Number 940


John Buscema, Wanted man!


When John Buscema died at age 75 in 2002 he left behind thousands of pages of superhero and fantasy-barbarian artwork for his fans to collect and admire. But like most comic book artists who started in the late 1940s, as he did, the bread-and-butter comic book work was in the genre fields: crime, romance, western, etc. Buscema, who had studied famous illustrators, as well as his comic art gods like Raymond, Foster and Caniff, was a superior artist at depicting "civilian" subjects (non-costumed characters, non-fantasy characters, that is). Looking at these two strips from Orbit Publications' Wanted Comics, you can see all of the things that made Buscema's art great, but in the milieu of the dark, dangerous and dirty world of criminals.

"Gang Doctor" is from Wanted Comics #32, 1950, and "They All Died" is from Wanted Comics #48, 1952:

Number 783


Science Fiction Week: "The Train That Vanished"


Science Fiction Week continues with a story drawn by John Buscema.

I was impressed by this story from Forbidden Worlds #87 in 1959, when I first read it, and especially liked the art. Buscema's panels explaining the Möbius strip made an impact on me. I actually learned something! The story wasn't original, though. A few years later I read an anthology from Astounding Science Fiction, and there was the story, "A Subway Named Möbius," by A. J. Duetsch, originally published in 1950.

Number 616


Buscema @ ACG


I don't need to tell anyone about John Buscema. I hope not, anyway. He was one of the best pencillers in the business for many years, drawing thousands of pages for Marvel Comics in the 1960s and '70s.

These are two superbly illustrated 1959 stories by John Buscema for ACG's Adventures Into the Unknown numbers 108 and 110.

Buscema died at age 74 in 2002.