Pat Boyette
Pat Boyette | |
Biographical information | |
Born: | July 27, 1923 |
---|---|
Died: | January 14, 2000 |
Nationality: | American |
Occupation: | Artist, Cover artist |
Website: | N/A |
Patrick "Pat" Boyette (born July 27, 1923, San Antonio, Texas; died January 14, 2000, Ft. Worth, Texas) was an American broadcasting personality and news producer, and later a comic book artist best known for two decades of work for Charlton Comics, where he co-created the character The Peacemaker.
Biography
Early career
Raised in San Antonio, Pat Boyette entered radio drama as a youngster, performing on a local soap opera. Learning radio production in the process, he became a broadcast journalist WOAI-AM, returning to this career following his World War II military service as a cryptographer. He later segued into television, becoming a TV news anchor in San Antonio. Additionally, Boyette became the producer of a daytime talk show, a puppet show, and TV commercials.
Boyette broke into comics in the mid-1950s. While continuing to work in television, he wrote and drew the short-lived Western comic strip "Captain Flame" for a syndicate owned by Charlie Plumb. He would return to comics after first leaving broadcasting and spending most of the 1960s shooting movies in San Antonio. He directed and co-wrote the low-budget horror movie Dungeon of Harrow (1962), a.k.a. Dungeons of Horror and The Dungeon of Harrow, also composing the music and serving as "supervising editor".[1] He as well wrote, produced and directed the science-fiction comedy The Weird Ones a.k.a. The Weird One (1962), co-directed the war picture No Man's Land (1964) and served as associate producer, and scripted the biker movie The Girls from Thunder Strip (1966), as well as at least one episode of the TV police series Adam-12.
Charlton Comics
Turning to comic books, Boyette began a two-decade stint as a freelance artist for the Derby, Connecticut-based, low-budget Charlton Comics. His first known work for the company is the nine-page story "'Spacious' Rooms for Rent" in the supernatural-suspense anthology Shadows from Beyond #50 (Oct. 1966). The Grand Comics Database also tentatively identifies an additional nine-page story that issue, "Reprieve!", as being penciled by Boyette.
On his very next assignment, Boyette co-created with staff writer Joe Gill the non-superpowered superhero The Peacemaker in the backup story in Fightin' 5 #40 (Nov. 1966). The Peacemaker was Christopher Smith, a pacifist diplomat so committed to peace that he was willing to use force as a superhero to advance the cause, using an array of special non-lethal weapons and also founding the Pax Institute. Most of his antagonists were dictators and warlords. The Peacemaker received his own title that lasted five issues cover-dated March to November 1967, with the Fightin' 5 as a backup series. Some of Boyette's artwork for a projected sixth issue later appeared online. DC Comics acquired the character following Charlton's demise in the mid-1980s, and The Peacemaker became the basis for the character the Comedian in writer Alan Moore's landmark limited series Watchmen.
Boyette would draw, and often write, hundreds of stories for Charlton through at least 1976, for such supernatural series as Ghost Manor, Ghostly Tales and The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, science fiction series like Outer Space, Strange Suspense Stories and Space Adventures, Western series such as Billy the Kid, Cheyenne Kid and Outlaws of the West, romance comics such as Love Diary and Secret Romance, war comics like Attack and Fightin' Marines, the prehistoric-adventure series Korg: 70,000 B.C., and the licensed-character series Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, The Phantom, and The Six Million Dollar Man. Boyette also took on the writing and art for the superhero series Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, succeeding creator Pete Morisi. His work continued on at Charlton as reprints through at least 1986. Some of his Charlton work was reprinted as late as 2002 in Avalon Communications' Enemies and Aces #1.
Other comics work
For a brief period in 1968, Boyette drew issues of the DC Comics aviator series Blackhawk. That same year, his friend and Charlton colleague Rocke Mastroserio helped Boyette join the stable of artists freelancing for Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazines, initially having him ghost-pencil, uncredited, "The Rescue of the Morning Maid" in Creepy #18 (Jan. 1968), which credited artist Mastroserio inked. Boyette would go on to do credited work for such other Warren titles as Eerie occasionally through 1970 before making Charlton his base.
Boyette's other comic work includes a Black Hood story for Archie Comics' eponymous costumed crimefighter comic, in 1983; an issue of the science-fiction series Revolver for Renegade Press in 1986; his self-published SF/fantasy anthology The Cosmic Book #1 (Dec. 1986), under the imprint Wandering Star Press; issues of Blood of Dracula for Apple Press in 1988 and 1989; and others.
Later life and career
In the 1980's, Boyette was storyboard director for "Defenders of the Earth", where he once again worked with the Phantom character.
His last known published comics work was inking penciler Howard Simpson on the 21-page story "White Men Speak with Forked Tongue (Jurassic Politics part 2)" in Acclaim Comics' Turok, Dinosaur Hunter #18 (Dec. 1994).
Boyette died of cancer of the esophagus. He was predeceased by his wife, Betty or Bette (sources differ). The couple had a daughter, Melissa.
Phantom work by Pat Boyette
Stories
Charlton stories
# | Title | Writer | Artist |
---|---|---|---|
1 | "The Curse of Kallai" | Wood | Boyette, Alascia |
2 | "A Small War" | Gill | Boyette |
3 | "Canyon of Death" | Gill | Boyette |
4 | "The Silent Thieves" | Gill | Boyette |
5 | "The Ritual" | Gill | Boyette |
6 | "The False Mark" | Gill | Boyette |
7 | "The Second Phantom" | Gill | Boyette |
8 | "Slave of Beauty" | Gill | Boyette |
8 | "The Idol" | Gill | Boyette |
9 | "Deadly Foe" | Gill | Boyette |
10 | "The Keeper of the Herd" | Gill | Boyette |
11 | "Who Needs Enemies?" | Gill | Boyette |
12 | "Prey of the Hunter" | Gill | Boyette |
13 | "Test of an Idol" | Gill | Boyette |
14 | "Paid in Full" | Gill | Boyette |
15 | "The Rain Stopper" | Gill | Boyette |
16 | "To Right a Wrong" | Gill | Boyette |
17 | "Danger in Bengali" | Gill | Boyette |
18 | "Death from Far Away" | Gill | Boyette |
19 | "Return of the Ruby" | Gill | Boyette |
20 | "Phantom and John Paul Jones" | Gill | Boyette |
21 | "The Cave of Kings" | Gill | Boyette |
22 | "The Last of the Cat" | Gill | Boyette |
23 | "The Vanishing Thieves" | Gill | Boyette |
24 | "Nest of the Man-Eaters" | Gill | Boyette |
25 | "The False Skull Cave" | Gill | Boyette |
26 | "Soundless Voices" | Gill | Boyette |
27 | "The Vapors of Vulcan" | Gill | Boyette |
28 | "The Man of Destiny" | Gill | Boyette |
29 | "The Hostage" | Gill | Boyette |
30 | "A Better Way" | Gill | Boyette |
31 | "The Intruders" | Gill | Boyette |
32 | "The Fire Gods" | Gill | Boyette |
33 | "No Gratitude" | Gill | Boyette |
34 | "The Lost Legion" | Gill | Boyette |
35 | "A Broken Vow" | Gill | Boyette |
36 | "Captive King" | Gill | Boyette |
37 | "The Treasure Room" | Gill | Boyette |
38 | "Lost in the Land of the Lost" | Gill | Boyette |
39 | "A World Away" | Gill | Boyette |
40 | "Revenge of the Singh Pirates" | Gill | Boyette |
41 | "The Looters" | Gill | Boyette |
42 | "The Phantom Meets the Do-Gooders" | Gill | Boyette |
43 | "The Outlaw's Herd" | Gill | Boyette |
44 | "Killers in the Mist" | Gill | Boyette |
45 | "The Angry Gods" | Gill | Boyette |
46 | "Master of Evil" | Gill | Boyette |
47 | "The Black Blight" | Gill | Boyette |
48 | "A Far-Off Drum" | Gill | Boyette |
49 | "A Thief in the Night" | Gill | Boyette |
50 | "Jungle Madness" | Gill | Boyette |
51 | "The Nazi Phantom" | Gill | Boyette |
52 | "The Chief Who Went Astray" | Gill | Boyette |
53 | "The Phantom Fails" | Gill | Boyette |
54 | "Taking His Medicine" | Gill | Boyette |
55 | "The Swamp of Death" | Gill | Boyette |
56 | "Diana's Ransom" | Gill | Boyette |
57 | "Prisoner on Shark Island" | Gill | Boyette |
58 | "The Despoilers" | Gill | Boyette |
59 | "Caught in the Devil's Cauldron" | Gill | Boyette |
Covers
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References
- The Grand Comics Database
- Comicartville Library: "A Tribute to Pat Boyette", by Don Magus (2003)
- IComics.com (June 10, 1998): "Pat Boyette's Curious Course into Comics History, by Marty Baumann
- Lambiek Comiclopedia: Pat Boyette
- Evanier, Mark. Superheroes in My Pants! (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1893905357), "Pat Boyette", pp.126+
- Charlton Personnel
- "The Warren Magazines", by Richard Arndt
- Don Markstein's Toonopedia: The Peacemaker
External links
- Comic Book Artist #9 (Aug. 2000): "The Charlton Empire: A Brief History of the Derby, Connecticut Publisher", by Jon B. Cooke & Christopher Irving
- Pat Boyette on IMDb
This article, in the version of January 19, 2007, includes information from Wikipedia: Pat Boyette. |