My buddy Gary Sassaman is back with another video about comics he loved as a kid. This one is about his favorite Superman artists and I'm linking you to it even though Gary and I differ on a few folks in that category. I first knew Superman as…well, I first knew him as George Reeves and then I knew him as a cartoon character in those Fleischer/Paramount cartoons. But my first Superman in comics was the one drawn by Wayne Boring and I still associate him and his style with most of my favorite Superman stories of the fifties and sixties.
Don't get me wrong: I love Curt Swan and have on one of my walls, a big still-in-pencil drawing he did for me of Superman flying over the Daily Planet building as Lois waves to him. But I felt Swan did the best Superman on covers and pin-up style drawings and Boring did the best Superman dramas. Your mileage, depending a lot on when you started reading those comics, is likely to vary.
(Actually: I think Mr. Swan was one of those artists who was probably better than we knew. I think his work was seriously reduced by most of those who inked his penciled artwork and it was further harmed by editors urging him to try to be "more dynamic" with his page layouts. This is a conclusion I reached after a devoted Swan collector showed me a number of never-inked Swan pages — stats and originals — dating back to the sixties and seeing how much better his compositions were when he didn't try squeezing them into oddly-shaped panels and stuck with squares. Just my opinion.)
Also, one of my favorite Superman artists of the later period — unmentioned by Gary in this video — was Ross Andru. I didn't always love the stories he drew but that wasn't his fault. He drew what was for me the Superman of that period who most looked like he could lift up a car or break through a brick wall. But Gary and I agree on some others, especially Kurt Schaffenberger. Did I ever tell you that when my mother was going to high school in Hartford, Connecticut, her best friend was dating a kid who went to a nearby school…a kid who wanted to grow up to draw comic books and, according to my mother, drew Superman on everyone's book covers? And yes, that was Kurt Schaffenberger who did indeed grow up to draw comic books…and very well.
Anyway, here's what Gary has to say on the subject…