Bruno Premiani - Biography - DC Comics - Doom Patrol

Doom Patrol

Premiani most notably drew the original incarnations of the Doom Patrol in 1963 and the Teen Titans in 1964, both series being cult favorites that have survived in one form or another, if sporadically, since their original creation for the DC Comics universe. In the case of the former superhero team, editor Murray Boltinoff had asked writer Arnold Drake to develop a feature to run in the anthology series My Greatest Adventure. Given the assignment on a Friday with a script due that Tuesday, Drake conceived what would become the Doom Patrol, and turned to another DC writer, Bob Haney, to co-plot and co-script the first adventure. Premiani designed the characters. Drake would subsequently script every Doom Patrol story, with Premiani drawing virtually all, from the team's debut in My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963) through the series retitling to The Doom Patrol with issue #86 (March 1964), to the final issue of its initial run, #121 (Oct. 1968). Premiani and Boltinoff appeared as themselves in that final story, discussing the impending demise of the team.

In 2001, Drake wrote of the search for a Doom Patrol illustrator, saying that Boltinoff's regular artists

...were all busy. That meant the DP would get some backup artist. So 'pessimism' was the password when Murray brought in a very lean, eagle-beaked, lantern-jawed guy with eyeglass lenses even thicker than mine: Bruno Premiani. But his superb draftsmanship, anatomy and design work turned my prejudice to dust. Still, could he give the DP the unique quality it needed — a quality I couldn't define myself? Bruno's first penciled pages told me we had truly lucked out. What he had recognized was that these super-heroes must be as human as possible. He captured that spirit from page one and sustained it for 42 issues: fabulous powers and fantastic enemies notwithstanding, The Chief, Rita, Larry and Cliff remained real people.

Premiani drew proto-teamings of the as-yet-unnamed Teen Titans beginning with the Kid Flash-Aqualad-Robin adventure "The Thousand-and-One Dooms of Mr. Twister" in The Brave and the Bold #54 (July 1964).

Additionally, in the early 1960s, Premiani freeelanced for the Gilberton Company's Classics Illustrated, Classics Illustrated Special Issue, and World Around Us series. His major project was the painted cover and complete interior art for Classics Illustrated No. 156, The Conquest of Mexico (May 1960), based on Bernal Diaz del Castillo's eyewitness account of the fall of the Aztec empire. In addition, he contributed sections to two Special Issues, The Atomic Age (June 1960) and The United Nations (1964). Most of Premiani's work for Gilberton was for the educational World Around Us line, for which he provided chapters in The Crusades (December 1959), Festivals (January 1960), Great Scientists (February 1960), Communications (April 1960), Whaling (December 1960), and The Vikings (January 1961).

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Famous quotes containing the word doom:

    If, in all the cities, every house that is past repairing could be pulled down or burned up, how great would be the crash, how heaven-high the conflagration. It would be a veritable crack of Doom and glare of the Judgment.
    Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)