Literally just yesterday I pre-ordered three comics as they had covers by Ramona Fradon. Today I have learned Fradon has passed.
Fradon had just retired this January at the age of 97 - and I assumed those covers were her last for DC. That's a career, friends. So, clearly, she was well and working right up til recent days. Thanks to some good people on the internet, she'd been recognized for her role as a woman in comics during the Silver and Bronze Age - in a vastly male-dominated industry. She was the right artist for many-a-project, and I'm glad she had a sort of late-career renaissance when folks recognized her. And, frankly, her art was still great right up til January.
If you're unfamiliar with Fradon's style, she's credited with the original design for Metamorpho, a DC hero, and I tend to think of her work as tilting more towards cartoony than illustrative, with an excellent use of line to suggest character. She's probably almost as famous for her work on Aquaman as Metamorpho,
In addition to work across genres at DC, she also worked on Brenda Starr, Reporter, a newspaper strip.
I'm sorry she has passed, but glad she had such a long life bringing so much great art to the world, and really enjoy a new generation of fans the last decade or so.
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