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Jim Steranko, Dark Surrealist

Jim Steranko, back in his days with Marvel Comics, brought to that fortunate company a combination of traits matched in few of his peers. His background encompassed graphic arts, stage magic, music, and theater; he had a feel for the style of the times; and he had a dark imagination that could evoke images of a truly disturbing character. With this baggage of available background, he would, in a short span, take comics to new places and bring into the medium a surrealism that gave it depth and tone.

Comics Film Noir

Steranko possessed a cinematographic way of storytelling that would later find expression in works like Bram Stoker's Dracula, for which Steranko involved himself in design of visuals and storyboarding, a role that other industry icons would also occasionally enjoy (such as Frank Miller's work for Robocop II and Neal Adams' work for Funhouse).

While this tony film-director's approach to comics had enjoyed much earlier presentation by the likes of Will Eisner, few comics artists between Eisner and Miller would demonstrate the film noir feel that could darken a story and disturb a reader so effectively.

Lighting, panel flow, and facial expression, plus a wealth of detail (when needed) and an excellent sense of the technical ways to direct a viewer's eye to the conceptual center of a picture all found their places in Steranko's pallette of techniques. Steranko used these pieces to craft runs on Captain America and Nick Fury stories that would present them in an altogether different vision than that of earlier stewards like Marie Severin and Jack Kirby; Steranko gave these works the tone of superhero or spy comics viewed through the derangement of an insomniac just on the border of passing out or hallucinating. Neither before him nor after him would either concept express such dense moodiness.

Yet this hint of derangement, this dark undercurrent of menace, would not strip from these works their original conception. Captain America and Nick Fury remained recognizeable and fully true to the concepts Steranko inherited; Steranko could infuse the fear into his work without recreating his cast, a talent probably lost to the medium with his departure from his regular creative chores at Marvel Comics.

Sinister Psychedelia

In this fortunate and talent-dense day, the comics readership represented a different and unique demographic. Children and soldiers read the comics of the Golden Age, and did not normally carry this interest into later life, since their generations took much more seriously the separation of what constituted appropriate juvenile and adult entertainment. By the late sixties, however, the comics audience included children and adolescents and, thanks to the maturing of the medium under the Stan Lee editorial model that would subsequently dominate the medium even beyond his control, young adults took to dabbling in comics.

This generation of young adults - the overrated "Baby Boom" generation - sometimes dabbled in dangerous means of modifying the consciousness through psychosis-simulating chemicals; even the more prudent and cautious often found an interest in the stylish surrealism of some of the "pop art" and "op art" movements, and works that touched on just the right sort of derangement appealed to the consumers of "psychedelia."

Steranko understood psychedelia well, if one must judge by examining the often-surreal portrayals in his most famous work. The context of these stories made the element of surreality shine more than it might; depicting of a World War II veteran turned secret agent or an icon of Golden Age superheroism amid a reality that flowed and took to strange turns of perspective made the effect stand out more so by contrast than in some works that strove to surrealism by their basic premises (such as Ditko's surreal Dr. Strange stories).

Like Jack Kirby, Steranko had his own feel for technological devices, but his take on these ever-present gadgets suggested later styles like the Giger specialty of "biotechnology," where devices followed the forms of living creatures and the organs and processes thereof. Steranko's gadgets and costumes often suggested plants, snakes, and arthropods in a precedent-setting melding of machine and animal that added to the unreal feel of those details lurking just behind the hero or in the walls that surrounded him.

Comics' Loss

Steranko did not remain long in comics. The essential creations from his pen dated from the late sixties, and a collector could assemble a portfolio of his work that demonstrated all of his strengths without needing later material. In this, he fit the profile of the great illuminator that does not long endure.

Steranko made occasional forays into comics in later years. Until the early seventies, he still provided occasional covers for Marvel, including distinctive work for its Doc Savage comic book. He contributed a stylishly surreal depiction of the line of Superman's descendants for Superman #400 and illustrated a super-hero role playing game called Superheroes Unlimited.

But, as did so much of the luminous talent of the late sixties, Steranko deliberately and permanently absented himself from the medium after only a short tenure of work that pushed the boundaries of its medium. One need not look into his history or character to understand this; superhero comics enjoys a casualty list of alienated talent driven away by overwork, low pay, and underrecognition that suggests no one need multiply causes to explain anyone's departure.

Still, in a sense, the pioneers justify the medium by the works they leave behind, and, even in passing, demonstrate that serial art need not pander to juvenile tastes nor lower the standards of its consumers. Steranko's work stands as one of the justifications of a medium.