John Buscema was an American comic book artist and one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s ascendancy into an industry leader and its subsequent expansion to a major pop-culture conglomerate.
37 Facts About John Buscema
2.
John Buscema's younger brother Sal Buscema is a comic book artist.
3.
John Buscema was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002.
4.
John Buscema showed an interest in commercial illustration of the period, by such artists as N C Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, Coby Whitmore, Albert Dorne, and Robert Fawcett.
5.
John Buscema graduated from Manhattan's High School of Music and Art.
6.
John Buscema took night lessons at Pratt Institute as well as life drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum.
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John Buscema contributed to the "real-life" dramatic series True Adventures and Man Comics, as well as to Cowboy Romances, Two-Gun Western, Lorna the Jungle Queen, and Strange Tales.
8.
Until the bullpen was dissolved a year-and-a-half later, as comic books in general and superhero comics in particular continued their post-war fade in popularity, John Buscema penciled and inked in a variety of genres, including crime fiction and romance fiction.
9.
John Buscema next produced a series of Western, war, and sword and sandal film adaptations for Dell's Four Color series.
10.
John Buscema drew at least one issue of the radio, film, and TV character the Cisco Kid for Dell in 1957, as well as one- to eight-page biographies of every US president through Dwight Eisenhower for that company's one-shot Life Stories of American Presidents.
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John Buscema began a freelance position for the New York City advertising firm the Chaite Agency, which employed such commercial artists as Bob Peak and Frank McCarthy.
12.
John Buscema spent approximately eight years in the commercial-art field, freelancing for the Chaite Agency and the studio Triad, doing a variety of assignments: layouts, storyboards, illustrations, paperback book covers, etc.
13.
John Buscema called this time "quite a learning period for me in my own development of techniques".
14.
Thomas and John Buscema introduced new versions of the Black Knight and the Vision during their collaboration on The Avengers.
15.
John Buscema named Frank Giacoia, Sal Buscema, and Tom Palmer as his favorite inkers.
16.
Toward the end of the decade, John Buscema drew some fill-in issues of superhero series and returned to familiar 1950s genres with a spate of supernatural mystery stories in Chamber of Darkness and Tower of Shadows, and romance tales in My Love and Our Love.
17.
John Buscema then returned to his signature series The Avengers for 11 issues inked by Tom Palmer.
18.
John Buscema additionally launched the feature "Black Widow" in Amazing Adventures vol.
19.
One thing I loved about Big John Buscema is the fact that I didn't have to spend time writing synopses for him.
20.
John Buscema additionally drew the Conan Sunday and daily syndicated newspaper comic strip upon its premiere in 1978, and even contributed some storyboard illustrations for the 1982 Conan movie, as well as painting four covers for the Conan magazines.
21.
John Buscema drew a story for the science-fiction anthology Worlds Unknown.
22.
John Buscema left the Thor title for a time to launch the Marvel version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character Tarzan in 1977.
23.
For Power Records, which produced children's book-and-record sets, John Buscema drew Star Trek and Conan the Barbarian comics.
24.
John Buscema contributed some superhero drawings for Pro, the NFL official magazine, and penciled some chapters of the first issue of Marvel Comics Super Special featuring the rock group Kiss.
25.
John Buscema later said that teaching the class was "very gratifying" but that having to make the 60-mile drive after a day's work was too exhausting, and ultimately forced him to give it up.
26.
John Buscema then collaborated with Lee on the book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, a primer on comic book art and storytelling based on the comic art classes John Buscema had given a few years prior, and has remained in print for over 25 years, in its 33rd printing as of 2007.
27.
The popularity of the character spurred the release of a Conan movie in 1982; John Buscema provided pencils and inks for a 48-page movie adaptation.
28.
John Buscema reteamed with Lee on the Silver Surfer himself with the 1988 graphic novel Silver Surfer: Judgment Day, self-inked and done entirely as full-page panels.
29.
Conan the Rogue, a graphic novel John Buscema plotted, pencilled, inked, and colored over a period of five years in his spare time appeared that same year.
30.
John Buscema both penciled and inked the graphic novel Wolverine: Bloody Choices.
31.
John Buscema pencilled the Punisher portions of 1994's Archie Meets the Punisher team-up.
32.
John Buscema reunited with Stan Lee on the 2001 one-shot Just Imagine Stan Lee and John Buscema Creating Superman.
33.
John Buscema finished the pencils on 2003's Superman: Blood of my Ancestors, begun by Gil Kane, who had since died, and had just signed on for a five-issue miniseries with Roy Thomas, JLA: Barbarians, though he died after finishing the first issue.
34.
John Buscema would get bored with it and start sketching.
35.
John Buscema's granddaughter Stephanie Buscema is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist, who started out as an inker for her grandfather.
36.
John Buscema was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and died on January 10,2002, at the age of 74.
37.
John Buscema was cremated with an artist's pen in his hand.