STERANKO, James

(1938-)

   US COMIC-book illustrator, writer and one-time stage magician and escapologist; Jack KIRBY based his comic-book character Mr Miracle - Super Escape Artist (1971) on JS. Influenced early in his career by Kirby,JS rapidly developed a reputation for originality, especially with his work for MARVEL COMICS on the sf comic-book character Nick Fury, first for Strange Tales 1966-8 (no connection with the weird-fiction magazineSTRANGE TALES) and then for Nick Fury, Agent of Shield June 1968-Mar 1971, and also for his work on X-MEN and Captain America. Some of his Nick Fury covers - he painted the first 7 covers and drew the stories of \#1-\#3 and \#5 - were revolutionary for comic books of that time in their bold designand utilization of Surrealist themes. JS was not so much an innovator per se as an artist who took a number of techniques hitherto seldom (and haphazardly) used and welded them into a new style in which the design unit became the double-page, not just the single frame. Like Kirby's, JS's narrative technique is strongly cinematic, but his work is more stylized and baroque, and less straightforwardly representational. Considering the height of his reputation, he has done remarkably few comics, but he has been much imitated, by Philippe DRUILLET among others. JS worked occasionally in the sf ILLUSTRATION field, producing 1 cover for AMZ, some work for Infinity, and also paperback covers for Pyramid Books's reprints of The Shadow.In 1970 JS left Marvel to found Supergraphics in order to publish his projected 6-vol history of PULP MAGAZINES and comics. Of this only the first 2 vols have appeared: The Steranko History of the Comics (1970) and The Steranko History of the Comics Volume 2 (1971). He haspublished and edited a bimonthly tabloid magazine/newspaper called Comixscene 1974-5 and then Mediascene 1974-80; with \#41 in 1980 it becamea slick movie magazine called Prevue. A planned SWORD-AND-SORCERY comic-book project, Talen, never materialized, although previews and sketches were published 1968. He wrote and drew: a remarkable GRAPHIC NOVEL, Chandler (graph 1976), which can only be described asChandleresque; a graphic-novel version of the 1981 film OUTLAND (1981-2 Heavy Metal; graph 1982); and a 10pp strip celebrating SUPERMAN in DC COMICS's special \#400 of that title (1984). He created a unique series of 3D illustrations (i.e., for use with 3D spectacles) for Harlan ELLISON's"'Repent, Harlequin,' Said the Ticktockman" in The Illustrated Harlan Ellison (graph coll 1978). He is listed among the creative talents currently working under Francis Ford Coppola on a projected movie, Dracula. Among his many awards is the 1970 Best Illustrator of the YearAward.

   PN/JG/RT