CapeZoneCapeZoneCreator/Sunday Press Books
William H. D. Koerner has 1 credited comics indexed across 1 series, working as writer, penciller, inker, letterer.
Koerner immigrated to Clinton, Iowa with his parents when he was three years old. At the age of twenty, Koerner was hired by the Chicago Tribune as a staff artist at $5 per day. Koerner made the short-lived comic strip Hugo Hercules, which was drawn in 1902, but it was terminated after only five months. Despite its short length, it is widely considered to be the first superhero comic. He enrolled at the Art Students League for a two-year program during 1905–07 under George Bridgman, Norman Rockwell's teacher. A student colleague later persuaded Koerner to apply to Howard Pyle's illustration school in Wilmington. From 1922 onwards, Koerner illustrated more than two hundred and fifty stories with Western themes and painted over six hundred pictures for periodicals. He illustrated a number of books that later were made into films based on his illustrations. It is estimated he completed nearly two thousand illustrations of which about eighteen hundred were done for magazines, as well as advertisements for C. W. Post's Grape-Nuts and Postum cereals.
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