Rocky Hartberg

Rocky Ray Hartberg, an American underground comic and commercial artist, was born in South Dakota and graduated from Northern State University in 1975 with an art degree, earning a second art degree from the same institution in 2003. He is best known for creating the hard-boiled detective Cole Black, a character who appeared in a series of self-published comics from 1976 through 2006, including *Cole Black Comix*, *Cole Black Comics*, and *Cole Black: the Missing Issue*. Hartberg also produced *Lonesome Cowboy Comix* and *White Knight Comics* in the late 1970s, and his work appeared in various fanzines during that era.

In the early 1980s, Hartberg’s Cole Black series gained traction amid the black-and-white comics boom inspired by *Cerebus* and *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*, but the market’s collapse in the mid-1980s led to distribution problems and cancellation after three issues of the 1985 series. Three completed issues remained unpublished for two decades. During this period, Hartberg owned a comic book store in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he shared his passion for the medium. After 1991, he shifted to commercial art and vibrant acrylic paintings. In 2006, Boardman Books released one of the abandoned stories as *Cole Black: the Missing Issue*. Hartberg resides in Langford, South Dakota, and is credited as artist, writer, and letterer across 14 issues from 1976 to 2007.