in the 1970s black-and-white comics magazine Planet of the Apes, a licensed spin-off of the movie series, done with writer Doug Moench, was "recognized by many as Sutton's best", said comics historian and columnist Tom Spurgeon:

"Together, they created the 'Future Chronicles' stories for Marvel's Planet of the Apes magazine. [For this] enormously elaborate and cleverly designed fantasy saga set on the world featured in the movies, Sutton worked with oversized originals to better show off his mixed-media work and allow for meticulous detail. The result was a lush, moody, and striking fantasy story to stand with any in mainstream comics history. ' He really made the work a joy, and pure fun,' Moench told [The Comics] Journal. ' This guy was so into the 'Future Chronicles', he wanted to put so much detail into it, he worked on these gigantic boards. It was [a] black-and-white [magazine], so it was already bigger than regular comics pages. Then he did that series twice up, these enormous things that would cover my desk. Right there it made it something special, the sheer physical size of it. The enthusiasm you could see in every brushstroke just made it so exciting'."

For the horror-oriented Warren, Sutton drew dozens of stories early in his career.

He moonlighted for Warren competitor Skywald Publications, drawing the Frankenstein-novel sequel "Frankenstein, Book II" (serialized in Psycho magazine #3–6, May, 1971 – May 1972)—using the pseudonym "Sean Todd" (writer-penciler Sutton and inkers Dan Adkins, Jack Abel and Sutton himself), to avoid the wrath of publisher James Warren.

A separate story in Psycho #4, written by Sutton and drawn by him and Syd Shores, was credited as "Larry Todd" (writer) and "David Cook" (art).

This was the result of someone having inadvertently inserted the name of real-life writer Larry Todd rather than usual pseudonym Sean Todd.

With writer Steve Englehart, penciler Sutton introduced the new furrily transformed X-Men character the Beast, who starred in a superhero feature in Amazing Adventures #11–15 (March–Sept. 1972).

In the 1990s, he moved to Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Sutton's first two comic-book stories appeared the same month.