Number 1160: Jesse Marsh's Dinosaurus!

Artist Alex Toth wrote about Jesse Marsh, longtime artist on Tarzan and Gene Autry Comics: "[Marsh] lived in Monrovia, California, with his aged parents, and took care of them to the last. Upon their passing, alone, middle-aged, he went on working hard, despite failing eyesight due to his bout with diabetes — and, in fact, died unattended in that family home — where he was found days later."*

Marsh died in 1966. He gave up drawing Tarzan in '65 due to his health problems.

Dell Four Color #1120, Dinosaurus!, from 1960, is a Jesse Marsh job. He did the drawing and lettering.** It's tragic, a guy and a drawing board, so isolated he was dead for several days before his body was found. Some of the artwork in Dinosaurus is rushed, but even so his composition is solid. Despite his problems Marsh was still a professional.

*See the whole essay, hand-lettered by Toth, here.

**Credit in the Grand Comics Database, via Alberto Becattini, is given to Eric Freiwald and Robert Schaefer for the writing. It's an adaptation of a movie I haven't seen, but you can read the IMdB posting here.

Here's an ad from the June 13, 1960 issue of Life magazine.