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