He had grown up and received his education in the Big Apple and graduated from George Washington High School in Washington Heights (Manhattan) before going on to study at the Art Students League of New York under renowned illustrator Frank Riley and the famous surrealistic, modern Japanese painter Kuniashi (genecolan.com).

"My mother owned an antique business. (...) My father was in the insurance business. I was into art, very early on. I started at about three, and I drew everything in sight (...) That was my passion, and I didn't care about anything else, not really (...) I had my pencil and pad, and I was set." (Irving, 2010)

Battlefield #5
(November 1952)

"The bottom dropped out and we had to take what we could get. (...) It happened at a time [in 1948] when everybody in the art department was let go. (...) People would have to fend for themselves, getting freelance or whatever. (...) I decided to take the day off and decided to see what I could get. I came back with some good accounts: Quality Comics was one, and I worked for Ziff-Davis, and maybe one or two others." (Irving, 2010)

Also in 1948 Colan became a freelance artist for National (DC). Always striving for complete accuracy, Gene Colan meticulously researched his countless war stories for DC such as All-American Men at War and Our Army at War, as well as Atlas Comics' Battle, Battlefront, G.I. Tales, Marines in Battle and Navy Tales (to name only a few). His earliest confirmed credit during this time is pencilling and inking the six-page crime fiction story "Dream Of Doom" in Lawbreakers Always Lose #6 (Atlas, February 1949).

Following the Wertham scare of 1954 and the downturn the industry faced Gene Colan left comic books for good for a number of years before returning to the medium in 1962. Initally working for DC and Dell, he also began to do some occasional work for Marvel as of 1963 with mystery backups on Journey into Mystery and Western stories.

Daredevil #44
(September 1968)
cover signed by Gene Colan

Tomb of Dracula #7, pg 6
(March 1973)
original artwork by Gene Colan, expertly inked by Tom Palmer

Tomb of Dracula #9, pg 26
(June 1973)
original artwork by Gene Colan, inked by Vince Colletta, notorious for his tendency to "simplify" pencilwork and leave out a lot of detail

Night Force #3, pg 20
(October 1982)
original artwork by Gene Colan, inked by Bob Smith

Daredevil #363
(April 1997)
colour guide by Christie Scheele on a production stat of Gene Colan's artwork

"[Film] was really a black and white medium when I grew up.  Most of the films that were in the theatres were all black and white, we didn’t have very many Technicolor films then so I was brought up in a world of black and white.  Aside from that, that’s how I saw everything anyway. I wasn’t into color it never occurred to me to have anything colored, so I drew it in black and white and if they wanted to add color to it then go ahead, but that’s just how I saw things.  Most of the inspiration came from films and to me the movie screen was just one gigantic comic book panel." (Best, 2003)

"[It was] at the age of 5 when I was exposed to my first horror film. It was Frankenstein. My father wanted to see it and he took me along. Boy, did that traumatize me! That was in 1931. From then on, I was intrigued with horror. I didn’t realize it in those years, but it kind of crept up on me. I sort of took what I loved from the screen and put it on paper (...) Whatever scary movie was out, I'd see it, and a combination of things, but I always had an affinity for that stuff (...) I just love the atmosphere - you know, old castles, cemeteries, fog - all that stuff. I've always been interested in that." (Siuntres, 2005)

"[Stan Lee] would just give me - and any of the other artists that could do it - a brief thumbnail idea of what the plot was - this is the beginning, this is the middle, and that's the end - and I wouldn't come into the city with that, I would tape record him telling me the story over the phone. That way I could follow the message that he left for me, on the recorder, and space it out the way he tells it. And I would say 'well this will take just so many pages and this should take so many' and I would equal it out until I felt that it would - in my mind, I didn't make notes or anything - that it should eat up about 18 pages, and tell the story. And sometimes I would run into trouble and other times I would be right on the nailhead. I just couldn't stand doing thumbnail sketches of these things, I just wanted to get right to it - and I would start with panel one." (Siuntres, 2005)

"You know comic book artists never sit down at a convention table to discuss how they're gonna do this and how they're gonna do that - it was always over the phone, very quickly, or in passing each other you'd spend a few minutes talking about it, maybe fifteen or so, and that would be it. It's all that was required." (Siuntres, 2005)

"An artist, as a rule, is not aware of a style; he just does it.  You know when you write your name you don’t think about how you’re writing it but yet it can be spotted by everyone and they’ll know that that’s you.  When you’ve written your name out it has a style to it, it’s very hard to copy and artwork is the same thing – it has a style to it and you just don't sit down and try to develop a style it just happens.  An unconscious experience." (Best, 2003)

"There are no two artists that look at things the same way. Everybody has their method of creating a mood.  I have mine, they have theirs.  Every time I did a job I was basically entertaining myself, having a good time with it, and I enjoyed that.  And even though I would put lines down that I knew the inker wouldn’t even begin to bother with, I’d put them in anyway, because it made the final picture I’d be doing finished. I gave it all I could. Whether they inked it or not, that was something else again. Once it left my hands I didn’t even care who inked it. There was no point in arguing with trying to get a specific inker to work on your stuff because they didn’t listen to you.  If they needed to a particular job done in a hurry and all the best inkers were working on other things they would give it to somebody else." (Best, 2003)

"I worked real hard on my art, why should somebody come over and wreck it up? So, I never really had a good inker, not until Tom [Palmer] came along. (...) I liked Tom's work very much. It was weighty, and he put in all the stuff that I liked - kind of like a Caniff. My work is not easy to follow, and he must've had a helluva time with it. Tom is an illustrator himself; he's done a lot of advertising art. So, he was very well-suited to it." (Field, 2001)

"Fortunately for me the last ten years or so I’ve had a lot of my work printed only in pencil." (Best, 2003)

"The only strip I really begged for was Dracula. [Stan Lee] promised it to me, but then he changed his mind, he was going to give it to Bill Everett (...) But I didn't take that for an answer. I worked up a page of Dracula, long before Bill did anything (...) and I sent it in. I got an immediate call back. Stan said, "The strip is yours"." (Thomas, 2000)

"I don’t remember when it started but I guess it started in the ‘60’s when they began to give back to the artists, after the stories were printed, the original artwork. But if an artist, if a penciler had to share the story with an inker then the inker would get a small percentage of it and the penciler got most of it.  Out of an 18-page story an inker might get five or six pages and then the penciler would get all the rest.  So unless I inked it myself I never got the full amount of pages back at anytime, I would get most of them back, but not all of them." (Best, 2003)

"I think comic books have gotten out of hand these days because they show everything that films portray and they don’t spare anything.  They don’t leave anything to the imagination of the reader." (Best, 2003)

"I never thought my career would take on the proportions that it has (...) I was just proud of the fact that I could actually draw something and do a story. (...) So it took off and the proportion that it reached just boggles the mind. I'm very fortunate in that respect." (Best, 2010)