And some people just seem to born to draw. It poured out of John Buscema, a lovely man who passed away this morning following a long, brutal bout with cancer. John was best known as the man who did it all at Marvel from the mid-sixties right into the nineties: Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Thor, Silver Surfer, Tales of the Zombie, Sub-Mariner…wherever they needed him. He hated the character but, when they didn't have anyone else who could draw Spider-Man, he drew Spider-Man. Matter of fact, John hated most super-hero strips…but he was of a time in comics when that didn't matter much. So he drew an awful lot of them.
He was happiest during his many years drawing Conan the Barbarian…and frustrated, as we all should have been, that the exigencies of production rarely allowed him to do finished art. When he did, he was wonderful…and even the main body of his work, doing pencils or "breakdowns" (half-finished pencils) for others showed a solid, dependable craftsman at work. His heroic figures had strength and stock, his beautiful women were truly that, and other artists stood in awe of how naturally it all seemed to flow out of him.
He was a guest of honor at last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and I got to chat with him on four panels, one of them a lengthy one-on-one. He struck me as enormously conflicted about his work — proud of all he had done, regretful that so much of it was spent on strips he didn't like, doing half a job that would be finished by someone else. He belittled most of his work and, in some instances, had the audience booing in disagreement. I think that's because he knew that The System didn't usually allow him to do his best. But the fans still loved him because, after all, John Buscema not at his best was still better than most artists at the top of their games.