Billy Graham (comics) - Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics

Graham eventually left Warren and joined the creative team that launched Marvel's Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, inking the premiere issue (June 1972) over pencilers John Romita Sr. and George Tuska. He either inked or himself penciled every issue of the book's 16-issue run under its original title, and the first as the retitled Luke Cage, Power Man (Feb. 1974). One reviewer of the reprint collection Essential Luke Cage, Power Man wrote, "The majority of the art is by George Tuska, initially inked by Billy Graham (with several solo pieces by Graham give an intriguing record of his progression as an artist: His initial work has a rough, half-finished look to it, but his later issues are clean and beautifully detailed)....

Steve Englehart, who wrote issues #5-16, said Graham "helped me plot, so that by the end it was pretty much a co-production." Graham is formally credited as co-writer of issues #14-15, though as Englehart's writing collaborator for those issues, Tony Isabella recalled, "Billy Graham is credited as the co-scripter of my first issue and, try as I might, I simply do not recall getting anything other than the usual penciled pages to script. I skimmed a little of that issue and, making no judgment as to whether this is a good or bad thing, the writing does strike me as all mine."

Graham collaborated with writer Don McGregor on the critically lauded "Black Panther" series which ran in Jungle Action #6-24 (Sept. 1973 - Nov. 1976). Bob Almond, inker for much of the run of The Black Panther vol. 3, dedicated his work in memoriam to Graham in an introductory note to issue #17 (April 2000). The pseudonymous Buzz Maverik wrote in Ain't It Cool News, "I know the artist, Billy Graham, was black. His cool Marvel Bullpen name was 'The Irreverent' Billy Graham. For me, even though I later learned that Jack Kirby created the Panther, Graham will always be the definitive Panther artist. His art, even more than McGregor's writing, made T'Challa one of what I call the 'grown men' of the Marvel Universe, the others being Daredevil and Iron Man. Those three seemed like the kind of adult I aspired to be, with cool jobs, cool hobbies (superheroing), and cool chicks."

Graham penciled issues #10-22, the bulk of that series' run, and went on to illustrate issues #3-9 of McGregor's 1980s Eclipse Comics series Sabre, a spin-off of one the first graphic novels. He also illustrated a story each by McGregor in Marvel's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Monsters Unleashed #11 (April 1975); an issue of the 1980s anthology Eclipse Monthly; and two issues of the black-and-white Eclipse magazine. He was both writer and artist of the six-page story "The Hitchhiker" in Eclipse magazine #5 (March 1982).

He additionally illustrated the Marvel story "More Than Blood", scripted by science-fiction author George Alec Effinger, in Journey into Mystery vol. 2, #2 (Dec. 1972); and two "Gabriel: Devil-Hunter" stories by Doug Moench in the black-and-white magazine Haunt of Horror #2-3 (July-Aug. 1974), as well as a Moench story in the black-and-white Vampire Tales #2 (Oct. 1974).

Graham's last comics work was co-penciling, with Steven Geiger, Power Man and Iron Fist (the again-retitled Luke Cage series) #114 (Feb. 1985), written by fellow African American Jim Owsley, better known under his pen name, Christopher Priest.