John Buscema

Giovanni Natale Buscema was born on December 11, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York (a few months earlier than Frank Frazetta, also a Brooklyn native). He showed an interest in drawing at an early age, copying comic strips such as Popeye. In his teens he had an interest in superhero comic books as well as appreciating the classic adventure strips, notably Hal Foster's Tarzan and Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates, and Burne Hogarth's Tarzan. He also had an interest in the illustrators of the period such as Dean Cornwell, Colby Whitmore, Al Dorne, and Robert Fawcett. His artistic interests extended to the fine arts, copying works from Italian Renaissance artists in particular. Buscema graduated from Manhattan's high school of Music and Art. He also took night lessons at the Pratt Institute as well as life drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum. While training as a boxer, he began painting portraits of boxers and sold some cartoons to the Hobo News. With this fairly modest art training, Buscema endeavored to seek work as a commercial illustrator while doing various odd jobs. Lacking in experience to crack the commercial art market at the time, he eventually took a look at the comic book field, thinking it an easier field which would enable him to eventually get more schooling in order to become a commercial illustrator. In 1948, he got his foot in the door by landing a staff job with Stan Lee at the Timely Comics bullpen (with artists such as Syd Shores, Carl Burgos and Mike Sekowsky. Gene Colan had been hired two weeks earlier).