Dan Spiegle

Dan Spiegle
Born	October 12, 1920 (1920-10-12) (age 91)
Area(s)	Artist
Notable works	Hopalong Cassidy Scooby Doo Nemesis Blackhawk Crossfire
Awards	Inkpot Award, 1983

Dan Spiegle (born October 12, 1920)^[1] is an American comic book and cartoon artist and illustrator (penciller and inker). He has had a long career in drawing comics based on movie and television characters, and has worked for companies including Dell Comics, DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

Life and career

In his second year of high school, Spiegle sent a sample comic strip to King Features. It was politely turned down, but Spiegle vowed to become a cartoonist. Discharged from the navy in 1946, Spiegle enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute of Los Angeles. Spiegle began his professional cartoonist career in 1949 drawing Hopalong Cassidy for the Mirror Syndicate. He continued to draw this strip after it was bought out by King Features in 1951, until it was canceled.

He then moved to Western Publishing Company drawing various comics for the Gold Key Comics line. This included the comic Space Family Robinson, Korak, Son of Tarzan, Brothers of the Spear, and many of their mystery/occult titles, as well as titles based on television series such as Maverick; Spiegle began work on Maverick comics before any publicity photographs of series star James Garner were available, so he met the actor on the set and the resultant drawings of Garner in the subsequent comics are eerily exact. In 1972, Spiegle explained in an interview:

“

I would say my favorite was Maverick, which ran about three years — fairly successful, considering the run of other western strips published then. I was assigned this strip even before they had stills available for the show, so I was sent down to Warner Bros. to see it in production — where I met James Garner, which is perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much. Having met the star, I was extra careful to make the drawings I did look as parallel to the real person as possible. I put my all into that strip, having fun all the way.[2]

”

In 1966, at the height of the James Bond craze, Spiegle provided realistic backgrounds and human characters while funny animal artist Paul Murry drew Mickey and Goofy for the short-lived Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent. As comic book historian Scott Shaw! notes, "What’s even weirder about these stories is that in them, none of the 'real' human characters seem to notice anything remotely unusual about occupying space with a three-foot-tall talking cartoon mouse!"^{[citation needed]} While mostly known for his realistic style, he also proved capable of handling more cartoony material such as Scooby Doo. It was on Gold Key's Scooby Doo... Mystery Comics where Spiegle was first teamed with Mark Evanier, who called Spiegle "one of the three nicest people in the whole comic book business."^[3] Except for issue 26, which was a reprint, Evanier wrote and Spiegle illustrated every issue of the title beginning with issue 21 and continuing through the end of the series. Hanna-Barbara sold the rights to its characters to Charlton, and neither Evanier nor Spiegle were involved in that run. Evanier and Spiegle did work on the character again under the Marvel imprint in 1977, and three of the issues for Archie Comics.^[4]

Spiegle later moved to DC Comics and worked on many of their features, such as Batman, Unknown Soldier, Tomahawk, Jonah Hex and Teen Titans, until the early 1990s. His most notable work was the Nemesis backup series in Brave and the Bold, and on Blackhawk with Mark Evanier.

Although the character of Crossfire was created by Mark Evanier and Will Meugniot in DNAgents published by Eclipse Comics, Spiegle is the artist most associated with Crossfire. With Evanier writing, Spiegle penciled and inked every issue of Crossfire, as well as Crossfire and Rainbow, and Whodunnit? (featuring Crossfire). Evanier and Spiegle also did all five issues of Hollywood Superstars for Marvel's Epic Comics imprint. Both series had as their milieu the entertainment industry and drew on Evanier's years working as writer for television and films.

More recently Spiegle provided the art for Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient (1993–1994) and Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny (1995) published by Dark Horse Comics. Spiegle also re-teamed with Mark Evanier on three issues of Archie Comics' iteration of Scooby Doo. He is also credited with doing the artwork for Nintendo Power magazine's Nester's Adventures comic (formerly Howard & Nester) in its later stages until it was discontinued in 1993. In the mid-1990s he took over doing art for the short-lived revival of the comic strip Terry and the Pirates after Tim and Greg Hildebrandt left. Spiegle worked with the Bank Street College of Education as an illustrator of a number of "Bank Street Classic Tales" published in Boys' Life magazine, Bible Stories for the American Bible Society, and he recently teamed up with Evanier again for a new Crossfire story.

Spiegle's daughter, Carrie, is a noted letterer in the comic industry.[1]

Notes

1. ^ Miller, John Jackson (June 10, 2005). "Comics Industry Birthdays". Comic Buyer's Guide. Archived from the original on October 29, 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5trAbNQWw. Retrieved December 12, 2010. 
2. ^ Gheno, Dan. "An Interview with Dan Spiegle," Graphic Story World (1972).
3. ^ Evanier, Mark. Crossfire #2, Vol. 1; Eclipse Comics; June 1984
4. ^ Evanier, Mark. Retrieved from the website Scooby Doo by Evanier & Spiegel—Comic Book Resources Forum, http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?p=11051217, retrieved on 12/15/10.

References

• Dan Spiegle at the Comic Book DB

External links

• Lambiek Comiclopedia entry

Preceded by Mike Royer	Korak, Son of Tarzan artist 1968–1972	Succeeded by N/A
Preceded by Ric Estrada	Blackhawk artist 1982–1984	Succeeded by N/A

Persondata
Name	Spiegle, Dan
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Date of birth	December 10, 1920
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