Fran Matera, an illustrator who worked in both comic strips and comic books including a long run on the Steve Roper and Mike Nomad daily, died on March 15 in Safety Harbor, Florida. He was surrounded by members of his family.
Matera grew up in Connecticut and through Alfred Andriola made contacts at Quality, where he worked both before and after graduation during the height of the North American comic book industry's initial explosion of activity. That work included uncredited art on Quality's Doll Man character. Matera studied at the Art Institute of Chicago -- some sources indicate that this may was supplemented by a correspondence course taken before making the move to the Windy City -- before dropping out to join the military during World War II. He spent some of his time in service drawing political cartoons for the camp newspaper on Parris Island. He also drew that publication's strip Ship To Shore. He would eventually request combat duty.Matera launched his comics career in 1947 after leaving the military, starting by assisting Andriola on Kerry Drake. His first major comic strip assignment was illustrating the Dickie Dare feature, a gig he held from late 1947 to 1949. Other major gigs were doing art for Little Annie Rooney (he ghosted in the early 1950s), a two-year stint on a feature called Mr. Holiday with the writer Chad Kelly, one year in the late 1950s on a Nero Wolfe effort, additional and somewhat brief ghost-artist efforts on Rex Morgan, MD, Judge Parker and Apartment 3-G. Matera was part of two of the more prominent late-period efforts to revive the adventure strip: an Indiana Jones-related effort and the Legend Of Bruce Lee strip from the early 1980s. He also worked on an abortive strip project featuring Dolly Parton.
In comic books, Matera was one of the many artists who did hundreds of pages of work including covers for the Charlton line, a comic book company noted for their ability to supply as much work as a productive artist might be able to do, to the point they could fit it around other projects. He worked on the Catholic comics magazine Treasure Chest from its inception, mostly for its Chuck White serial (from its launch through 1971) but also for the initial material presented to educators. He also did comic book pages for the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Hulk character and for various Tarzan comics when the Edgar Rice Burroughs property was at Marvel.
Matera's most high-profile gig was a two-decade run on Steve Roper and Mike Nomad for King Features, beginning in 1984 and ending in 2004. The strip ended in December of that year.
After retirement Matera attended a few shows in Florida and continued to draw. The Tampa-based cartoonist Greg Vondruska told CR about meeting Matera in 2006. "I couldn't believe there was a comic strip artist of his caliber that lived in my area! He was just about 20 minutes away from Tampa in Safety Harbor. My first thought at seeing his work was that it looked a bit like Milton Caniff to me and I was blown away. I looked up his number a few weeks later and called him." He added, "Fran was the friend I always wanted to have. He was a great raconteur full of the lustre and history of comic strips. He was generous and contributed to several small press comics I put together. It was a treat to ink a few of his drawings as well. He loved drawing and was at his board daily until the last few years."
Matera is survived by three sons and was preceded in death by his wife. He was 87 years old.
photo and initial news of Matera's death supplied by Greg Vondruska; thanks, Greg
