Silver-Age Stone
Stone largely left comics during the 1950s to become an art director for magazines including True Experience and The American Salesman,[3] and to publish a magazine, Boy Illustrated, which folded after two issues.[4] He did commercial art for Grey Advertising and TV commercial storyboards for Filmack Studios.[3] Stone, at this time living in Hollywood, California, then became art director of Modern Teen and Dig Magazine.[4] At unspecified points, he did art for magazines including Esquire and Mechanics Illustrated, and was publisher and art director of Boy Illustrated.[5]
He returned to comic books during the 1960s Silver Age, initially with the small American Comics Group (ACG) on titles including Adventures into the Unknown, for which he would pencil from 1962-1967.[3] He also variously penciled and inked, uncredited, for DC Comics, and occasionally ghosted for artists Bob Kane (on Batman stories) and George Papp (inking his Superboy pencils).[6]
Shortly thereafter, Stone began inking industry legend Jack Kirby's pencils on Fantastic Four (issues #28-38, Annual #2). He also inked Kirby on early issues of X-Men and the feature "Thor" in Journey into Mystery, and the two artists collaborated on covers across the spectrum of Marvel's comics.[7][8]
Of his pairing with Kirby, Stone recalled in a 1997 interview, "Just before 1964 I was pounding the pavement, going from one publisher to another, picking up jobs at random. At the time I was penciling Batman, and inking Superman covers for [editor] Mort Weisinger at DC. I happened to walk into the Marvel offices at the time [editor-in-chief] Stan Lee was editing a Kirby pencil job. Looking over his shoulder I was totally awestruck by the magnificent penciling. Stan looked at me and asked, 'Chic, would you like to ink this?' My knees turned to Jell-o; all I could murmur was, 'You're kidding?' ... [After I turned in the assignment,] Stan was exceedingly pleased with my rendition of Jack's work, and from that time on I would finish one job to have another waiting. There were times I'd be working on three stories at once; working 12 to 16 hours a day was not unusual. The page rate for inking was not that great, but being able to work on Jack's pencils was a substantial bonus.[9]"
Cartoonist Fred Hembeck, describing Stone as "my favorite Kirby inker", said that "beyond the bold and expressive line Stone's varied brushwork brought to Jack's power-packed pencils, the sheer fact that, by year's end, he was inking the King on Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, and the Thor and Captain America features in their respective home titles gave the entire line a warm and homey sense of visual cohesiveness that it's never quite managed to achieve since."[10]
Later in the decade, Stone returned to freelancing for DC Comics, penciling an occasional Batman story — including the lead tale in the anniversary-issue Batman #200 (March 1968). He additionally pencilled numerous stories for Tower Comics' T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Dynamo and NoMAN.[7][11]
Other work around this time includes a run of the character Nemesis in ACG's Forbidden Worlds and Unknown Worlds; Dell Comics' Flying Saucers, and a Garrison's Gorillas TV tie-in comic; and early-1970s work for Skywald Publications' black-and-white horror magazines Psycho and Nightmare. Stone's art for an AMT model car-kit ad ("Grandpa Munster 'Digs' The Drag-U-La!") appeared in DC's Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #64 (April 1966),[12] and elsewhere. After Jack Kirby left DC Stone replaced him as penciller on the Kobra and Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth books for DC, Stone was brought in as his replacement, pencilling an issue of Kobra and three issues of Kamandi until he "found the press of outside commitments too great."[13][14]
