Murphy Anderson .com

Murphy Anderson .com

MURPHY'S LAW:
FANCY ON
THE DRAW

Anderson inked Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane and Curt Swan.

Murphy Anderson was born in 1926 in Asheville, North Carolina, and has enjoyed a comic book art career spanning over half a century. Excelling as both a penciller and inker, Anderson worked mainly for DC Comics, starting in the late 1930s shortly after the Superman phenomenon hit.

During the early years, he worked on characters including Hawkman, the Spectre, Zatanna and, in the newspaper comic strip genre, the daily syndicated version of Buck Rogers.

Anderson is also responsible for defining the earliest images of Adam Strange and the Atom, as well as the modern age revamps of Batman, Flash, Superman and various other titles also featuring them. Such titles included the original Justice League Of America, which itself was a revamp of the classic Golden Age comic series called the Justice Society Of America.

Later, during the 1970s, with Anderson's frequent collaborator, penciler Curt Swan, their artwork on Action Comics and Superman during the 1970s was dubbed by fans as "Swanderson."

But beyond that, his unusually clean style and detailed brushwork set the bar to a higher talent level, particularly regarding the DC comics of the Silver Age, with a unique style that has never quite been equaled.

The quality of his fancier than usual style has only been approached by very few other artists, however even at that they took much longer to get their best results. Anderson, however, was not only always able to produce his extra slick "magazine look" polish for comic books, but he did all such fancy extra detailing under deadline as well.

It also could not have hurt Anderson's attitude towards the fantasy world of comic books that even before he became one of the top 10 greatest comics artists of all time, he was first and foremost a diehard science fiction fan. In fact he is still a member of First Fandom, and began his career working for the legendary 1940s pulp magazine, Planet Stories. (He also contributed to its sister publication, Planet Comics.)

The Life And Art Of Murphy Anderson.
(Click pic to enlarge.)
Printed by TwoMorrows Publishing
Copyright © 2003 R.C. Harvey

Mystery In Space 22.
Cover art: pencils and inks
by Murphy Anderson.
(Click pic to enlarge.)
Copyright © 1948 DC Comics

One might have assumed he would be have been retired as of the mid-2000s, but he instead began supervising Murphy Anderson Visual Concepts, which provides color separations and lettering for comic books. His son runs that now, but the elder Anderson still keeps busy painting cover recreations of his classic comics for display and sale through Diamond Galleries.

Among Anderson's many accolades are:

1962 Alley Award for Best Inker;

1963 Alley for Artist Preferred on Justice League of America;

1964 Alleys for Best Inking Artist and for Best Comic Book Cover (Detective Comics #329, with penciler Carmine Infantino);

1965 Alleys for, again, Best Inking Artist and Best Comic Book Cover (The Brave and the Bold #61), as well as for Best Novel (an untitled story in Showcase #55, with writer Gardner Fox).

Anderson was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1988.

Justice League Of America 19.
Cover art: pencils and inks
by Murphy Anderson.
(Click pic to enlarge.)
Copyright © 1963 DC Comics

ANDERSON ANSWERS:

Murphy Anderson Tribute

Murphy Anderson at Cartoonist Greats

Murphy Anderson at Lambiek .net

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