Frank Springer

Frank Springer (December 6, 1929 – April 2, 2009 ) was an American comics artist best known for Marvel Comics' Dazzler and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. As well, in collaboration with writer Michael O'Donoghue, Springer created one of the first adult-oriented comics features on American newsstands: "The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist" in the magazine Evergreen Review. A multiple winner of the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award, Springer was a president of the Society and a founding member of the Berndt Toast Gang, its Long Island chapter.

Biography Early life and career Frank Springer was born in the Jamaica neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, and moved with his family to nearby Nassau County, Long Island when he was nearly 10 years old. He graduated from Malverne High School in Malverne, New York, in 1948. Following his discharge, he began freelancing in New York City, soon becoming assistant to cartoonist George Wunder on the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, on which Wunder had succeeded creator Milt Caniff. Springer recalled in 2008,

quote|I was essentially a line artist and it was through one of the freelance jobs that I learnt that George Wunder, who wrote and drew Terry and the Pirates, was looking for an assistant and I was given his number. I called him up, was hired and I stayed there for five years doing some backgrounds and foregrounds, answering his mail, coloring the Sunday strips. That was good training, watching a professional churning this stuff out, day after day, writing the synopsis, then writing the strips and so on. I loved the strips when I was growing up. I grew up on Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant; those were the main adventure ones. There were a lot of adventure strips at that time, Buck Rogers, Smilin’ Jack and all of that, so I leaned toward all of that rather than the gag cartoons.

Silver Age comics During the remainder of the 1960s and early 1970s period fans and historians call the Silver Age of comic books, Springer became a prolific penciler-inker across much of Dell's line, drawing issues of Ghost Stories, Movie Classic, Tales from the Tomb, Toka: Jungle King, and the movie/TV tie-in series The Big Valley, Charlie Chan, Iron Horse and The New People, among other comics. Secret Six #1 (May 1968), art by Springer . Unusually, the story begins on the cover. He debuted at DC Comics with two comics the same month: penciling Batman #197, and both penciling and inking the lead feature, "Dial H for Hero", in House of Mystery #171 (both Dec. 1967). Springer went on to draw an issue each of Detective Comics and Our Army at War; an anthological story in another House of Mystery; and the first two issues of Secret Six — the initial one a rare example of a comic-book beginning its story on the cover rather than on the inside page one. Evergreen Review publisher Grove Press collected the series as a 1968 book.

Doonesbury comic-strip creator Garry Trudeau cited the strip as an early inspiration, saying, " very heavy influence was a serial in the Sixties called 'Phoebe Zeitgeist'. ... It was an absolutely brilliant, deadpan send-up of adventure comics, but with a very edgy, modernist kind of approach. To this day, I hold virtually every panel in my brain. It's very hard not to steal from it."

Springer also drew the series "Frank Fleet" for Evergreen Review from 1969 to 1970. From 1971 to 1988 he was a regular contributor to the satiric magazine National Lampoon, occasionally using the pseudonyms Francis Hollidge and Bob Monhegan. He also drew The Incredible Hulk newspaper strip, starring the Marvel Comics' antihero; the romance strip The Virtue of Vera Valiant, with writer Stan Lee; and The Adventures of Hedley Kase in the 1990s. Springer's cartoon art has appeared in Games Magazine, Muppets Magazine, the New York Daily News,

Springer also did a small amount of uncredited penciling on the comic strip The Phantom, assisting Sy Barry, and "for a really brief period" worked with writer-artist Stan Drake on The Heart of Juliet Jones. In 1995, after spending the majority of his life on Long Island (mostly in the towns of Lynbrook, Massapequa Park, and Greenlawn),

Springer at one point was president of the National Cartoonists Society, and was a founding member of the Berndt Toast Gang, its Long Island chapter. Inkpot Award: 2004