I started my comic book career writing Superman stories for Silver-Age comics legend, editor Julius Schwartz. Here are a few issues featuring my stories, as they appeared in overseas editions!
Continue reading Die Erde Wird Verkauft!
Date With Debbie was a comic book title published by DC Comics in the late 1960’s. Very much in the Archie mold, this drawing was a commission for my friend Chris Lambert. It was used in his great new book, ‘My Favorite Year In Comics…1968.’
Hop over to my commissions page or send me an e-mail and request an art commission of your own!
Here’s another item that was buried sufficiently deep in a closet that it survived the house disaster… and a great photostatic keepsake it is. It’s the splash page and additional art from a Superman story I wrote — and for fans of the classic era of Superman, there’s no mistaking the drawing style. The artist is Wayne Boring.
Wayne’s history with Superman runs deep. He was hired as a ghost artist for the Siegel and Shuster (Superman’s creators) studio in the mid-1930’s, and eventually became the main, credited artist for the Superman newspaper comic strip. When Siegel and Shuster split from their comic book publisher, Boring was hired by that publisher as a staff artist and became one of the main artists for the Superman comic book line for decades thereafter. His style couldn’t have been more distinctive; his Superman figures were the ones who looked like they were jogging across the sky rather than flying.
Wayne Boring had long-since retired when I began writing Superman stories for Editor Julius Schwartz in the mid-1980’s.
Around that time,I was invited to stop in and give a talk at my alma mater, The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey. I had attended the school in its earliest days and we alumni were frequently invited to give a progress report whenever we were in town.
Continue reading Wayne Boring Pencils!
I’m saddened to hear about the passing of Murphy Anderson, at the age of 89. He was one of those artists whose work was so perfect that, when I was a young kid and reading my first comics, it never dawned on me that a human hand could be behind those pictures. They just had to magically roll off of a printing press somehow.
Eventually I got to meet Murphy and saw him once in a while, back when I was doing a few Superman stories for our mutual editor, Julius Schwartz. I never saw him without a coat and tie, and he was one of the more soft-spoken and unassuming giants I’ve met.
When Murphy learned I was from Cincinnati, he got as excited as I’d ever expect to find him. He recalled for me his past visits to Cincinnati, and in particular to the Ohio Book Store on Main Street, his area destination for buying vintage cartooning and art books.
At the time that I met him, Murphy was currently doing a series of stories featuring Golden Age characters for DC’s Secret Origins title, an assignment he said he really enjoyed.
Murphy inked one cover (pencils by Howard Bender) for a story I wrote, an Action Comics issue. That was a big fat checkmark on my bucket list, to be able to count him among my collaborators, but more importantly, to have been able to get to know him even just a bit.
