Pierce Rice was a highly talented early comic book artist (and activist). If you want to know more about him after reading this piece, I suggest you visit his obituary at The Comics Reporter in 2003: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/longbox/59/. As the Labieks Comiclopedia puts it: "He worked for Fox Comics, Fawcett and Centaur, but mainly for Harvey, dong features like 'Zebra', 'Green Hornet', 'Captain Freedom' and 'Black Cat'. Rice was drafted in the US Army in 1943, where he served in World War II's European theater and drew for the Seventh Army Newspaper in Heidelberg. Back in civil life, Rice began work at DC, where he contributed art to such features as 'Spectre', 'Crimson Avenger', 'Manhunter', 'Slam Bradley' and 'Seven Soldiers of Victory'. Other post-War clients were Hillman, Harvey, Ace, Standard, Gleason, Ziff-Davis, ACG, Eastern and Topps. In the ffties Pierce Rice left comics, to pursued magazine cover illustration, portraiture and various design projects. He also became a renown art critic and teacher at the University of Pennsylvania."
But before that, he also went on some sort of goodwill tour for the army, or visited veterans hospitals where he did portraits of soldiers. I bought these photo's from ebay, where the seller mentioned that they were made in the late forties or early fifties, but made no mention of the comic book connection. They are a remarkable addition to what we already know about the talented and politicly active (he participated in Bernie Krigstein's efforts to create a comic book artists union) early comic book great.
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