The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
‘I GAVE HIM MY ATTITUDE’
When he wasn’t giving Indiana Jones his now-iconic look, Wizard World Cleveland guest Jim Steranko was drawing ground-breaking pages for Marvel
He’s well past the age of retirement but would rather not publicly state it. He insists age is just a number. ¶ He lives on the side of a mountain on the East Coast and says he runs up and down it with his dogs — at 2 a.m., no less — for exercise. He also “pumps iron” regularly. ¶ He sleeps two, three hours a night, and he eats one meal a day at 8 p.m. consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables. He is constantly drinking water. ¶ A WIZARD magazine poll named him one of the five “Most Influential Artists of All Time,” a feat all the more impressive considering his total contribution to the Marvel Comics is just 30 stories — all of which are from the 1960s and 1970s. ¶ It’s fair to argue Jim Steranko is the most interesting guest scheduled to make an appearance at Wizard World Cleveland, set for March 6 to 8 at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.
“I think the trick is fooling Mother Nature into thinking you can handle it,” said Steranko, now 81, of his lifestyle choices in a recent phone interview. Steranko put himself on the Marvel map when he took a struggling “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD” title — part of the “Strange Tales” book in the 1960s — to great popularity for the Stan Lee-led company with a revolutionary approach to design and storytelling. His bio says Steranko “rocked the comic world” with “dynamic symmetry, visual metaphors, symbolic montages, and point-of-view angle shots.” In other words, his approach to comic book illustration was ahead of its time. As for his status today in the world of comics and pop culture, it may be as strong as ever, and Steranko is baffled by that fact. “A week doesn’t go by when I don’t get an email from a fan … it goes on and on,” said Steranko. “I’m very grateful and shocked my work holds up after all this time. I don’t understand it.” Steranko also took on titles such as “Captain American” and “The X-Men” (for which he created the classic title), drew many memorable comic-book covers and created a cult of followers who gave him the title “The Innovator.” His back story might be as interesting as his work in the comic book industry. During his early teens growing up in Reading, Pennsylvania, Steranko spent several summers working with circuses and carnivals, where he specialized in fire-eating, the Hindu bed of nails and sleight-of-hand work on stage. While in high school, he joined the gymnastics team, boxed and fenced — and he enjoys fencing to this day. Steranko then ventured into a professional career and joined the advertising industry. He also made headlines as an escape artist. Bound by straitjackets and handcuffs and sometimes suspended by his heels, he escaped from vaults, after being buried, while tied to ferris wheels and stuffed in mailboxes and from the confines of trunks at the bottoms of rivers.
Steranko also became a stage magician with cards and coins and then joined a band as a musician. He played the sax, keyboards, drums and the guitar. To supplement his income, Steranko — who became enamored with drawing at a young age — freelanced as an artist for a local newspaper. Years later, he became art director for a prominent advertising agency. In 1966, he arrived at Marvel Comics’ New York office without an appointment and asked for a meeting with Lee. Instead, an assistant editor agreed to meet Steranko. After looking at his artwork, the editor showed it to Lee, who then met Steranko on the spot. By the time he left Marvel’s office, Steranko was assigned “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD,” which at the time shared stories with Dr. Strange in “Strange Tales.” His innovative work popularized the super spy with readers of Marvel. At the height of his time at Marvel, Steranko wrote the Fury stories and drew the inside art work and covers. In a 2013 PBS documentary, “Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle,” Steranko was given the choice of picking the Nick Fury title because he “could do virtually anything, especially experimentation.” Two examples of his work were ground-breaking: • In No. 166 issue of “Strange Tales,” Fury is escaping enemy territory and must maneuver through a labyrinth by way of what Steranko called an “interactive page experiment.” The reader had to follow the maze by turning the book upside down and sideways to read the captions. “I think of myself as an entertainer,” said Steranko. “That’s all, no big deal. When I created these devices, it was to tell the story with higher drama, and more effectively. I wanted to move the readers emotionally and bring them into a new world.” • In the debut issue of Fury’s standalone book, “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD,” Steranko drew the first three pages of the story — titled “Who Is Scorpio?” — with Fury breaking into an enemy fortress with no captions. He wanted the artwork to tell the story.
“Stan hit the roof,” said Steranko, a movie buff who took inspiration from that sequence from a French film he saw as a teen-ager. “He said, ‘Don’t you know our distributors and retail outlets are gonna look at those three pages and say there’s been a misprint and send it back?’ I said, ‘I don’t believe it. I said, ‘Isn’t this the House of Ideas?’ As it turned out, I got a lot of mail about that sequence.” He also received a call from “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, who at the time was onto his next big idea — the iconic character Indiana Jones from 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Lucas — who created the character with fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg — told Steranko they were at a crossroads with Indiana Jones. “‘We don’t know what the character should look like,’” said Steranko, recalling that conversation with Lucas. “We talked about the character for about 15 minutes.” Steranko produced conceptual art of the Jones character, and Lucas and Spielberg took that — along with their script — to Paramount, and “Raiders” was sold. Steranko gave Indy his iconic fedora hat, leather bomber jacket and whip, and one last important trait. “I gave him my attitude,” he said. These days, Steranko does about 15 to 20 shows per year and says he won’t retire. He recently drew variant covers for the 1,000th issue of “Detective Comics” and “Action Comics.” He enjoys the convention circuit, and he remembers well the first comic book show in New York he attended in 1965. “A huge section of my fans are women and young kids,” said Steranko. “The way I look at is that it may be within my power to put these kids down that path. Am I gonna turn that down? No. These are the Michaelangelos of tomorrow.” As for what’s next, Steranko says he’s looking to start a “new career” and he’s serious. He has interest in science and technology, and wants to design men’s clothing and has ideas for women’s electronic jewelry and a “world’s most dangerous watch” for men. “It’s the burden of ambition,” said Steranko. “I can’t stop. The only time I will stop is when I’m dead. I have to create constantly. I call it an obsession. I can’t shut my brain off.”