Anyone know anything about "ghost artist" Sheldon "Shelly" Moldoff?

[AG2020]

Hi, all -

I know nothing about comic books, but I think I might have inherited a painting by one of the Batman ghost artists, Sheldon Moldoff. I was hoping that one of you might know something about him, specifically did he also do oil on canvas art not related to comics? The painting was a gift to my aunt from the artist. She has been gone for a number of years and no one else left in the family has any more information. I've attached a pic of the signature on the painting.IMG_0922.jpg

I hope someone might have more information on Mr. Moldoff. Thanks, in advance, for any information!

Amy

[Caivu]

I did some Googling, and Sheldon Moldoff apparently had two brothers. One, Stan Moldoff, was five years younger and was a painter.

[Jim Kelly]

Well, if the O.P. says the painting was by Sheldon Moldoff then I'm going to believe that to be the case. The signature resembles the way "Shelly" signed his commission comics paintings. Look at how the "FF" runs together, for example. You can see a similarity in this work--keeping in mind the one signature is done with a paintbrush and the other is done with a pen, with 33 years between them--



I could fill a few pages with Sheldon Moldoff's biography. I'll try to keep it short for this post. Sheldon Moldoff was a significant figure in comics history. His early comics artwork was noted for using swipes of artists like Alex Raymond and Hal Foster. You can see this in his work in the early 1940s on Hawkman and on the Black Pirate--his own creation, Moldoff also wrote the Black Pirate feature (one of the great unsung D.C. characters).

Shelly was the first artist (that we know of) to work on Batman with Bob Kane. He mainly did backgrounds and some inks in those 1939 stories. He would return to Batman in 1954 as Kane's ghost artist. Note that this is different from Dick Sprang who worked directly for National (even though, as with all artists, his work had the Bob Kane credit box). Shelly continued to work on Batman for Kane--and thus paid directly by Kane rather than National Periodical Publications--until 1967. And when the BATMAN T.V. series debuted, he did a lot of the promotiional art and was the first artist to work on the newspaper strip that appeared at the time.

Moldoff worked for a lot of other publishers--he co-created Kid Eternity for Quality. And he essentially invented the horror anthology genre for comics. He came to William Gaines with the idea, with the agreement that he would get paid royalties for the concept. Gaines used the idea but never made good on his deal with Moldoff. However, Shelly then launched a horror anthology line for Fawcett.

In 1967, Carmine Infantino was given a management job as the editorial director for N.P.P. and he made a deal with Bob Kane. The publisher had a contract with Kane that required them to pay him for steady work, which he then farmed out to ghosts (which included Lew Sayre Schwartz, Moldoff and Chic Stone), but Infantino said they'd just give Kane the money every month and he wouldn't have to do any art for them. Of course, Bob jumped at the offer, but this meant Moldoff didn't get anymore ghost work on Batman.

Besides the ghost work, Moldoff worked directly for D.C. doing pencils or inks on many features. He was one of the better inkers for Curt Swan's Superman art. And he was a frequent artist on the D.C. public service ads, written by Jack Schiff.

As well, he helped Bob Kane create the cartoon characters Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse and he was a story board artist for the series. Later in life, Moldoff did a lot of commission art paintings for the fan market, often recreating comics work he had done in the past.

[Caivu]

What's the painting of?