My Letter from Curt Swan

Curt Swan is my favorite Superman artist of all time. He always has been and always will be.

Mr. Swan started his comics career drawing The Boy Commandos in the 1940s, but he would soon begin his association with Superman that continued well into the 1980s. I would say he was the main cover artist of the Superman family of books from the middle 1950s through the late 1960s, on titles like Action Comics and Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane and World's Finest and others. But then Neal Adams and, later, Nick Cardy took over those cover duties.

From 1971 through 1976 I would peg Mr. Swan's cover output at roughly zero pieces, as he concentrated on the Superman story interior pages. A real shame, because I always liked the Swan covers. Then came DC Super Stars #12 in late 1976 with, you guessed it, a Curt Swan cover! I am showing you that cover up above and isn't it beautiful! (By the way, whenever Mr. Swan needed to draw a ferocious monster or a life-threatening gorilla, the creature always seemed to come off his pencil resembling a cuddly teddy bear; Mr. Swan was such a nice man he was unable to draw any mean-looking creatures!)

I liked the DC Super Stars cover so much that I wrote Mr. Swan a letter in care of DC Comics telling him just that. And he very graciously wrote me a note in return! For a number of years it's been in my head that I wrote my letter right when that DCSS was released but, since Mr. Swan's reply is dated 1985, I guess something must have delayed me for six or seven years. Hm.

Well anyway, you can see the note that Mr. Swan sent me by looking right here. That fine gentleman even went so far as to enclose with the note a personalized lithograph of one of his pencil drawings, and you can view that over here.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Curt Swan is my favorite Superman artist of all time.And a really nice guy.