Sid Jacobson (born October 20, 1929)[1] is an American writer who has worked in the fields of children’s comic books, popular music, fiction, biography, and non-fiction comics. He was managing editor and editor in chief for Harvey Comics. Jacobson is also known for his late-career collaborations with artist Ernie Colón, including such nonfiction graphic novels as The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation and Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography.

Biography

Sid Jacobson graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School and then New York University, where he majored in journalism. His first jobs out of school were at the New York tabloid The Compass and the horse racing paper The Morning Telegraph.[1]

In the 1950s and 1960s, while working at Harvey Comics, Jacobson wrote songs for such pop acts as Frankie Avalon (“A Boy Without a Girl”), Earl Grant (“(At) The End (of a Rainbow)”), Dion and the Belmonts, and Johnny Mathis—despite the fact that Jacobson did not read music.[1] It was at Harvey that Jacobson met artist Ernie Colón, whose work he edited for many years both there and at Star Comics.

After his long stint at Harvey, Jacobson became an executive editor at Marvel Comics, where he helped create the children’s imprint Star Comics.[3] In addition to editing the entire Star line, Jacobson contributed scripts to some of the titles such as Wally the Wizard and Top Dog.[4] He wrote comics adaptations of the films Santa Claus: The Movie (1985),[5] Labyrinth (1986), Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987), and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988).[4]

During this period, Jacobson published the novel Streets of Gold (Pocket Books, 1985), a fictionalized history of his family’s immigration journey from the shtetls of Russia to the United States.

Jacobson returned to Harvey Comics in the early 1990s, among other things creating a line of Hanna-Barbera comics, original stories based on the animated TV series characters.

In 2006, Jacobson and his old Harvey colleague Ernie Colón teamed up as writer and illustrator to create a graphic novel version of the 9/11 Commission Report titled The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. In 2008, they released a 160-page follow-up: After 9/11: America’s War on Terror. Subsequent collaborations with Colón include A Graphic Biography: Che, released in 2009; and Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, published in 2010 by Hill & Wang in the U.S. and Uitgeverij Luitingh in the Netherlands.

Personal life

Jacobson has two children, Seth and Kathy. He lives in Los Angeles.

Awards

Sid Jacobson received an Inkpot Award in 2003.