19 Facts About George Tuska

George Tuska, who early in his career used a variety of pen names including Carl Larson, was an American comic book and newspaper comic strip artist best known for his 1940s work on various Captain Marvel titles and the crime fiction series Crime Does Not Pay and for his 1960s work illustrating Iron Man and other Marvel Comics characters.

George Tuska was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the youngest of three children of Russian immigrants Harry and Anna Onisko Tuska, who had met in New York City.

At 17, George Tuska moved to New York City, rooming with his cousin Annie, and a year later began attending the National Academy of Design.

George Tuska showed me a comic book and said, 'This is what we want'.

George Tuska said, 'We'd like to have you work for us'.

George Tuska, invited along, joined Chesler's studio, working there in 1939 and 1940, earning $22 a week, increased to $42 a week within six months.

Alongside colleagues that included Sultan, Ruben Moreira, Mac Raboy, and Ralph Astarita, George Tuska helped to supply content for such Fawcett Comics publications as Captain Marvel Adventures.

Later, when Eisner-Iger client Fiction House formed its own bullpen to produce work on staff, George Tuska left Chesler to join Cardy, Jim Mooney, Graham Ingels and other artists there.

At some point, George Tuska again worked for Will Eisner, now split from Jerry Iger, with a group of artists including Alex Kotzky and Tex Blaisdell.

George Tuska was honorably discharged as a private first class after a year for reasons the artist did not specify.

Simultaneously at first, from 1954 to 1959, George Tuska took over as writer-artist for the failing adventure comic strip Scorchy Smith, supplying "eye-catching drawings and interesting plots, but it was too late".

George Tuska became a Marvel mainstay, penciling and occasionally inking other artists on series as diverse as Ghost Rider, Sub-Mariner, and The X-Men.

George Tuska was one of the artists on the licensed movie tie-in series Planet of the Apes.

George Tuska was perfectly competent, and his art for titles like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk [sic] is decent, though unspectacular.

George Tuska thus played an inadvertent part in setting up [Marvel and DC Comics]' creed of speed over quality, and helped establish the Marvel house style, which nurtured some young artists, but acted as an artistic straitjacket for others.

George Tuska was a helluva artist and very versatile and very fast.

Later, for DC Comics, George Tuska drew characters including Superman, Superboy, and Challengers of the Unknown.

George Tuska died in 2009 "near the stroke of midnight between October 15 and October 16," officially on the latter date.

George Tuska was a 1997 recipient of the industry's Inkpot Award.