Don Perlin, comic book artist who found success late, dies at 94

George Gene Gustines

Don Perlin, a veteran comic book artist who, after decades in the industry, helped create the popular but nontraditional superheroes Moon Knight and Bloodshot, died on May 14 in Jacksonville, Fla. He was 94. His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his stepson Leslie Blumenfeld.

Mr. Perlin began working in the comic book industry in the late 1940s, but some of his greatest successes came later — first in the ’70s and later in the ’90s. In 1974, he was recruited by Roy Thomas, an editor at Marvel, to draw the series Werewolf by Night. The next year as part of that series, he and the writer Doug Moench created Moon Knight, a mercenary armed with silver weaponry to slay supernatural creatures. In 1976, the creative team introduced the idea that Moon Knight had multiple identities, which would eventually be revealed to be a sign of a dissociative identity disorder. In 2022, Oscar Isaac starred as the character in a six-part series on Disney+.

“He appreciated the idea that these characters that he, his colleagues and his friends had created so long ago endured,” said another stepson, the jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld.

Another enduring character Mr. Perlin worked on was Bloodshot, a hero powered by nanotechnology. The character, created with the writers Bob Layton and Kevin VanHook, first appeared in 1992 in a comic book published by Valiant. Vin Diesel played the character in a 2020 feature film.

The early 1990s were a boom time for the comic book industry. The first issue of Bloodshot sold nearly a million copies. As it happened, it was published on the same day that DC Comics published an issue of Superman depicting the hero’s death. “Stores like Forbidden Planet had a line around the block for Superman and a line going the other way for Bloodshot,” Mr. VanHook said.

Mr. Perlin was recruited as Valiant’s creative director in 1991 by Jim Shooter, a founder of the company, who had worked with Mr. Perlin when he was the editor in chief of Marvel. “Don was steady. He got up, got to the board and worked all day,” Mr. Shooter said in an interview. “He was a master storyteller, and I could ask anything of him.”

Mr. VanHook said that working on Bloodshot with Mr. Perlin gave the artist the recognition he deserved. “I got a big kick out of the fact that this guy who had been around in my eyes forever was having this incredible success,” he said. “He had always been the stalwart, workhorse craftsman, but now, suddenly, there were 12- and 13-year-old kids coming over and clamoring for his autograph.”

Donald David Perlin was born on Aug. 27, 1929, in Brooklyn to Murray and Rebecca Perlin. He grew up in the Canarsie neighborhood and remained there until 1997, when he moved to Jacksonville. His father was a fabric designer but dabbled in painting, and he pushed Don toward art.

Mr. Perlin attended Straubenmuller Textile High School in Manhattan. In 1943, when he was 14, he saw a newspaper advertisement for an art class taught by Burne Hogarth, who illustrated the Tarzan newspaper strip. “It was at Hogarth’s place, and his classes, where I learned about comics — the fundamentals — and that’s when I realized that I’d found my niche,” Mr. Perlin said in a 2022 interview published in the comics fanzine Alter Ego.

Mr. Hogarth initially held his classes in a loft on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but in 1947 he turned his endeavor into the Cartoonists and Illustrations School, which nine years later became the School of Visual Arts. “When the class became affiliated with a school,” Mr. Perlin said, “I couldn’t afford it and had to drop out.”

Thanks to a bit of hustling — he would make the rounds of comic book publishers in New York with samples of his work — Mr. Perlin landed one-page assignments, which were often uncredited. Starting in 1951, he was hired to draw longer stories, including romance and horror.

He was drafted into the Army in the spring of 1953 and served domestically for two years, continuing to draw stories after hours. He married Arlene Bon in 1955, and they were together until her death in 1976. He married Rebecca Blumenfeld in 1977.

In addition to his stepsons, Mr. Perlin’s wife survives him, as do his daughters, Mindy Cohen and Elaine Perlin; his son, Howard Perlin; eight grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.

During a lull in comic book assignments, Mr. Perlin took on odd jobs, including illustration work for technical manuals and a stint at a knitting mill. He also attended night classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but dropped out when his mill shifts went from day to evening work. In 1962, he began an 11-year stint at Charlton Comics, where he also wrote stories.

After starting at Marvel in 1974 with Werewolf by Night, he went on to draw many of the company’s other characters, including Ghost Rider and the Defenders, a team of heroes that included the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner. He was a creator of Moon Knight before the establishment of a royalty system for comic book creators. But he was happy when his work from 1985 to 1987 on a Transformers comic for Marvel sold well and led to royalty payments.

His last published work was an issue of Scooby-Doo in 2000. Mr. Perlin often appeared at comic book conventions, which his stepson Leslie found to be an eye-opening experience. “There would be 50 to 100 people saying, ‘Oh my God, there’s Don Perlin,’” he recalled. “It would be like if you went to a Taylor Swift concert.”