Dan Spiegle
Encyclopedia
Dan Spiegle 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
.
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:
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!"
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." 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.
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.http://www.comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=961
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
and cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
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
Dell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
, DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
and Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
.
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 InstituteChouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
of Los Angeles. Spiegle began his professional cartoonist career in 1949 drawing Hopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of popular short stories and twenty-eight novels based on the character....
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
Gold Key Comics
Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.-History:...
line. This included the comic Space Family Robinson
Space Family Robinson
Space Family Robinson was an original science-fiction comic book series published by Gold Key Comics. It predates the Lost in Space TV series....
, Korak, Son of Tarzan, Brothers of the Spear
Brothers of the Spear
Brothers of the Spear was a long-running backup feature in the Tarzan comic book series created by Western Publishing and published first through Dell Comics and then through Gold Key Comics...
, and many of their mystery/occult titles, as well as titles based on television series such as Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...
; Spiegle began work on Maverick comics before any publicity photographs of series star James Garner
James Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...
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:
In 1966, at the height of the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
craze, Spiegle provided realistic backgrounds and human characters while funny animal artist Paul Murry
Paul Murry
Paul Murry was an American cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his Disney comics, which appeared in Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics from 1946 to 1984....
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!"
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
Mark Evanier
Mark Stephen Evanier is an American comic book and television writer, particularly known for his humor work. He is also known for his columns and blogs, and for his work as a historian and biographer of the comics industry, in particular his award-winning Jack Kirby biography, Kirby: King of...
, who called Spiegle "one of the three nicest people in the whole comic book business." 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.
Spiegle later moved to DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
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
Nemesis (DC Comics)
Nemesis is the name of two fictional characters in the DC Comics universe. Thomas Andrew Tresser first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #166, , and was created by Cary Burkett and Dan Spiegle. Soseh Myrkos first appeared in JSA Annual #1, , and was created by David S...
backup series in Brave and the Bold, and on Blackhawk
Blackhawk (comics)
Blackhawk, a long-running comic book series, was also a film serial, a radio series and a novel. The comic book was published first by Quality Comics and later by DC Comics. The series was created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, and Bob Powell, but the artist most associated with the feature is Reed...
with Mark Evanier.
Although the character of Crossfire
Crossfire (Eclipse comics)
Crossfire is a comic book series created by writer Mark Evanier and artist Dan Spiegle originally for Eclipse Comics. It was a spin off from DNAgents, which was also written by Evanier.-Plot:...
was created by Mark Evanier
Mark Evanier
Mark Stephen Evanier is an American comic book and television writer, particularly known for his humor work. He is also known for his columns and blogs, and for his work as a historian and biographer of the comics industry, in particular his award-winning Jack Kirby biography, Kirby: King of...
and Will Meugniot
Will Meugniot
Will Meugniot is an American writer, storyboard and comics artist, film producer and director.- List of works :* The DNAgents * Exosquad * G.I. Joe: Valor vs...
in DNAgents published by Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics was an American comic book publisher, one of several independent publishers during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1978, it published the first graphic novel intended for the newly created comic book specialty store market...
, 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
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
's Epic Comics
Epic Comics
Epic Comics was a creator-owned imprint of Marvel Comics started in 1982, lasting through the mid-1990s, and being briefly revived on a small scale in the mid-2000s.- Origins :...
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
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
. Spiegle also re-teamed with Mark Evanier
Mark Evanier
Mark Stephen Evanier is an American comic book and television writer, particularly known for his humor work. He is also known for his columns and blogs, and for his work as a historian and biographer of the comics industry, in particular his award-winning Jack Kirby biography, Kirby: King of...
on three issues of Archie Comics
Archie Comics
Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the Village of Mamaroneck, Town of Mamaroneck, New York, known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones. The characters were created by...
' iteration of Scooby Doo. He is also credited with doing the artwork for Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...
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
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Terry and the Pirates
Terry and the Pirates
Terry and the Pirates is the title of:* Terry and the Pirates , the comic strip created by Milton Caniff* Terry and the Pirates , a radio serial based on the comic strip...
after Tim and Greg Hildebrandt left. Spiegle worked with the Bank Street College of Education
Bank Street College of Education
Bank Street College of Education is located in Manhattan, New York City.-History:Bank Street was founded in 1916 by Lucy Sprague Mitchell as the "Bureau of Educational Experiments"....
as an illustrator of a number of "Bank Street Classic Tales" published in Boys' Life
Boys' Life
Boys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America . Its targeted readership is young American males between the ages of 6 and 18.Boys' Life is published in two demographic editions...
magazine, Bible Stories for the American Bible Society
American Bible Society
The American Bible Society is an interconfessional, non-denominational, nonprofit organization, founded in 1816 in New York City, which publishes, distributes and translates the Bible and provides study aids and other tools to help people engage with the Bible.It is probably best known for its...
, 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.http://www.comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=961