Who are the individuals who have made great contributions to the comic book arts? Who are the writers, artists, editors, publishers and others who have plied their craft in insightful ways? The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide presents The Overstreet Hall of Fame. We’ll take a look at one of our inductees each week in Scoop.

Whether one knows his work from his long run on the Tarzan newspaper strip, a too-brief stint on the Star Wars newspaper strip, or creating the comic book series Magnus Robot Fighter, the illustrations of Russ Manning (1929-1981) pack clean, crisp line work and solid storytelling into every panel. With a design sense dictated by the stories (His Star Wars or Magnus are substantially different than his Tarzan), he became influential with comic artists, even though his work was never published by Marvel or DC.

In recent years, Dark Horse has reprinted many of his Tarzan stories in collected editions, sharing them with new generations of fans. Each year The Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award is an award presented at Comic-Con International: San Diego to a comic book artist whose first professional work appeared within the previous two years. In 1982 the first recipient was the late Dave Stevens, who had worked as an assistant of Manning’s.

If you’d like to get a copy of The Overstreet Hall of Fame, it’s available from the Gemstone Publishing website.