Born in Wales, John Dingle settled near Toronto, Canada with his family when he was three years old. During his lifetime, he remained living near Toronto, building a home in the 1940s in Mississauga, south of Toronto, and just prior to his death in Caledon.

He began an illustration* career in the early 1930s, and from 1941 to 1947, wrote and illustrated a comic book series, Nelvana of the Northern Lights. "Nelvana was the first Canadian superhero comic character whose debut was four months before that of Wonder Woman, a DC Comics book series popular in the United States", and like Dingle's character, featuring a female heroine.

Other comic super-hero character created by Dingle was The Penguin, a "suave tuxedo-clad masked detective" who premiered in 1943. Because of potential litigation with the publishers of Batman, whom many saw as very similiar to the Penguin, Dingle's character and series was renamed The Blue Raven.

Because of so many complications with the Canadian comic-book industry, including copyright threats, John Dingle turned to other kinds of illustration and to fine-art* painting, working in a modernist, realist style, and painting marine, town views, and landscape subjects.

"John Dingle died at age 63 in Toronto at Wellesley Hospital due to complications from cancer treatment. He had three sons with his wife Patricia. He was posthumously inducted into the Joe Shuster Awards Hall of Fame* in 2005."


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Dingle_(comics) Quotes are from this source.
Auction records of AskART.com

* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx