Creator Profile: Wayne Boring

Artist Wayne Boring is remembered for his work on Superman titles in the 1940s and ‘50s, helping to define the look of the Man of Steel. He started ghosting for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s studio in 1937 on titles like Slam Bradley and Doctor Occult. After Superman was introduced in 1938, he was tasked with providing the art for the spinoff Superman comic strip.

He became a staff artist at National Comics in ’42, then a year later he started nearly 20 years of collaboration with Stan Kaye as the inker over Boring’s pencils. When Siegel and Shuster left the Superman titles, editor Mort Weisinger brought Boring onto the line.

Boring was the primary Superman penciller through the 1950s, then after Curt Swan took over, Boring would be a guest artist through the ‘60s. For Action Comics #101, Boring created the “Superman Covers Atom Bomb Test” cover, marking an early instance of nuclear weapons appearing in pop culture. He and writer Jerry Coleman co-created the Fortress of Solitude in Action Comics #241 and he co-created Bizarro World with Otto Binder in #263.

After he was let go from DC in ’67, he became ghost artist on backgrounds for the Prince Valiant Sunday comic strip. His next move was as the main artist on the Davy Jones strip in the early ‘70s. Boring drew a few issues of Captain Marvel and returned to DC for a few issues of Superman titles in the mid-‘80s.