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Jim Steranko

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Captain America #111 (March 1969): Steranko's signature surrealism. Inking by Joe Sinnott.
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Captain America #111 (March 1969): Steranko's signature surrealism. Inking by Joe Sinnott.

James Steranko (born 5 November, 1938, Reading, Pennsylvania, United States) is an American graphic artist, comic book writer-artist-historian, publisher, and film production illustrator. His most famous comic-book work was with the 1960s superspy feature "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." in Marvel Comics' Strange Tales and in the subsequent eponymous series. Steranko earned lasting acclaim for his innovations in sequential art during the Silver Age of comic books, particularly his infusion of surrealism and op art into the medium. His work has been published in many countries and his influence on the field has remained strong since his comics heyday. Marvel has published several trade paperback editions of his work, including Marvel Visionaries: Jim Steranko (2002; ISBN 0785109447).

The comic book character Mister Miracle, and the Escapist (from Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) are partly inspired by Streranko and his early career as an escape artist. [link],[link]

Contents

Early life and career

Up through his early 20s, Steranko made a living as an illusionist, escape artist, magician, and musician (including a stint with Bill Haley and his Comets) [link] in which he claims to have put the first go-go girls onstage [link].

He entered the comics industry through editor Joe Simon at Harvey Comics, where Steranko said he created the characters Spyman, Magicmaster and the Gladiator for the company's short-lived superhero line, Harvey Thriller. Shortly afterward, he showed his Secret Agent X proposal to Paramount Television's animation unit in New York City (nothing became of it), and met with Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee. Lee, impressed with Steranko's work, assigned him the "Nick Fury" feature in Strange Tales, a "split book" shared each issue with another feature.

Silver Age Steranko

Future Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, then a staff writer, recalled Steranko's arrival at Marvel:
I met Jim [in 1965]; he brought his work up to Marvel then, I think, but it wasn't considered quite pro quality yet. The next year ... he came up to the office again — I presume he had an appointment — and I sent out by Sol [Brodsky] to look at his work and basically brush him off. Stan was busy and didn't want to be bothered that day. But when I saw Jim's work, which was even better than what I'd seen the previous year, on an impulse I took it in to Sol and said, "I think Stan should see this". Sol agreed, and took it in to Stan. Stan brought Steranko into his office, and Jim left with the 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' assignment. ... I think Jim's legacy to Marvel was demonstrating that there were ways in which the Kirby style could be mutated, and many artists went off increasingly in their own directions after that.1

The 12-page "Fury" strip was initially by Lee and Jack Kirby, with the latter supplying such inventive and enduring gadgets and hardware as the Helicarrier — an airborne aircraft carrier — as well as LMDs (Life Model Decoys) and even automobile airbags. Marvel's all-purpose terrorist organization HYDRA was introduced here as well.

Initially penciling "finishes" over Kirby's layouts, Steranko soon took over full penciling and in short order was writing and coloring the feature as well. "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." soon became one of the creative zeniths of the Silver Age. Streranko introduced or popularized in comics such art movements of the day as psychedelia and op art; built on Kirby's longstanding work in photo montage; and in Strange Tales #167 (Jan. 1968), created comics' first four-page spread — again inspired by Kirby, who in the Golden Age had pioneered the first full-page and double-page spreads. All the while, Steranko spun outlandishly action-filled plots of intrigue, barely sublimated sensuality, and a cool-jazz hi-fi hipness. And he created his own version of Bond girls, essentially, dressed in skintight leather or green hair with matching eyeshadow and accessory whip — well pushing what was allowable under the Comics Code at the time.

Fury's adventures continued in his own series, for which Steranko contributed four much-reprinted 20-page stories: "Who is Scorpio?" (issue #1); "So Shall Ye Reap...Death" (#2), inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest; "Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill" (#3), a Hound of the Baskervilles homage, repleat with a Peter Cushing manqué; and the spy-fi sequel "What Ever Happened to Scorpio?" (#5). Yet after deadline pressures forced a fill-in "origin" story by another team in issue #4, Steranko dropped the book. Decades afterward, however, their images are among comics' best known, and homages to his art have abounded — from recreations of classic covers with different heroes in place of Fury, to the Krusty the Klown parody "Krusty, Agent Of K.L.O.W.N." in Simpsons Comics #3 (March 1994).

Steranko also had short runs on Captain America (three issues out of four, missing a deadline that required Kirby to draw an issue over a weekend) and X-Men. Steranko also dabbled with a horror story and a romance story before ending regular work in the comics industry. During the early 1970s he returned as a regular cover artist for Marvel, and has from time to time contributed individual pages or covers to various comics projects.

Publisher and paperback-artist

Steranko was unable to produce comics work that met his own standards at a pace sufficient to sustain himself economically. As well, he felt constrained by the Comics Code Authority, which frequently ordered changes to tone down the sensuality of his work. Seeking work illustrating book covers, he compiled a porfolio of acrylic paintings and met with Lancer Books art director Howard Winters, to whom he immediately sold a fantasy painting from among his samples. This led to a career illustrating dozens of paperback covers, popularly including those of Pyramid Books' reissues of the 1930s pulp novels of The Shadow.

Steranko also formed his own publishing company, Supergraphics, in 1969, and the following year worked with writer-entrepreneur Byron Preiss on an anti-drug comic book, The Block, distritubted to elementary schools nationwide. In 1970 and 1972, Supergraphics published two popular, tabloid-sized volumes entitled "The Steranko History of Comics", a planned multivolume history of the American comics industry, though no further editions have appeared.

Through Supergraphics he also published the magazine Comixscene (retitled Mediascene and finally Prevue), which began as an oversized newsprint periodical reporting on the comics field, and evolved in stages into a general-interest, standard format, popular culture magazine. It ran from 1972 through 1994, and in its later years was criticized for doing double duty as a catalog for Steranko's retailing business, particularly its erotica.

Occasionally returning to narrative forms, Steranko wrote, drew, and produced the illustrated novel (1976), published by Byron Preiss Visual Publications/Pyramid Books as part of its "Fiction Illustrated" series. Steranko also drew a comic-book adaptation of the 1981 film Outland, serialized in Heavy Metal magazine.

For the movie industry, Steranko was the conceptual artist on Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, designing both the look of the film and the character of Indiana Jones. He also served as project conceptualist on Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and directed the episode "The Ties That Bind" of the DC Comics animated TV series Justice League Unlimited. Brad Bird has stated that Steranko's work was his main comic-book influence on Pixar's The Incredibles.[[Citing sources citation needed]]

Steranko's youthful career as an escape artist was an inspiration for the Jack Kirby character Mister Miracle (see Quotes, below), as well as for Joe Kavalier in the Michael Chabon novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The lighthearted spy movie If Looks Could Kill (1991) features Roger Rees as the villain, Augustus Steranko.

Quotes

Panel from Steranko's illustrated novel Chandler: Red Tide. Frank Miller would use similar patterned shading in Sin City.
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Panel from Steranko's illustrated novel Chandler: Red Tide. Frank Miller would use similar patterned shading in Sin City.

Steven Ringgenberg, Betty Pages Magazine #4 (Spring 1989) [link]: "Steranko's Marvel work became a benchmark of '60s pop culture, combining the traditional comic book art styles of Wallace Wood and Jack Kirby with the surrealism of Richard Powers and Salvador Dalí. Steeped in cinematic techniques picked up from that medium's masters, Jim synthesized a style he christened 'Zap Art' — an approach different from anything being done in mainstream comics, though it did include one standard attraction: lots of females in skintight, sexy costumes. Countess Valentina (Val) Allegro De Fontaine made her debut in Strange Tales #159 (Aug. 1967) by flooring Nick Fury during a training session, proving that she could take care of herself! She looked like a character who had just stepped out of a James Bond poster."

Mark Evanier (Screenwriter, Jack Kirby biographer, and Kirby's assistant during the Fourth World comics) [link]: "Jack based some of his characters (not all) on people in his life or in the news.... Big Barda's roots are not in doubt. The visual came about shortly after songstress Lainie Kazan posed for Playboy...and the characterization between Scott 'Mr. Miracle' Free and Barda was based largely — though with tongue in cheek — on the interplay betwixt Jack and his wife Roz. Of course, the whole 'escape artist' theme was inspired by an earlier career of writer-artist Jim Steranko."

Michael Chabon (Author, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the early days of comics, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay [- Reviews/Dec Reviews/steranko_one.htm]: "I would never have written Kavalier and Clay without [Jim Steranko's] History of Comics. It is the standard history. When I first read it in 1970 was when I discovered that comics had a history...I was mind-blown by [Steranko's] body of work. The October 1995 Comic Book Marketplace issue has a detailed account of Steranko as a performing escape artist. Up until I read that, I had heard it but never knew how seriously to take that."

The Incredible Hulk King-Size Special #1 (Oct. 1968). Cover art by Steranko.
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The Incredible Hulk King-Size Special #1 (Oct. 1968). Cover art by Steranko.

Bibliography: Comic books

Chronological order. Artwork for Marvel Comics unless otherwise noted.
:Serialized Outland movie adaptation
  • The Fly  covers only 1-2 (Archie Comics; May-July 1983)
  • Epic Illustrated  cover only 19 (Aug. 1983)
  • Superman  400, story "The Exile at the End of Eternity" (10pp.) (DC Comics; Oct. 1984)
  • Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.  cover only 1 (June 1988)
  • ''The Green Hornet  cover only, 1 (Now Comics, Nov. 1989)
  • The Superman Gallery  one-shot, pinup (1p.) (DC Comics; 1993)
  • Ray Bradbury Comics: Martian Chronicles  cover only, 1 (Topps/Byron Preiss, June 1994)
  • Kabuki  cover only, 1 (Image, 1997)
  • The Victorian  cover only, 1 (Penny-Farthing Press; March 1999)

    • Comic-book cover gallery

    Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Image:SHIELD 01.jpg|'' #1 (June 1968) Image:SHIELD 02.jpg|'' #2 (July 1968) Image:SHIELD 03.jpg|'' #3 (Aug. 1968) Image:SHIELD 04.jpg|'' #4 (Sept. 1968) Image:SHIELD 05.jpg|'' #5 (Oct. 1968) Image:SHIELD 06.jpg|'' #6 (Nov. 1968) Image:Nick Fury7.jpg|'' #7 (Dec. 1968)

    Bibliography: Author

    Bibliography

    Books about

    Book covers

    This list is incomplete

    Pyramid Books

    The Shadow (reprints of pulp-magazine stories)
    By Maxwell Grant (pseudonym of Walter Gibson)

    Other

    Dates Unknown

    Footnotes

    References

    External links

     

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