Fred Peters was an American Disney animator who also worked for Bill Gaines at EC Comics, during the company's transition from the Pre-Trend line into the New Trend titles. He illustrated various crime, western, horror and suspense stories. He was later also a cartoonist for the Boston Globe.
Frederick D. Peters was born in 1923 in Oklahoma. Among his early graphic influences were Harold Foster's 'Prince Valiant', Alex Raymond's 'Flash Gordon' and Bob Kane and Bill Finger's 'Batman'. He went to art schools in Oklahoma and Minnesota and near the mid 1940s he moved to California, where he was hired as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios. He contributed to pictures as 'Bambi' (1942), where he illustrated a waterfall scene, and animated Jiminy Cricket in his second movie appearance in the anthology picture 'Fun and Fancy Free' (1946). But he was mostly preoccupied with the 'Pluto' series, for which he animated hundreds of cartoons.
Peters eventually left Disney to start his own studio in New York with a friend. When this attempt failed he became an illustrator of animated TV commercials, illustrated advertisements, color slides and comic strips. He joined EC Comics in 1949, where he made contributions to their western ('Gunfighter', 'Saddle Justice') and crime titles ('Crime Patrol', 'War Against Crime').
Text (c) Lambiek