596 STEVENS, DAVE
series Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pennsylvania-born visionary artist Jim
Steranko has worked in many media outlets. He was the concept artist for such fi lms
as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992) and Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost
Ark (1981), for which he designed Indiana Jones’s iconic look. His performances as a
magician and escape artist provided a living model for Jack Kirby’s Mr. Miracle and
Michael Chabon’s Th e Escapist (from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Th e Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay). While in his teens, Steranko was also one of the top
card-magic specialists in America.
Just out of high school, Steranko worked as a sign painter and printer, and eventually
became Art Director for a major ad agency. In 1965, he broke into comics, creating
Spyman, Magicmaster, and the Gladiator for editor Joe Simon at Harvey Comics.
Migrating to Marvel Comics, Steranko tightened and inked Kirby’s layouts for Strange
Ta l e s 151, and soon took over penciling, writing, and coloring duties for S.H.I.E.L.D.
During his brief run on the X-Men, he redesigned the title logo; some consider his
work on Captain America #113 the peak of artistic quality. Th e Steranko thriller “At
the Stroke of Midnight,” in the fi rst issue of Tower of Shadows, won a 1969 Alley Award
for Best Feature Story. Th e same year, he started his own publishing company, Super-
graphics, generating the entertainment magazine Mediascene (later retitled Prevue) and
the acclaimed two-volume History of Comics. Moving on again, Steranko went on to
paint hundreds of book covers, including 30 Th e Shadow pulp reprints for Pyramid
Books.
No other artist has had such a revolutionary eff ect on comics with such a relatively
limited body of work. Steranko had the popularity of a rock star during the late 1960s
and early 1970s. His combination of extreme cinematic fl are with pop-art styling
supports the argument that comic books provide readers with an inexpensive way to
hold a work of art in their hands every month. Steranko has had his works exhibited
around the world, from the Winnipeg Art Gallery to the Louvre in Paris. He was
inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.
Selected Bibliography: Steranko, James. History of Comics. 2 vols. New York: Crown
Publishing, 1972.
Jeff McLaughlin
STEVENS, DAVE (1955–2008). Dave Stevens was an award-winning illustrator, and
is most prominently remembered as the creator of Th e Rocketeer, his association with
legendary pin-up model Bettie Page, and his participation in fan culture, particularly
the early years of San Diego Comic-Con (now Comic-Con International).
Stevens was born in Lynwood, California, and although he was raised in Portland,
Oregon, spent much of his life from high school onward in San Diego, California.
Among Stevens’s earliest work as an artist was working as an assistant to the illustrator
Russ Manning on the newspaper comic strips for Ta r z a n and Star Wars. His work in
comics fanzines would lead to an association with Jack Kirby, who was a fellow San
