Creator Profile: Jack Burnley

Comic industry veteran artist Hardin “Jack” Burnley is best remembered as the co-creator of the superhero Starman and for illustrating numerous covers for DC Comics.

His career began with King Feature Syndicate in 1929, when he was just 18 years old. In 1939 Burnley began working for DC Comics, and produced the cover art to New York World’s Fair Comics 1940. The comic book was historically significant as it was the first cover ever to feature Superman, Batman, and Robin together. In 1941 the three superheroes would be reunited in the long-running comic book title World’s Finest Comics.

Burnley’s career at DC Comics flourished with the artist illustrating Superman in Action Comics while also producing covers for Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batman, Detective Comics, Superman, World’s Finest Comics, and others. His art featured superheroes promoting war bonds and fighting Nazis. Along with Gardner Fox Burnley he co-created Starman in 1941. The character proved to be of interest, but was not as popular as Superman and Batman.

Burnley continued to draw for comic books until 1947 when he returned to newspaper illustrations, specifically sports cartoons. He worked for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and then later with the San Francisco News from which he retired in 1976. He and his wife then moved to Charlottesville, Virginia in 1981. In 2000 Jack Burnley wrote the introduction to DC Comics The Golden Age Starman Archives Vol. 1.