A number of Steuben County folks have made enough of a splash in the world that they have become the subjects of biographies, documentaries, and histories. Using the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), I recently did some exploration to see how Steuben County has fared in “educational” (or even entertainment) comic books.
*Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport, perhaps our closest approach to a superhero, appears in eight publications, beginning with a caricature in a 1909 aeronautical publication. (Tom Baldwin, who at the time was living and working in Hammondsport, also appears.)
*The other Curtiss appearances are all non-fiction pieces on the history of flight — two of them in Norwegian!
*The next most-frequent is Marcus Whitman, who shows up in five comics, PLUS cover appearances (as small insets) in Real Life Comics (1945) and True Comics (1946). Two of his appearances are in Norwegian, and there is probably also at least one Dutch reprint.
*Other Prattsburgh-area folks, such as Narcissa Prentiss and Henry Spalding, also come into the Whitman stories. But Henry appears on his own in a 1958 story about Chief Joseph.
*Corning-born Margaret Sanger has two current book-length graphic biographies: Woman Rebel, published in Canada, and Our Lady of Birth Control. Sanger ally Katherine Houghton Hepburn, also of Corning, appears in a photo in the notes to Woman Rebel.
*Corning Glass Works appears, though not by name, in a 1961 story about making the 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar observatory. And numerous Steuben men appear in caricature in a 1907 private publication by the Steuben County Society of New York City.
*In a class by himself is Dick Ayers, who passed away two years ago shortly after his 90th birthday. Dick lived in Pulteney for a couple of years during the Great Depression — Hammondsport teacher Stan Smith got him his first paying art commission. A mid-March check of the Grand Comics Database showed that Dick, who worked in comic books for about 70 years, penciled 3349 stories; inked 5274 stories; lettered 832 stories; wrote 76 stories; colored 1 story; and appeared as a character in 22 comic-book stories — even beating Glenn Curtiss! Considering how long he worked in the field, no doubt there are many more stories yet to be discovered.