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: