SFScope friend Andrew Porter writes with news of the death of author and artist Lou Cameron, whose cartoon work appeared in Classics Illustrated’s War of the Worlds (#124, January, 1955) and The Time Machine (#133, July, 1956). Porter forwards to us word that “Cameron died November 25, 2010 in New York City, writes Anthony Tollin. His Wikipedia listing assumes he is still alive.”
Tollin writes: “Lou Cameron is dead, as confirmed by some of his closest friends and associates. This particular Lou Cameron (the writer-artist, same birth date, same social security number) did indeed die.
“His death is known to some of Cameron’s friends and business associates who had stayed in contact with him. If anyone doubts this, they should try contacting Cameron personally themselves (request an interview with him?), and ask the anyone who claims otherwise to provide positive evidence that Cameron is still alive. (He isn’t.)”
Dutch comic shop Lambiek describes Cameron: “American illustrator and writer Lou Cameron attended the California School of Fine Arts. He was active as a comic book artist in the 1950s. He was a versatile artist for Gilberton’s ‘Classics Illustrated’ series. For this collection, Cameron illustrated among others comic adaptations of novels by Herbert George Wells, Ann S. Stephans, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola and Robert Louis Stevenson.
“He was furthermore a contributor to the mystery titles published by Atlas, including Astonishing Comics, Journey into Mystery, Uncanny Tales and Journey Into Unknown Worlds. He illustrated stories in the same genre for DC titles like House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Tales of the Unexpected, as well as Ace Periodicals’ Baffling Mysteries, Web of Mystery and Hand of Fate. He additionally did horror stories for St. John Publishing and romance and western features for Story Comics. In 1951 and 1952 he did a syndicated feature called So It Seems.
“During the same period, Cameron was active as a pulp book illustrator. From 1957 he focused on his work has a writer, which he has done under his own name but also as Julie Cameron, Dagmar, Mary Manning and Ramsay Thorne. Among his many (mainly suspense, war and western) novels are Beyond the Scarlet Door, The Amphorae Pirates, Belle of Fort Smith, The Dirty War of Sgt. Slade and a biography of President Reagan, as well as the Stringer western series.”
A bibliography of his work is available on the Fantastic Fiction site.