Fred Guardineer

There Guardineer wrote, drew and lettered the 12-page feature introducing his magician-hero creation Zatara, a character remaining in the DC stable as of the 21st century.

In the late 1940s, he also drew for such Lev Gleason Publications comics as Black Diamond Western and Crime Does Not Pay.

[6] Popular-culture historian Ron Goulart called Guardineer ...a true nonpareil, an artist whose style was unmistakably his own.

[When presented with the convention's Inkpot Award,] Fred was confined to a wheelchair ... but with great effort, he insisted on standing as he made a brief but eloquent acceptance speech.

[8] One source says Guardineer moved to San Ramon, California, where he died in 2002,[4] though the Social Security Death Index gives his last place of residence as Babylon, New York (ZIP Code 11702) in Suffolk County, Long Island.