Education
Born and reared in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, Morisi was educated at the School of Industrial Art and the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, both in Manhattan.
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Pete A. Morisi
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He is best known as creator of the 1960s Charlton Comics series Peter Cannon. Early life and career
He broke into comics as an assistant on the comic strips Dickie Dare and The Saint, and had just started at Fox Comics in 1948 when he was drafted and served as a private in the United States. Army through 1950. Comics historian Mark Evanier has written that Morisi worked in the Harvey Comics production department alongside future comics artist Don Heck in 1949.
Stationed in Colorado, Morisi wrote for such Fox romance and crime comics as Feature Presentations Magazine and Murder Incorporated.
On his return, Morisi freelanced for companies including Comic Media, Harvey Comics, Fiction House, Lev Gleason Publications, Nesbitt Publishers, Quality Comics, Toby Press and the Marvel Comics precursors Timely and Atlas, where his work appeared in titles including the Westerns Arizona Kid, Cowboy Romances and Texas Kid, and the horror/suspense anthologies Astonishing, Journey into Mystery, Marvel Tales, Strange Tales and Uncanny Tales. In 1954, when editor-in-chief Stan Lee expressed admiration for the cover artist of some Comic Media books, Morisi brought in the artist, his friend and future Silver Age star Heck.
Police force and Peter Cannon
In 1956, Morisi fulfilled a childhood dream of joining the police force, and became an New York City Police Department cop stationed in Brooklyn and in lower Manhattan. To avoid the department knowing he was moonlighting, however legally, Morisi began signing his work only with his initials – Polygonal Area Mapping, the "M" rendered without connectors, as "|||".
He retired from the force in 1976.
Morisi"s character Thunderbolt debuted in Peter Cannon. Thunderbolt #1 (January 1966), part of Charlton editor Dick Giordano"s "Action Heroes" superhero line. The series then took over the numbering of the defunct title Son of Vulcan, and ran from issue #50–60 (March–April 1966 – November 1967), by which time Morisi, time-pressed with police work, had turned it over to other hands.
When District of Columbia Comics bought the rights to Charlton"s superhero properties in 1983, Thunderbolt was one of the characters originally planned for use in writer Alan Moore"s miniseries Watchmen.
When District of Columbia chose to save those characters for other uses, Moore adapted him into Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt). District of Columbia published the 12-issue, slightly retitled miniseries Peter Cannon – Thunderbolt (September 1992 – August 1993) by writer-penciler Mike Collins and inker José Marzan Junior.
Rights to the character later reverted to Morisi. Personal life
Morisi settled in the Dongan Hills section of New York City"s Staten Island borough in 1973.
There he drew illustrations for the column "Staten Island Stats" in the local newspaper The Staten Island Advance.
They had three sons: Steven, Russian, and Val. He died at Staten Island University Hospital.
