[7] Among his earliest influences, he said in 2001, were the Coulton Waugh adventure comic strip Dickie Dare "in The New York Sun.

"[J]ust a summertime job before I went into the service",[10] it gave Colan his first published work, the one-page "Wing Tips" non-fiction filler "P-51B Mustang" (issue #52, Dec.

[7] Originally scheduled for gunnery school in Boulder, Colorado, plans changed with the war's sudden end.

I worked very hard on a war story, about seven or eight pages long, and I did all the lettering myself, I inked it myself, I even had a wash effect over it.

[7]Comics historian Michael J. Vassallo identifies that first story as "Adam and Eve — Crime Incorporated" in Lawbreakers Always Lose #1 (cover date Spring 1948), on which is written the internal job number 2401.

[17] Due to Colan's work going uncredited, in the manner of the times, comprehensive credits for this era are difficult if not impossible to ascertain.

Colan's earliest confirmed credit during this time is penciling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom", by an uncredited writer, in Atlas' Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Feb.

[23] Around this time he did his first work for DC Comics, then the industry leader, on the licensed series Hopalong Cassidy, based on the film and TV Western hero, drawing it from 1954 to 1957.

[7] While freelancing for DC romance comics in the 1960s, Colan did his first superhero work for Marvel under the pseudonym Adam Austin.

Sometime after Colan began this pseudonymous stint, Marvel editor Stan Lee made overtures to lure him from DC.

Operating, like other company artists, on the "Marvel Method" — in which editor-in-chief and primary writer Stan Lee "would just speak to me for a few minutes on the phone, tell me the beginning, the middle and the end [of a story] and not much else, maybe four or five paragraphs, and then he'd tell me to make [a 20-page] story out of it,"[10] providing artwork to which Lee would then script dialogue and captions — Colan forged his own style, different from that of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, whom Lee would point to as examples of the Marvel style: Whatever book he thought was selling, he would have the rest of the staff try to copy the same style of work, but I wouldn't do it.

Colan admitted relying upon amphetamines in order to make deadlines for illustrating the series Doctor Strange,[30] for which he would personally visit the character's real-life Manhattan neighborhood, Greenwich Village, and shoot Polaroid photographs to use as location reference.

[34] In Captain America #117 (Sept. 1969), Colan and writer-editor Stan Lee created the Falcon,[35] the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books.

[2][3] The character came about, Colan recalled in 2008, ... in the late 1960s [when news of the] Vietnam War and civil rights protests were regular occurrences, and Stan, always wanting to be at the forefront of things, started bringing these headlines into the comics.

[36]Concurrent with his move to Marvel, Colan also contributed several stories to Warren Publishing's line of black-and-white horror comics magazines, beginning with the six-page tale "To Pay the Piper", by writer Larry Ivie, in Eerie #2 (March 1966).

There and in subsequent stories for that magazine and its sister publication, Creepy, Colan would ink his own pencil work.

The vast majority of these were written by Warren editor Archie Goodwin, with whom Colan would later collaborate on Marvel's Iron Man.

[24][37] Colan in the 1970s illustrated the complete 70-issue run of the acclaimed[38][39] horror title The Tomb of Dracula[40] as well as most issues of writer Steve Gerber's cult hit Howard the Duck.

[46] In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Colan's run on The Tomb of Dracula fifth on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".

[47] Colan's collaboration with Steve Gerber on the Howard the Duck series saw the title character nominated by the All-Night Party, a fictional political party, as their nominee in the Presidential campaign of 1976,[48] and led to Howard the Duck receiving thousands of write-in votes in the actual election.

[60] In the insert preview in DC Comics Presents #41 (Jan. 1982), writer Roy Thomas and Colan provided Wonder Woman with a stylized "WW" emblem on her bodice, replacing the traditional eagle.

Wonder Woman #288 (February 1982) premiered the new costume and an altered cover banner incorporating the "WW" emblem.

[24] Colan's style, characterized by fluid figure drawing and extensive use of shadow, was unusual among Silver Age comic artists,[69] and became more pronounced as his career progressed.

[24] Back at Marvel, he collaborated again with Marv Wolfman and veteran inker Al Williamson on a new The Tomb of Dracula series, and with Don McGregor on a Black Panther serial in the Marvel Comics Presents anthology, as well as a six-issue adaptation of Clive Barker's "The Harrowers: Raiders of the Abyss.

[24] Saying the book required "a much younger and better-looking Dracula" than in their previous series, Colan used "my lawn-boy [as] my model.

2, #100 (Oct. 2007), Colan penciled pages 18–20 of the 36-page story "Without Fear, Part One"; the issue additionally reprinted the Colan-drawn Daredevil #90-91 (Aug.-Sept.

[74][75][76] On May 11, 2008, his family announced that Colan, who had been hospitalized for liver failure, had suffered a sharp deterioration in his health.

[78] He continued to produce original comics work as late as 2009, drawing the 40-page Captain America #601 (Sept. 2009), for which he won an Eisner Award.

[86] He subsequently won the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (together with writer Ed Brubaker) for his work on Captain America #601 (Sept.

[79] The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco presented the retrospective "Colan: Visions of a Man without Fear" from November 15, 2008, to March 15, 2009.