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| Above, a Curt Swan/George Klein Superman (no. 174) cover from the 1960s. |
As this week is being called "Superman Week" in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Superman, Arlen Schumer has an article at 13th Dimension.com saluting the definitive Superman artist, Curt Swan.
The article begins with:
To the Baby Boom Generation that grew up on his work, Curt Swan (1920-1996) was, is, and forever will be the definitive Superman artist.
Over the course of his almost-four decade run on the character (1948-1986), Swan depicted many of the landmark events that became touchstones in the lives of the Superman family. His versions of familiar aspects of the character’s iconography, from the scenes of a doomed Krypton to sights of Superman soaring above the Metropolis skyline, became the new icons against which all succeeding Superman artists are judged.
As the Superman character evolved from the Golden Age to the Silver Age, “Mort Weisinger (Superman editor 1945-70) felt we should get a little more humanistic qualities into him,” Swan recalled in a 1974 Cartoonist Profile interview. “We wanted people to relate to him better, make him a little more believable.”
That believeability came across in Swan’s characters’ faces — young or old, male or female, hero or villain, monster or alien — which he endowed with a spectrum of human emotions, from agony to anger, mournful to mirthful, that remains one of the hallmarks of his realistic style.
To read the full article, go here.
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