Bill Benulis

Bill Benulis (November 5, 1928 – May 30, 2011) was an American comic book artist in the 1950s. His style is distinctive, and he signed his work, he drew 146 stories in a variety of genres. He was associated with artist Jack Abel who inked much of his work. His work appears in war comics, horror comics, and science fiction comics, and was reprinted in the Marvel Comics reprint series, War Is Hell, as well as in several of the reprints of fifties comic books published under the IW imprint in the sixties. His work is also collected in several reprints in the Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era series (Strange Tales, Battlefield and Journey into Mystery).

Benulis was born in 1928 in Brooklyn, New York. He married in 1959, and has three children and two grandchildren.

Between 1952 and 1956 he drew 146 comic stories, mostly for Atlas Comics, but also for Fiction House, Lev Gleason, Simon and Kirby, American Comics Group, Superior, Prize and Premier Magazines. In 1952 he drew his only superhero stories, two Captain America tales in Captain America Comics #76. Although most of the comic stories that he drew did not credit the writer, he illustrated many written by Carl Wessler and several by Stan Lee, Frank Kelly, Hank Chapman and Burt Frohman. About a third of his stories were inked by Jack Abel.

He decided not to pursue his art further past the end of 1956 in order to provide for his family by working in the post office. Despite living with the after-effects of childhood polio, he worked many years on foot as a letter carrier in the post office and retired from it around 1993. Sadly, he never drew any more after his short time in comics—a time in which he was able to work alongside others he admired like Will Eisner and Stan Lee. He illustrated a cover for an early science fiction book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.