On this day, August 2, 1912, pulp artist Raphael Jerard Norman Astarita was born in Brooklyn, New York. Astarita never graduated high school and never formally studied art, self-training instead. Early on Astarita worked for comic books. During WWII he joined the U. S. Naval Reserve. After the war his work began to appear in pulp magazines and then he contributed illustrations to a juvenile reference encyclopedia.