George Tuska
George Tuska (/ˈtʌskə/; April 26, 1916 – October 16, 2009),[1][2] who early in his career used a variety of pen names including Carl Larson, was an American comic book and newspaper comic strip artist best known for his 1940s work on various Captain Marvel titles and the crime fiction series Crime Does Not Pay and for his 1960s work illustrating Iron Man and other Marvel Comics characters. He also drew the DC Comics newspaper comic strip The World's Greatest Superheroes from 1978–1982.
George Tuska
April 26, 1916
Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.
October 16, 2009 (aged 93)
Manchester Township, New Jersey, U.S.
Penciller, Inker
Carl Larson
Inkpot Award, 1997
Biography[edit]
Early life and career[edit]
George Tuska was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the youngest of three children of Russian immigrants Harry and Anna Onisko Tuska, who had met in New York City.[3] George's siblings Peter, the eldest, and Mary, the middle child, were born in New York City. Years later, Mary died while giving birth to her second child, who was stillborn.[4] Harry, a foreman at a Hartford auto-tire company, died when George was 14.[3] Anna then opened a restaurant in Paterson, New Jersey, where she had relatives, and later remarried.[3] At 17, Tuska moved to New York City, rooming with his cousin Annie, and a year later began attending the National Academy of Design.[5] His artistic influences included illustrators Harold von Schmidt, Dean Cornwell, and Thomas Lovell, and comic strip artists Lou Fine, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond.[5] At some early point, he took his first job in art, designing women's costume jewelry.[5]
Tuska then began working for comic book packager Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of companies at the time that supplied comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium. His first known published comic-book work appeared in Fox Comics' Mystery Men Comics #1 and Wonderworld Comics #4, both cover-dated August 1939. Tuska in the mid-2000s recalled:
Awards[edit]
Tuska was a 1997 recipient of the industry's Inkpot Award.[41]