FIFTEEN ALL TIME GREAT AMERICANS

In compiling a list of great Americans I am not likely to get everyone's favorites but hopefully I will get at least one of your top personal twenty. The truth be told, the USA has been around long enough to accrue quite a few heroes not to mention movers and shakers. I will mention a few Americans that have in some way or other affected my life plus Americans that have touched us all. I think this is a fair enough approach. They are not in any special order of excellence.

Born in New York on August 1917, Jack Kirby made his mark as an illustrator and cartoonist. He did some marvelous work with Joe Simon in the 1940s but is perhaps best remembered for his work at Marvel in the 1960s and '70s. His characters were larger than life. He excelled in creating futuristic looking cars and space vessels even back in the 1940s. Many of these drawings still stand up today as highly imaginative and futuristic looking. His collaboration with Stan Lee over The Fantastic Four is legend in the comic book business. He has inspired artists throughout the world with his great body of work which includes Captain America, the hulk, the Avengers and the Inhumans. Whenever I see a round shield with the colors of the American flag on it Jack definitely springs to mind.

Gentleman Gene Colan's career as an illustrator started before the 2nd World War broke out for the USA and was interrupted by his time in the military during that war. Even so, he developed a technique of illustration that was more about the ebb and flow of the action of the unfolding story than an attempt to capture a fictional moment in space and time. Anyone who has studied and enjoyed the work of the French artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec should check out Gene's work on Marvel Comics' Daredevil and Tomb of Dracula. Gene could draw the most enticingly beautiful women or, going the other way, the most repellent of hags. Of course it really is impossible to get a line drawing to move unless accompanied by other line drawings. Even so, the very illusion of movement, which Gene was a master of, really is something to behold. Born in 1926, I knew him briefly in correspondence as a great American as well as a great artist.

Born in 1807 Robert E. Lee had a rather distinguished and controversial career. He was a military genius who fought for the South during the American Civil War. When war was breaking out President Lincoln wanted Lee to lead the North to victory but he couldn't go against Virginia. He didn't believe in slavery or succession but he had to fight for the South because they were his people. The South was always at a disadvantage throughout the war in terms of numbers of fighting men, weapons and other resources. What they were not short on was military leaders worth their salt.

Born a Texan in 1906, Robert E. Howard is best known for his Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja and Solomon Kane stories. He wrote pulp fiction that is still with us today and, if you are keen on sword and sorcery, you really can't go past tales such as Red Nails (Conan adventure) and Red Shadows (Solomon Kane adventure) for excitement. He is perhaps best known for his work on Weird Tales magazine.

Ulysses S. Grant was the general mainly responsible for bringing the American Civil War to a successful conclusion for the North. A failure in civilian life, he led the North to ultimate victory. He became president of the USA but his presidency, despite the fact that he served two full terms, was not a great success. He pushed for African American rights and fought against the Ku Klux Klan. He died of throat cancer probably brought on by the cigars he had smoked.

Abraham Lincoln became president of the USA at a time of great turmoil in American history. He was against slavery but, at the same time, understood the slave holder. He had in-laws that owned slaves.

Unlike other politicians against slavery, he understood the complexities of the various issues involved in the slave trade. The South was afraid of becoming impoverished through any freeing of the slaves. Southerners were also scared of being murdered in their beds if slaves were freed en masse. Lincoln proposed a plan of having the government buy up the slaves over time from the slave holders and send them back to Africa or where ever else they had come from. This plan was not practical for a number of reasons. For a start, many of the slaves had been born in the USA and so had their parents and their parents' parents. They had very little understanding of life in Africa and had little if any understanding of how to survive there. What's more, many of the tribes they had come from were no more and many of them would have faced hostile tribes upon their so-called return. Like it or not, the slaves were Americans in all but name.

It had been hoped that Lincoln's conservative approach to the issues driving the nation to civil war would help hold it together. Lincoln had promised not to interfere with slavery where it existed but to prevent slavery from coming in where it didn't exist. During his presidency Lincoln was to break this promise. Once he became president he urged the South not to succeed from the union but southern states did so anyway.

After the war it had been hoped that Lincoln would have a second term as president a lot more peaceful than the first. Unfortunately, this was not to happen. In 1865 Lincoln went to Ford's Theater in Washington to check out a comedy. There he was assassinated by an actor who was also a drunk and a coward.

Born in New York in 1922, Stan Lee has quite a reputation as a comic book writer and editor. He helped to create the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the Hulk. He did his best work along side great artists such as Jack Kirby and Gene Colan.in the 1960s and '70s even though his writing for the comics dates back to th3e 1940s. Nowadays he can be occasionally glimpsed in movies where you have costumed characters of the Marvel variety.

Barbara Custer is an up and coming pulp style writer, editor and publisher. Her novels include Twilight Healer (dark fantasy) and Starship Invasions with Tom Johnson (science fiction), She puts out the magazine Night to Dawn.

In 1969 they did indeed put a man on the moon and the man was Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin also set foot on the moon. The race to our nearest celestial neighbor had been won by the USA. Among other things, this race with the Russians had given the USA a unique and somewhat new way of viewing our planet. We do indeed live on a blue planet. The flight and landing on the moon were televised. One thing that made this possible was space technology used in Australia. I had the afternoon off school just so I could watch the landing at home.

Born in Arizona in 1934, Barbara Eden is best known for her role as Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie. This is a show women liberationists have mixed feelings about. The general rule of thumb here is that those who haven't seen the show think it degrades women while those who have checked it out believe that it actually empowers women in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. There are connections with this show in, of all places, the great Western television show Rawhide. One episode has a mischievous Barbara Eden in it as part of a con act. An even earlier episode has the 1854 song Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair by Stephen Foster song by one of the drovers to a young girl. The opening line is: ' I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair.'

Elizabeth Montgomery is best known for her role as Samantha, the suburban witch, in the television show Bewitched. Strangely enough, one of her first roles on television was in an episode of The Untouchables. I say strangely enough because actor Dick York, the man who played her mortal husband, Darren Stephens, in Bewitched also starred in an episode of The Untouchables. It just didn't happen to be the one Elizabeth was in. She also played a feisty role in an episode of Rawhide before becoming a television witch.

Harry Turtledove is best known for his alternate history novels such as In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003), Ruled Britannia (2002), The Guns of the South (1992) and American Empire: Blood and Iron (2001). His alternate history novels are well researched, thoughtful and thought provoking.

Born in New York, Diane Duane is the best of the Star Trek novel writers. Her work in the Star Trek universe includes Spok's World (1988) Doctor's Orders (1990) and Dark Mirror (1993).

Born in San Francisco in 1930, Clint Eastwood has had quite a distinguished television and movie career both in front of and behind the camera. His role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide is not likely to be forgotten. His role as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films raised the bar as to what cop based movies could be and could do. His Western movies include A Fist Full of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Pale Rider and Unforgiven. There's also the strange psychological thriller Play Misty for Me. One of his best non-western and non-cop roles was in Grand Torino (2008) where he played a disgruntled ex-army veteran on his last legs living in a neighborhood that was becoming more and more alien to him. Among other things, Clint has promoted Jazz Rock over the years a nd has helped struggling actors get back onto their feet.

Mark Twain gave many of his characters not only an American setting but also a genuinely American voice at a time when it was rare for an American novelist to do so. In his life time he was heavily criticized for having uneducated people actually talk like uneducated people. Lately, Mark Twain's use of real dialogue has once more emerged as a problem for some rather prissy modern scholars. This is a damn shame. Of the novels he wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tends to be the most controversial. The South hated it when it came out because it appeared to be in support of African American rights.

I hope you have enjoyed the read. Not any modern politicians or bankers in this bunch but I suppose that is to be expected.