Number 2202: America’s future patriotic hero

Like Robert Webb, who drew Sheena, featured a couple of days ago, Dan Zolnerowich was a journeyman comic book artist who began his career with the Eisner and Iger studio. He sometimes signed his name Zolne. Also like Webb, I can’t find much information on him. Fiction House Comics stood out on the racks because of the covers Zolnerowich drew for them during the war years and beyond.

I have noticed online some paintings he did, reproducing some of his early covers, done as late as 1977. If anyone has information on him I would appreciate you sharing it.

Heritage Auctions showed all but the last page of Zolnerowich’s artwork for Super-American, which originally appeared in Fight Comics #17 (1942). My thanks to Heritage for posting these pages. My appropriation of them is shameless, but that’s just the kind of stuff I do and who I am. The last page I took from scans of the printed comic available at the Digital Comics Database.

Super-American appeared in only four issues of Fight Comics, numbers 15 through 18, then disappeared. Fiction House had never been totally comfortable with superheroes, not like their competition. They had many characters who appeared year-after-year, but most of them were like comic book versions of characters out of pulp magazines, which Fiction House also published. Super-American was brought from the future to help America fight their enemies. I have shown a couple more of his stories; check the links below.

As promised, two earlier Super-American stories, including his origin. Just click on the thumbnails.