Shades of Gray: An Informal History of The Life and Work of Gray Morrow (1)

This is an introduction for this series of blog posts.

Ever since I read his, albeit limited, work on Man-Thing, I have been a Gray Morrow fan. Later, when I first encountered his work for Warren Publications, is when I became a bit more of a devotee of his work. It would be disingenuous for me to say that I have devoted as much of my time to Morrow’s work as I have Steve Ditko’s, but he ranks right up there in my pantheon of favorite artists with others like Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, and so on. Truly an unsung great.

So, being a huge fan of Morrow’s work, you can imagine my excitement when I learned that Gray and I hail from the same city. Gray Morrow grew up in the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I grew up in very nearby Churubusco, but the rest of my family and my social life existed in Fort Wayne and that is the city that I now call my home--basically, if you're from 'Busco, you may as well be from Fort Wayne. It’s difficult to not be excited by the fact that someone whose work you admire so much shares your home town. In big cities, it likely has a far less significant impact than what the majority of us, that exist in small cities and communities, would experience. It’s a point of pride in many ways. Someone whom I admire, in a medium that I’m passionate about, has a common heritage. It’s cool.

I’ve known that Gray was from Fort Wayne for a number of years, and I also knew that he would have been close to my grandparents’ age. Being as small a city as it was, I thought about asking if they knew or remembered him but just never got around to it—mostly because I (wrongly) assumed that they would not have the same level of interest in the man as I did.

Then, just last night, that all changed. I was reading an interview with Morrow in Bill G. Wilson’s fanzine, The Collector. It was issue #27 from 1973. In that interview Wilson asks Morrow to give a brief history of his youth and early education. Morrow, of course says he was born in 1934 in Fort Wayne, and then the bomb dropped. Morrow said that he went to North Side High School, here in the city. After reading that I knew that I had to investigate further.

From Blazing Combat #3

See, both of my grandmothers were born in 1934 and both graduated from North Side. Ipso facto, both of my grandmas graduated with Gray Morrow and likely knew him as a kid. I had to find out more. So this morning I immediately called up both grandmas and grilled them about Morrow’s youth. “What was he like? Were you friends?”, and so on and so on.

Both immediately remembered him and both knew him as far back as elementary school at Forrest Park Elementary. I got some reasonable initial stories, one of which I find at least a little dubious, but it’s inspired me to dig for more. Morrow also had a sister who would have graduated with my great uncle. I feel like there’s a wealth of information to be found about this man whose work I so greatly admire. I am going to be speaking to as many first person sources as I can through connections from my grandmas and their old friends to assemble as much as I can about Morrow's early life. I have a little bit now, but need more.

From Creepy #1

I think there’s a lot to learn and appreciate about Gray Morrow and his work. Beginning with this post I will be assembling a series of blogs that will serve as an informal biography that will hopefully be an interesting insight into this legendary creator’s youth in, what he referred to as, “Fort Pain”; and on into his career and contributions to comics, art, and the 1967 Spider-Man animated series.

So I hope that you guys will keep up with these as I gather new information. Posts on this topic may be infrequent, but I will post them as new information becomes available to me.

Gray Morrow was born March 7, 1934 and tragically took his life on November 6, 2001 as a result of his personal struggles in dealing Parkinson’s Disease—which prevented him from being able to draw.