In Remembrance Of Lily Renée

When you've read comic books for as long as I have, you might think you know about everyone who did everything in this medium. But I can still be surprised by learning of a creator I never heard of before.  

Last week, Lily Renée passed away at the age of 101. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who made her way to America in 1939, Lily Renée became a comic book artist.  

When the United States entered World War II, a lot of male artists were drafted just as the demand for comic book content was skyrocketing. Which meant comic book publishers were willing to give a chance to artists who also happened to be female women of the opposite sex.   

Here's how Renée recalled to writer/artist Trina Robbins the sequence of events that led her to drawing comic books: "At that time, I was painting Tyrolean designs on wooden boxes, and then I got a job on the 46th floor of Rockefeller Center at Reiss advertising agency. They paid me 50 cents an hour to draw catalogs for Woolworth's. And so I was making some money too and I was going to night school, and then I think I told you that my mother saw an ad in the paper for comic artists? I went to Fiction House and I was hired on a trial basis, and they kept me. And then after a year-and-a-half, I was doing covers and I got a big Christmas bonus."

Here is Lily Renée's cover for the  Señorita Rio feature in Fight Comics.

Lily Renée could give noted "good girl" comic artist Matt Baker a run for his money as evidenced by this cover for Planet Comics.    

Or this damsel in distress cover.  

Lily continued to work in comic books after the war ended but eventually she stopped working in comics, doing some children's books and playwriting over the years.  

As was the fate of many Golden Age artists, Lily Renée was mostly forgotten  until Tina Robbins interviewed Renée for The Comics Journal in 2006 and in 2007, Renée visited Comic-Con International at San Diego for the first time and was inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

The time Lily Renée spent as a comic book artist was brief and oh so long ago but she was an extraordinary talent.  I am glad I know of this astonishing woman and her amazing skills as an artist.