Hired as "a staff penciler", Colan "started out at about $60 a week. ... Syd Shores was the art director". Due to Colan's work going uncredited, in the manner of the times, comprehensive credits for this era are difficult if not impossible to ascertain. In 2010, he recalled his first cover art being for an issue of "Captain America Comics"; Colan drew the 12-page lead story in issue #72, the cover-artist of which is undetermined. He definitively drew the cover of the final issue, the horror comic "Captain America's Weird Tales" #75 (Feb. 1950), which did not include the titular superhero on either the cover or inside.