Howard Purcell, whose early influences included the adventure comic strip artists Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, as well as illustrators Harvey Dunn and Dean Cornwell, took art classes at the Art Students League of New York. He worked as an animator in New York City studios before entering the comics industry, where his earliest known credit is National's Adventure Comics #53, for which he wrote and drew the six-page feature "Mark Lansing". The titular adventurer's exploits with subterranean races and other science fiction conceits ran through issue #62. By that time Purcell had drawn the cover of All-American's All Star Comics #2 – reprinted as the cover of DC Comics' quirkily numbered, 2006 hardcover collection All Star Archives #0 – as well as the feature "Lando, Man of Magic" in World's Best Comics #1, and both the Green Lantern cover of, and the humorous adventure feature "Red, White and Blue" in, All-American Comics #25. Purcell and writer John Wentworth created Sargon the Sorcerer in the following month's issue. A minor character in what would become the DC Universe, Sargon was John Sargent, whose exposure to the "Ruby of Life" during infancy granted him magical powers that he used in adulthood to fight crime, keeping his supernatural abilities camouflaged in his guise as a stage magician. Purcell and Wentworth continued with the character through All-American Comics #50. With writer Gardner Fox, Purcell created the Gay Ghost in All-American's Sensation Comics #1. The character, renamed the Grim Ghost in the 1970s, was similar to National Comics' the Spectre in that he was a ghost who inhabited the body of a modern man, Charles Collins, to fight injustice – although unlike the genuinely grim Spectre, he did so with cheery swashbuckling. For rival Timely Comics, the 1940s forerunner of Marvel Comics, Purcell drew the only appearance of the superhero the Young Avenger, in U.S.A. Comics #1, under the pseudonym Michael Robard.
Later life and career
Purcell drew the Mr. District Attorney series, a comics adaptation of the radio crime drama, from 1948 to 1957. His 1960s work included drawing the DC series Sea Devils and co-creating the supernatural character the Enchantress with writer Bob Haney in Strange Adventures #187. The Enchantress appears in the 2016 live-action movie Suicide Squad, portrayed by Cara Delevingne. Purcell did a smattering for Marvel Comics, including two "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." stories, over Jack Kirby layouts, in Strange Tales #143–144 ; a Black Knight solo feature in Marvel Super-Heroes #17 ; and three 10-page, semi-anthological backup stories featuring the Watcher, in Silver Surfer #4–5 and #7. Purcell's last known work was a story each in the DC supernatural anthology Weird Mystery Tales #1–3, plus the cover of #2. By at least 1968, Purcell was additionally a teacher at a high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and at the Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, and was chairman of that college's commercial art department. Purcell died April 24, 1981 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
