Jerry Grandenetti entered the field, at the age of 23, as a background artist for Will Eisner's Spirit in 1948. If his subsequent work never quite matched the impact of Eisner's -- who, Grandenetti once said, "was like a god to us" -- it strived, and sometimes succeeded, in being as distinctive.

Grandenetti paid homage to his former boss in his best known series, "The Secret Files of Dr. Drew," which ran in Rangers Comics #47-60. As he moved through short stints with Ned Pines and Charlie Biro and a 12-year stint at DC (where he put Bob Kanigher's words to music in various war books), Grandenetti began to experiment with a cartoonish, surrealistic approach to his panels. By the time he joined Jim Warren's staff in the early 70's, his stories for Creepy were jammed with some of the quirkier elements of Alex Toth, Graham Ingels, and Jack Davis.

In 1972 Grandenetti did some final work for DC then abandoned the field to take a job as art director for the advertising firm of Young & Rubicon.

From "Comics Between the Panels" by Steve Duin and Mike Richardson