Richard Bache "Dick" Ayers (April 28, 1924 – May 4, 2014) was an American comic book artist and cartoonist best known for his work as one of Jack Kirby's inkers during the late-1950s and 1960s period known as the Silver Age of Comics, including on some of the earliest issues of Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four. He is the signature penciler of Marvel's World War II comic Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, drawing it for a 10-year run, and he co-created Magazine Enterprises' 1950s Western-horror character the Ghost Rider, a version of which he would draw for Marvel in the 1960s.

Ayers was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2007.

Early life

Richard Ayers was born April 28, 1924 in Ossining, New York, the son of John Bache Ayers and Gladys Minnerly Ayers. He was in the 13th generation, he said, of the Ayers family that had settled in Newbury, Massachusetts in 1635. He published his first comic strip, Radio Ray, in the military newspaper Radio Post in 1942 while serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II.