Michael D Hamersky On Comics Remembers...   John Buscema!

TODAY'S FEATURE IS BLOG #3759 -   I'm noticing that several of my archived blogs with John Buscema's name in them are seeing some activity the past 18 hours.

That's because John' Birthday would have been today... As he was born December 11th of 1927 in Brooklyn, New York.

So John, had he lived on, would have been 85 years old today...

Sad to say, John passed away on January 10th of 2002...

The above top right photo is from the 1960's Marvel 'Bullpen' Days, which is where I first got to 'know' John via his work.

John had earlier attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan.

After John started working professionally, he was influenced by the art of the famous illustrators of the '40's and '50's, such as Al Dorne, Norman Rockwell and Robert Fawcett

John had a great relationship with Stan Lee during the years. Indeed, John's last published work was for DC Comics on 'Just Imagine Stan Lee with John Buscema Creating Superman'.

John was actually a long time artist with Marvel Comics, first starting there in 1948, when it was known as 'Timely'. He stayed on staff there for about a year and half. He later came back in the mid 1960's when Stan Lee needed more artists for comic book expansion. He retired from active comics drawing in 1996.

A little over ten years ago, I met John for the first time at the 2001 SDCC, (San Diego Comic Con Int'l). It would be the first and only time John made it to that gathering of fans of the comic arts where he spoke.

John spoke gruffly at his spotlight program and made fun of his superhero work at Marvel.  That included the Fantastic Four, Nova, Sub-Mariner, the Incredible Hulk, and of course the Mighty Thor.

Indeed, he said while the cameras were running that were filming the program, that his work on Conan the Barbarian  was among his favorite works.  However in the early years of Conan, Marvel could not afford his page rate for that comic. It was only after Barry Smith, who worked for less when first starting out, brought Conan's circulation numbers up that Marvel could afford to have John do the artwork!

John tried to come across as a gruff old guy during this spotlight program and other panels he attended that week, but all the audience could see that he was like a big teddy bear. The comic book industry lost a great man when he stopped drawing...

~ Michael

NOTE FROM Michael D Hamersky On Comics:  My thanks again to all of YOU reading this blog and our archived blog posts, now at 3,759 total posts in number!   I do appreciate your continued reading and support of this Blog!

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