Don Komisarow, Lawrence Lariar, and Lou Fine

In 1945 and 1946 Liberty Magazine was running a 2 page comic by “Donlou,” a pen-name used by illustrators Don Komisarow and Lou Fine. The text was by Lawrence Lariar, cartoonist, author and cartoon editor of the Parade newspaper supplement. Lou Fine is well-known for his superhero comics for Victor Fox, Eisner& Iger and Quality comics in the Golden Age. He quit comics in the forties for advertising and comic strip work.

Don Komisarow is less well-known but he was a well-known newspaper illustrator circa 1936-1939 and had a single-panel called “All For Lovely Woman’s Sake” and in 1954 was drawing a religious comic strip re-telling the tales of Noah and Jacob which was distributed by King Features.

Lawrence Lariar won the Red Badge Mystery Prize in 1944 for a book entitled “The Man with the Lumpy Nose” published by Dodd, Mead & Co. A reviewer said of that book:

“The man with the grotesque proboscis is a bird of ill omen, where he appears evil follows, usually murder. When his shadow falls on the great Earl Chance, a magazine editor almost any member of the Comic arts club could have cheerfully murdered, and wins him the attention of Homer Bull, short, fat bundle of shrewdness, murder comes home to roost. Lariar has fashioned quite a neat plot, but best feature of the yarn is its picture of the Bohemian world of the comic strip artist.”