Long-time comics artist John Buscema died of stomach cancer, early on January 10th. Last year, he was been reported as being in the advanced stages of cancer.

Buscema was a long-term mainstay of Marvel Comics, having drawn nearly every character at one time or another. He was the definitive CONAN THE BARBARIAN comics artist, having drawn thousands of pages of various CONAN titles, mostly in collaboration with writer/editor Roy Thomas. He is also well-remembered for his run with writer Stan Lee on the SILVER SURFER, continuing the character co-created by Lee and Jack Kirby. Other titles he drew for extended periods include THE AVENGERS, SPIDER-MAN, THE FANTASTIC FOUR and SUB-MARINER.

Buscema had drawn comics since the late 1940s for many different companies (Dell, ACG, Charlton, Timely/Atlas/Marvel), but his peak years were during what amounted to a second career, starting in the 1960s. He had effectively left the business and was doing commercial art when Lee, needing more artists as Marvel hit its stride, invited him back. He more-or-less retired in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but returned sporadically for special projects and fill-in issues. The most recent of these was a new version of Superman, done for DC with Lee.

Buscema was not a great innovator and for most of his Marvel output, he followed other artists -- Barry Windsor-Smith on CONAN, for example, and Jack Kirby on THE FANTASTIC FOUR -- but he was an exceptional draftsman and storyteller who was highly regarded by his peers. He was prodigious in his output, often doing only cursory breakdowns for other artists to render so that he could increase his output. (Comics art is typically collaborative, with one artist creating the pencil drawing and another rendering it in ink. Marvel valued Buscema's storytelling over his draftsmanship and relied heavily on inkers to complete Buscema's pencils as well was to render them.)

He spoke out on more than one occasion about the industry economics that made it necessary for him to take this approach, but he also conducted classes and seminars teaching others how to do the same.

--Pierce Askegren

Posted January 11, 2002