Sunday, June 05, 2022

Today in Comics History, June 5: Happy birthday, Wayne Boring!

We raise our hands and hearts in salute today to one of the great Superman artists, the incorrectly named Wayne Boring, born on this day in 1905! He's the artist who helped define the look of Superman and his surroundings and evolved an iconic look loved even today. As one of the ghost artists under the Joe Shuster name in the early days, Boring would eventually make this feature his own. Starting in 1943, alongside inker Stan Kaye, Boring's artwork on Superman was established as the major house style for the character well into the '60s.


from Fifty Who Made DC Great one-shot (DC, 1985)

Much-loved elements of the Superman mythos sprang from Boring as well: he's the co-creator of the Fortress Of Solitude, Lori Lemaris, Bizarro World. Plus, he drew the origin of the Earth-2 ("his!") Superman in Roy Thomas's Secret Origins #1, as well as a handful of other 1980s DC superhero comics before his death in 1987.




from "The Secret Origin of the Golden-Age Superman" in Secret Origins (1986 series) #1 (DC, April 1986), script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Wayne Boring, inks by Jerry Ordway, colors by Gene D'Angelo, letters by David Cody Weiss

Happy birthday, Wayne Boring!


from Superman #8 (DC, January 1941), pencils and inks by Wayne Boring

Posted by Bully at 4:00 PM
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1 comment:

Blam said...

Boring's Superman, like Sprang's Batman, was as much a part of my personal Golden Age of Comics as the contemporary stuff thanks to the great From the '30s to the '70s book and other reprints. I had kind-of a love/hate relationship to that big ol' barrel chest, his oddly set jaw, and the way he'd jog through the sky — but it's pure nostalgia to me now. Kaye inked both him and Swan definitively, too, which is quite a feat; so is Swan being a Superman mainstay for so long that he had multiple definitive inkers, but we're here to talk about Boring.

6/14/2022 9:14 AM

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