John Buscema (December 11, 1927 – January 10, 2002) circa 1975.
Statistically speaking, if you were a Marvel fan during the Silver or Bronze age, you probably owned a lot of John’s work: he averaged three books a month for a decade-long period — including over 200 issues of Conan and Savage Sword of Conan alone — and contributed to nearly every Marvel title at some point or another, either as regular artist or doing fill-ins.
John was also big on teaching, briefly running the John Buscema Art School in the mid-1970s, until the grueling 6—mile commute made it too difficult, and collaborated with Stan Lee on ‘How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way’, a rare early comics how-to tome first published in 1978 that has gone through 33 printings, the latest being in 2007.
Even well into the modern era, John continued to contribute, being the first artist to draw She-Hulk in 1980, had a nearly fifty-issue run on the Avengers in the 1980s, and was the initial artist on Wolverine’s ongoing monthly solo series for its first year. John did work with the Punisher in the 1990s, including one of the most bizarre comics ever: Archie Meets the Punisher, in 1994.
With a list of credits beginning in 1948 that span nearly every genre and include comics adaptations of films Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Wizard of Oz, and Labyrinth, John probably has the most colorful portfolio of any comics artist: he’s a guy who drew Kiss in their comics debut in 1977, St. Francis of Assisi in a Marvel-published biography in 1980, and Superman and Spider-Man’s second crossover in 1981.
John passed away in 2002, and was buried with an artist’s pen in his hand. Buscema’s talent and passion for comic art never wavered, on the clock or off, with friends and family saying he would even draw on the back of his finished comics pages.
“ This guy used to eat, sleep and breathe drawing. It didn’t matter what was going on around him. He would get bored with it and start sketching. … He just couldn’t stop drawing. [His back-of-board sketches were] better than some of the stuff that he did on the front. … He’d get a spark of inspiration and turn the page over and draw whatever was in his skull. ”
— Sal Buscema, Marvel artist and John’s brother
I still have my well-worn and decades old copy of How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Buscema’s storytelling skills were next level.
(via dirtyriver)
