Ernie Schroeder

Ernest C. Schroeder (January 9, 1916 – September 20, 2006)Ernest C. Schroeder
Social Security number 133-03-0033, at the United States Social Security Death Index via GenealogyBank.com an
via FamilySearch.org
Latter retrieved on March 4, 2013. was an American comic book artist, a commercial illustrator, and a sculptor, best known for drawing and co-writing Hillman Periodicals' influential muck-monster the Heap from 1949 to 1953.

Other characters with which Schroeder is associated include Hillman's Airboy and Harvey Comics' Shock Gibson and Spirit of '76.

Biography

Early life and career

In a 2004 interview, Schroeder described a family life in which his future father was a West Point graduate and Spanish–American War veteran who after that conflict settled in the Philippine Islands, and who met Schroeder's future mother, the daughter of an amusement park owner, while on a visit to the United States. Schroeder said that upon marriage, the couple lived in the Philippines, where his mother worked as a hospital nurse; they later returned to the U.S., where his father played a Confederate officer in the D.W. Griffith film ''The Birth of a Nation'', made a fortune with a New York City silver-polish company called Noxon, and sold Ford trucks in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, where Schroeder was born, before leaving the family when Schroeder was very young. The artist said he lived with his grandmother for a short time until his mother became resident nurse at the estate of Jesse Jay Ricks, president of the Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation, and that Schroeder then grew up in a wealthy household of four boys, where family guests included Carl Sandburg.

Schroeder later studied under George Bridgman and George Grosz at the Art Students League, in Manhattan. He joined the U.S. Merchant Marine in 1936. Leaving the service by 1939, Schroeder got married, had a child, and began working as a textile designer. As World War II was beginning, he began working in a machine shop, making tools for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation's PTB bomber. After meeting comic-book artist Bob Powell, Schroeder quit the machine shop to pursue art, but a month later was drafted into the infantry and stationed at Camp Blanding, near Jacksonville, Florida. There he drew for the camp newspaper, ''The Bayonet'', and drew some of his first comic books; his earliest known confirmed credit is penciling and inking the 6-page story "Satan Rides the Waves" in Harvey Comics' ''All-New Comics'' #7 ( cover-dated March 1944).Ernie Schroeder
an
Ernest Schroeder
at the Grand Comics Database

Later, while in California waiting to be shipped with the planned invasion forces to Japan, news came that the atomic bomb had been dropped, precipitating the end of the war. Schroeder, who had four children by then, was discharged from the service.

Schroeder eventually divorced his first wife, and remarried. He had children with both.Herb Rogoff interview, ''Alter Ego'' vol. 3, #42, November 2004, p. 14

Airboy and the Heap

From 1946 to 1949, Schroeder drew and also occasionally wrote for Parents Magazine Press' non-fiction history series ''True Comics''. Other work for that company included art for the comic books ''Bigbrain Billy'', ''Calling All Boys'', and ''Calling All Kids''.

Introduced by Powell to Harvey Comics principals Alfred and Leon Harvey, Schroeder did uncredited art for such company characters as the Zebra, Shock Gibson and Spirit of '76. He then began a long stint at Hillman Periodicals, penciling and inking the adventures of aviator hero Airboy in ''Airboy Comics'', from vol. 5, #11 (Dec. 1948) through the final issue, vol. 10, #4 (May 1953).

With vol. 6, #8 (Sept. 1949), Schroeder additionally began drawing the backup feature " The Heap", starring a shambling, elemental muck monster created by Mort Leav