Alvin Hollingsworth (1928 - 2000)
A lot of people don’t know about this pioneering creator, but he’s a comic creator you should get to know a lot better.
He entered the industry as an art assistant at Holyoke Comics at the age of 12 (!) inking Cat-Man and other titles working alongside creators like Jack Kirby and Will Eisner and attending school with Joe Kubert. Mr. Hollingsworth had many pseudonyms, including A.C. Hollingsworth and Alvin Holly. Often times, creators rarely were credited by name with their work, but the first credited work by Mr. Hollingsworth that’s commonly cited by comic historians was a four-page story, Robot Plane, in Combat Comics #5 back in 1945 (although recent revelations has shown his first credited work, albeit under his Alvin Holly pseudonym, was a short story in Crime Does Not Pay #31 with the cover date January 1944, which means it was probably published in late 1943.
Mr. Hollingsworth worked on various properties throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including Captain Aero, Suicide Smith, Bronze Man, Numa, and The Saint, various anthology books like Young Romance, Police Against Crime, Dark Mysteries, Witchcraft, and Negro Romance, and comics strips like Kandy, Scorchy Smith, and Martin Keel.
He left comics in the mid-1950s and became a professional fine artist with subjects ranging from civil rights and jazz to cityscapes and Jesus Christ to Don Quixote and various abstract subjects . He hosted a ten-part art series on NBC called “You’re Part of the Art” where he showcased his skills and went on lectures throughout the East Coast. From 1980 to about 1998, he was an art instructor teaching a generation his techniques.