Tom Sutton

Thomas F. Sutton (April 15, 1937 – May 1, 2002) was an American comic book artist who sometimes used the pseudonyms Sean Todd and Dementia. He is best known for his contributions to Marvel Comics and Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror-comics magazines, particularly as the first story-artist of the popular character Vampirella. Tom Sutton was born and raised in North Adams, Massachusetts, where father Harry was a plumbing, heating and air conditioning shopkeeper, and a machinist and gunsmith for General Electric and others. He had a half-sister "seven or eight years older than I am" from his widower father's first marriage. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school in 1955, and worked on art projects while stationed at Fort Francis E. Warren, near Laramie, Wyoming. Later, stationed at Itami base in Japan, Sutton created the Caniff-style adventure strip F.E.A.F Dragon for a base publication. Sutton's first professional comics work, it led to a long-hoped-for placement on the military's Stars and Stripes newspaper. At the Tokyo office of Stars and Stripes, he drew the comic strip Johnny Craig, a character name inspired by the EC artist Johnny Craig. Sutton recalled that he worked on this strip "for two years and some odd months. I did it seven days a week, I think. It was all stupid. It was a kind of cheap version of Johnny Hazard, I think it was". On his return to civilian life in 1959, Sutton lived and worked in San Francisco, where, he said, "There were some publications ... that I sold or gave artwork to." After six months he moved to Jacksonville, Vermont, where his parents were at the time. In about 1960 he began attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on either a scholarship or the G.I. Bill – Sutton was unclear on this in a 2001 interview – and studied there for two-and-a-half years while freelancing in commercial art for the likes of small ad agencies. Sutton became an art director at a company called AVP, and was the animation director for Transradio Productions, among many other jobs that included graphics work on a Radio Shack catalog.