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Curt Swan

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Cover to Superman #423 (Sept 1986), the first half of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

Curt Swan (born February 17, 1920 in Minneapolis, Minnesota; died June 16, 1996) was an American comic book artist, most known for his work on the Superman comics.

Drafted into the army in 1940, he spent World War II working on the G.I. magazine, Stars and Stripes. After returning to civilian life in 1945 he began working for DC Comics. After a stint on Boy Commandos he began to just pencil pages, leaving the inking to others.

Cover to Adventure Comics #296 (May 1962).

He drew many different features including Tommy Tomorrow and Gangbusters, but slowly began gravitating towards the Superman line of books including Superboy, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics. He drew the daily newspaper comic strip Superman from the late 1950s until its demise in 1964.

Swan became the artist most associated with Superman during the Silver Age of comic books, producing hundreds of covers and stories from the 1950s through the 1980s. With his frequent inker Murphy Anderson, the pair's collaborative artwork came to be called "Swanderson" by the fans.

After DC's 1985 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths and with the impending 1986 revision of Superman by writer and artist John Byrne, Swan was released from his duties on the Superman comics. His swan song on Superman was the noncanonical 1986 story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, a critically acclaimed story written by Alan Moore. After this, Swan continued to do an occasional minor project for DC.