Career
He always went by his middle name and signed as Wilson McCoy, but his other artwork was signed R. Wilson McCoy. Born one of seven children in Troy, Missouri, he developed a unique, naive style of drawing. He always drew with attention to details, and he used photographic references for every drawing, having his family and friends pose for him and act out the different situations happening in the stories he worked on.
Like Phantom creator Lee Falk, McCoy was a world traveler with an adventurous spirit, traveling to jungles, where he visited native tribes, including the Ituri tribe of pygmies, much like the Bandar tribe in
McCoy studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Academy and Washington University"s School of Fine Arts, where he later served on the faculty.
Working as a commercial artist, he made paintings for covers, calendars, prints, pin-ups and advertisements for major companies. McCoy continued drawing the strip until his death in 1961, after which it was continued by Bill Lignante for a short while, and then Sy Barry.
McCoy died after a heart attack in Barrington, Illinois in 1961. His Phantom stories are occasionally published in the Australian Frew Publications Phantom comic, and the Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish Phantom comic books, and also in hardcover editions.