622 SWAN, CURT
at DC. Swan’s fi rst assignments were Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion stories,
assigned in 1945 and published in 1946.
Following these assignments, Swan largely abandoned inking, preferring penciling.
Th is increased his output to three pages per day. Following the advice of Steve Brody,
Swan began using illustrative shortcuts, such as minimal backgrounds for selected pan-
els. Demonstrating an affi nity for space opera, he was assigned a new strip in Action
Comics, To m m y To m o r r o w, in 1948. His success on this strip led to his work on Super-
boy, beginning in 1949. Th e sense of Americana that Swan bought to the title came in
part from his upbringing in rural Minnesota and resonated with many of the feature’s
readers. In 1953, he began working on his signature character, Superman.
His portrayal of Superman was defi ned by attention to detail, imagination and
realistic anatomy. Swan was one of a cadre of artists who redefi ned the character in the
1950s and 1960s, along with Al Plastino, Wayne Boring, Jim Mooney, and Murphy
Anderson. Swan also penciled the cover of the issue of Adventure Comics that intro-
duced Supergirl.
Also drawing the Superman newspaper strip from 1958 to 1961, Swan’s style became
the signature look for the character. Andy Warhol’s Superman screenprint is based on
an iconic Swan drawing of Superman in fl ight. Swan’s Superman remains the default
image of the character to this day.
Swan drew literally thousands of pages for DC over his 50-year career, spanning
most of DC’s line. His work on World’s Finest Comics helped defi ne that title in the
1960s. Aside from Superman, he was best known for his work on the Legion of Super-
Heroes. Th ough the series’ writers include Jerry Seigel and Otto Binder, many hold that
the title was at its creative zenith when Swan was drawing Jim Shooter’s scripts.
Swan worked for DC almost exclusively. He did a smattering of work for indepen-
dent publishers in the 1990s, and worked for Marvel only once. He retired from Super-
man in 1986, but returned to the character and other DC projects for fi nancial reasons.
Th ough not his last work on the character, Swan’s 1986 illustration of Alan Moore’s
two-part story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is regarded as canon
for both defi ning and closing the Silver Age of comics. Here Swan’s elegant pencils
raised the emotional level of Superman’s struggle with chaos to Wagnerian heights. One
of Swan’s last DC jobs was an issue of Swamp Th ing, which he described as “rather
strange, but these days, what isn’t?”
Swan won the 1984 Inkpot Award and was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of
Fame in 1997. His unfulfi lled desire was to be taken seriously as a professional illustra-
tor. It is appropriate and a bit ironic that he is often called “the Norman Rockwell of
comics.”
Selected Bibliography: Zeno, Eddie, et al. Curt Swan: A Life in Comics. Lakewood,
NJ: Vanguard Press, 2002.
Diana Green
