Matthew Fox, Artist D

uring the early 1970s, Jerry Bails got a hold of Matt Fox’s Connecticut address and sent him the standard Who’s Who of American Comic Books questionnaire to fill out and return. Here’s what the artist wrote himself and sent back to Bails. (The parenthetical (p) and (i) indicate pencil art and inks, respectively.)

MATTHEW (MATT) FOX (1906– ) Artist. Major influence: Alex Raymond; Cartoons; Adv art; Lithographs; Pulp illus; Covers of Weird Tales (oils), Color woodcuts; Water colors; Oil paintings; Etchings, Comic book credits: (p) & (i). Youthful: (1952–53) fantasy; Marvel: (1952–56) horror, s-f; (1962-63) s-f, fantasy.

I first discovered the art of Matt Fox during the early 1960s while reading the back-up fantasy stories he had inked, over Larry Lieber’s pencils, in Marvel Comics titles, such as Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, and Tales to Astonish. In many cases, These stories were more appealing to me than some of the super-hero fare being offered in comics at the time. As an aspiring amateur artist myself, I soon realized just how difficult it was trying to create something with a pencil, out of my own imagination, and then inking it with a Crow Quill pen. My early attempts at art looked crude and, in some cases, overworked, and not very realistic. I couldn’t begin to form slick, quick lines like Jack Kirby or Wally Wood. My drawings had a lot of non-professional scratchings to them. In time, I became pretty good at inking those drawings and adopted the art of stipple for shading; a technique I picked up from other amateur artists at the time, including Matt Fox. I think this may be one of the reasons that I—and other young artists—were first attracted to the unusual work of Matt Fox. In those days, a lot of us wanted to be comic artists, and if we couldn’t be as good as Kirby or Wood, we could at least come close to Matt Fox’s work, right? Well, not really. After all, by that time, Matt Fox was a seasoned pro and had the dedication to stick with something he loved to do.

Many years later, during an interview, Larry Lieber admitted that he struggled himself with the drawing of those stories and didn’t care at all for Fox’s embellishments over his pencils. Lieber claimed that Fox made his work look stiffer than it already was, and made it look like wood cuts, which it no doubt did, in some cases. To this day, however, those stories are remembered more by collectors for the Matt Fox inking than anything else. Comic fans have been discovering and acquiring a taste for this artist’s work for the past fifty years.

Opinions vary greatly about Matt Fox’s art; you either like it or you don’t. I tend to think that most people would agree there is a certain charm about it, especially his body of work produced for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines during the 1940s to 1950s, only some of which has been reprinted in the ensuing years. Many collectors may not even be aware of Matt’s early pulp magazine contributions.

Matt’s work, on his own, usually dripped with horror and odd-looking characters. The editor of Weird Tales obviously thought his art weird and unique enough to be published in a magazine presenting… “weird tales.” During my lengthy research into Matt’s life and career, I discovered the artist loved to read stories of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction, and even more so, loved to illustrate them. It’s a little too easy to judge an artist’s work based on a few comic stories where he was only inking over someone’s pencils. To fully appreciate the talents of Matt Fox, one must first discover and absorb the cover paintings and interior pen-&-ink illustrations he produced for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, before coming to comics. And then move on to Matt’s early comic book work where he began to mature even more. Only then, can one form an educated opinion about it. Hopefully this volume, and testament to his art, will enlighten you. We certainly hope so.

Roger Hill November 2022