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John N. Buscema was born on December 11, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. His earliest artistic influences were Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and Tarzan, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon. John attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. And while still in high school, he spent about 18 months at night studying life drawing and design at Pratt Institute |
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In addition to all his
formal training, John spent a great deal of time visiting museums and studying the works
of the Old Masters; Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Rubens and Raphael. Later on, when John started
working professionally, he was influenced by the art of the famous illustrators of the '40's
and '50's, such as Al Dorne, Norman Rockwell and Robert Fawcett, to name but a few.
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John began his career at Marvel in 1948, back
when it was known as Timely Comics. He stayed on staff for a year and a half, and afterwards
worked free-lance for a variety of companies. The comic market starting shrinking during the
50's, so in 1958 John left the field and went into advertising.
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And there he stayed, until 1966, when his old
boss Stan Lee called him out of the blue and made him "a very attractive offer" to come
back and work for Marvel.
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John had been with Marvel ever since, and
had
worked on all of Marvel's major characters. In the 1970's he began his own art school
and wrote the best selling book, "How to Draw Comics The Marvel
Way" with Stan Lee.
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In 1996 after almost 50 years in the comic book business, John quietly retired from the industry. Five years after his "retirement", John remained busy and in great demand. For instance in May, 2001 he attended a con in Italy & in July he was one of the Special Guests of the San Diego Comic Con. During the San Diego show, Vanguard Press unveiled "The John Buscema Sketchbook", featuring drawings from John's personal collection.
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In September, DC Comics released the long awaited ,"Just Imagine Stan Lee with John Buscema Creating Superman. Nobody knew it at the time, but that book would turn out to be John's last published comic ever, because during the fall of 2001 John was diagnosed with cancer. Despite his health problems, John continued working on his commissions, along with drawing the first book of a 5 part mini-series for DC comics written by Roy Thomas. Sadly on January 10th, 2002 John succumbed to his illness. He leaves behind his wife Delores, son John Jr. and daughter Dianne and grandchildren. Click here to read an interview with John by the Kirby Collector... |
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