John was born in Brooklyn in 1927. As a youth, John enjoyed great
comic strips like Hal Foster's PRINCE VALIANT , Alex Raymond's
FLASH GORDON, and TARZAN, as depicted by Burne Hogarth. These
artists had a tremendous impact on John's own artwork, but were
not the only artists whose work he enjoyed. While in high school,
John attended the Pratt Institute at night, taking life drawing
and design classes. He visited museums and study firsthand the
works of the Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, and Rubens. Likewise,
John followed the works of many professional artists of the day
such as Norman Rockwell and Al Dorne.
In 1948, John spent a short time working for Timely Comics (later
known as Marvel Comics). When the comic industry hit a slowdown,
John left to pursue a career in advertising. It wasn't until 1966
that he gave comics another go when Stan Lee, who had been his
boss at Timely, made him an offer and John took it.
Buscema frequently drew loose, "break-down"-type pencils, which
meant that his inkers often had the freedom to interpret them
as they saw fit. Only on the rarest of occasions, however, could
an inker's work dominate John's dynamic style. John developed
his amazing technique in part from working over the layouts of
Jack Kirby in his earlier days at Marvel.
John worked at Marvel until his retirement in 1996, producing
some of the best comics art in history. In 1978, John's method
was named the "house-style" at Marvel, so naturally he was chosen
to work with Stan Lee in creating HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL
WAY, often considered to be the comic artist's bible. His work
on such titles as SILVER SURFER, THE AVENGERS, THE FANTASTIC FOUR,
THE MIGHTY THOR, and, of course, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, speaks for
itself. Even after he retired, Buscema kept working, completing
JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE WITH JOHN BUSCEMA CREATING SUPERMAN in 2001.
Late in 2001, John learned that he had cancer; only a few months
afterward, in January 2002, one of comics greatest legends passed
away, leaving a fifty-year legacy of phenomenal work.
