Golden Age
During the late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age of comic books, Moldoff became a prolific cover artist for the future DC Comics. His work includes the first cover of the Golden Age Green Lantern, on issue #16 (July 1940) of All-American's flagship title All-American Comics, featuring the debut of that character created by artist Martin Nodell.[5] Moldoff created the character Black Pirate (Jon Valor) in Action Comics #23 (April 1940),[5] and became one of the earliest artists for the character Hawkman (created by Gardner Fox and Dennis Neville,[5] though sometimes misattributed to Moldoff). Moldoff drew the first image of the formerly civilian character Shiera Sanders in costume as Hawkgirl in All Star Comics #5,[6] based on Neville's Hawkman costume design.
Beginning with Flash Comics #4 (April 1940), Moldoff became the regular Hawkman artist, following Neville's departure from the feature the issue before.[5] He drew the Hawkman portions of the Justice Society of America stories published in All Star Comics as well.[7][8] Moldoff recalled in 2000 that All-American publisher Max Gaines "...took a shine to me. ... He's the one who said, 'We're going to put you on 'Hawkman', and do whatever you want with it. Do a good job; I know you can do it.' And that was it! ... But when I looked at 'Hawkman' and read a couple of stories, I said to myself, 'This has to be done in a[n Alex] Raymond style.' I could just feel it.... I [had] saved [Raymond Flash Gordon] Sunday [comic strip] pages and the daily papers for years! ... [Gaines] liked my style; he liked the realism. We were competing with the newspapers. When he picked up the Sunday papers, he saw Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates. When he picked up a comic book, there was a tremendous difference in the quality of the art. And then, all of a sudden, he saw me—an 18-year-old coming around, and I'm almost a student of Raymond, and by God, the stuff looks good—it looks like Raymond! We all leaned on these guys to learn—and we were very lucky, because while we were learning, we were selling the product... I spent a lot of time on it. I had books on anatomy and shadows and wrinkles; I studied, and I worked very hard on it, and I think it showed."
Drafted into World War II military service in 1944, Moldoff returned to civilian life in 1946, drawing for Standard, Fawcett, Marvel and Max Gaines' EC Comics. For EC he drew Moon Girl, continuing with that character for Bill Gaines.[9]
When superhero comics went out of fashion in the postwar era, Moldoff became an early pioneer in horror comics, packaging two such ready-to-print titles in 1948. He recalled in 2000 that, "I had shown This Magazine Is Haunted and Tales of the Supernatural to [ Fawcett Comics' ] Will Lieberson before I showed them to [ EC Comics' ] Bill Gaines, because I trusted Will Lieberson much more. He showed it to the big guys at Fawcett, and he said, 'Shelly, Fawcett doesn't want to get into horror now; they don't want to touch that'".[10]
Moldoff then did approach Gaines with the package, signing a contract stipulating that he would be paid a royalty percentage if the books were successful. Several months later, when EC's Tales From the Crypt hit the newsstands, Gaines reneged on the deal, Moldoff recalled in 2000, with EC attorney Dave Alterbaum threatening to blacklist Moldoff if he took legal action.[10] Afterward, said Moldoff, "Will Lieberson said, 'Let me bring it back to Fawcett again, and see if they'll take the title'. And so they did; they took This Magazine Is Haunted and Worlds of Fear and then Strange Suspense Stories. What they did was pay me $100 for the title, and give me as much work as I wanted, and I also did the covers. So that went on that way".[10]
Moldoff, who received no royalty there, either, created the cadaverous host Doctor Death.
