(L to R) Lenny Brenner, Bill Gaines, Antonio Prohias, Angelo Torres, and Nick Meglin
Angelo was born in 1932, on the island of Puerto Rico, where he spent the first fourteen years of his life.
His first recollection of any interest in comics was fighting his cousin over who’d get the Will Eisner Spirit insert that came with the family’s magazine subscription. He was nine years old at the time and remembers Sundays at his grandparents’ house waiting patiently for his grandfather to finish with the funnies, his favorite strips being Bringing Up Father and Tarzan, drawn at that time by Burne Hogarth. (A dozen or so years later and over a thousand miles away, Ange would be sitting in a classroom being taught drawing by Burne Hogarth himself.)
His grandfather would then relinquish the paper, allowing Ange to plunge into his favorites - Terry and the Pirates and Prince Valiant being at the top of the list - although, frankly, he loved all of them. It was around this time that he began drawing. Needless to say, his grades in school suffered, while his notebooks became fully illustrated messes.
Angelo at the drawing board in the MAD Magazine production offices
In 1946, Ange came to New York City and attended junior high school in the Bronx. He made some wonderful friends there, some of whom were forever asking him to draw naked girls - something he had never seen. Upon graduating junior high, he was advised to follow a career in art and thus not be concerned with algebra, trig, and calculus and such. He was more than happy to oblige since he had always hated math, and for the next three years attended the School of Industrial Art, a vocational high school in Manhattan. This kept him happily drawing without too many concerns about his grades. He still has problems with long division.
Angelo graduated from the School of Industrial Art in January of 1951, and with the Korean War still going, faced the prospect of being drafted into the military. In March, he joined the NY National Guard, and then in April the unit was activated. It was sent down to Camp Stewart in Georgia for artillery training, and he became a radar operator. The following January his unit returned to New York to be deployed around the city and later that summer it received orders to ship out to Korea.
The troop ship sailed out of Staten Island in New York Harbor, through the Panama Canal, and all the way to Pusan, South Korea. This had to be the mother of all cruises. Ange didn’t get much drawing done during this period, but he did ship out with a copy of the MAD #1 comic book in his back pocket. Who knew? Ange returned to New York in January of 1953 to be discharged. He had decided well in advance what he wanted to do upon his release from the service - enroll in the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now known as the School of Visual Arts) to study with Hogarth and others and make cartooning his profession. That first year in school, he met Nick Meglin who became a life-long friend and who, in the years ahead, would become his editor at MAD Magazine. He also met George Woodbridge at C&I and the following year would meet Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel. This would become the tight-knit group of friends that would in time be dubbed “The Fleagles.”
Angelo speaks after receiving The NCS Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award
Late in 1955, Stan Lee came to the school and ran a contest: two pages of a four-page script were passed around to the class; two weeks later, Lee would be back to judge the student art. The winner would get to finish the last two pages of the story, which would then be sent to print. Ange was chosen the winner and when he delivered the finished pages, Lee asked him if he would like to do another story. The answer was yes and shortly after that, he quit school and went to work for Stan Lee. His life as a professional cartoonist had officially begun!
What followed was a career most noted for its wide variety of subject matter and the various styles employed on many of the jobs. Ange has always been grateful that he has been granted that flexibility and that in all the years doing comics he has seldom been asked by an editor to alter or change his work.
Angelo's work spans the genres of science fiction, mystery, romance, horror, war, prehistoric animals, the space race, World War ll, the Civil War, and of course, humor. No subject was ever avoided, and being able to put aside a war page to work on a MAD parody made drawing that much more enjoyable.
In 1962, living in northeastern Pennsylvania, an old friendship was rekindled and in 1965 Angelo and the lovely Joan Douglass were married. Three years later, Ange said goodbye to his trout streams and he and Joan returned to New York City, moving to Brooklyn’s Park Slope, where they would raise their two sons, John and Andrew. The following year Ange began working for MAD magazine, where, as a member of the Usual Gang of Idiots, his work would appear in almost every issue for close to forty years. During this time he continued working on projects for such companies as DC Comics, Marvel, Consumers Union and others.
The Crayon Whiz
Ange still resides in “the Slope,” doing an occasional drawing for a friend or a fan, but drawing mostly for his own enjoyment. He also enjoys his Sinatra collection, his books, and his movies and most of all his drawing sessions with his five year old grand daughter Caitlin, who is a whiz with crayons.
Angelo's awards include: