![]() Steranko, whose first band, in 1956, was called The Lancers, did not perform under his own name, claiming he used pseudonyms to help protect himself from enemies. ![]() Up through his early 20s, Steranko performed as an illusionist, escape artist, close-up magician in nightclubs, and musician, having played in drum and bugle corps in his teens before forming his own bands during the early days of rock and roll. At 17, Steranko and another teenage boy were arrested for a string of burglaries and car thefts in Pennsylvania. At school, he competed on the gymnastics team, on the rings and parallel bars, and later took up boxing and, under swordmaster Dan Phillips in New York City, fencing. Illusionist and musicianīy his account, Steranko learned stage magic using paraphernalia from his father's stage magician act, and in his teens spent several summers working with circuses and carnivals, working his way up to sideshow performer as a fire-eater and in acts involving a bed of nails and sleight-of-hand. Toth is one of the few guys who can simplify an illustration to a minimum of lines with a maximum of impact. The fewer lines you can put into a drawing the quicker it reads, and the simpler it is. Actually, the opposite is generally true. Fans seem to think that the more lines that go into a drawing the better it is. Fans seem to have a lot less opinion of Robbins for some reason, just because they're more enamored of lines. I still think Robbins is one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Steranko in 1978 described some influences and their impact on his creative philosophy:Įarly influences were Chester Gould's Dick Tracy (not particularly in my drawing style but in subject matter and an approach to drama), Hal Foster, and Frank Robbins' Johnny Hazard. Radio programs, Saturday movie matinées and serials, and other popular culture also influenced him. He studied the Sunday comic strip art of Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and Chester Gould, as well as the characters of Walt Disney and Superman, provided in "boxes of comics" brought to him by an uncle. Despite his father's denigration of Steranko's artistic talent, and the boy's ambition to become an architect, Steranko paid for his art supplies by collecting discarded soda bottles for the bottle deposit and bundled old newspapers to sell to scrap-paper dealers. ![]() Steranko had begun drawing while very young, opening and flattening envelopes from the mail to use as sketch paper. His youngest brother was born when Steranko was 14, "severing even the minimal interaction between me and my parents." I was bused to school for four years, then dropped into standard junior high." There, being smaller and younger than his classmates, he found himself a target for bullies and young gang-members until he studied boxing and self-defense at the local YMCA and began to successfully fight back. Later, "Because my father had tuberculosis (and I tested positive), I began third grade at what was called an 'open-window' school, a facility across the city that had a healthy program for kids with special problems. Steranko recalled beginning school at age 4. Steranko's father and five uncles showed musical inclination, performing in a band that played on Reading radio in the 1930s, Steranko has said. He slept on a couch in the nominal living room until he was more than 10 years old. ![]() Steranko later said his father and uncles "would bootleg coal – they would go up into a mountain and open up a shaft." One of three children, all boys, Steranko spent his early childhood during the American Great Depression living in a three-room house with a tar-paper roof and outhouse toilet facilities. Steranko's father, one of nine siblings, began working in the mines at age 10, and as an adult became a tinsmith. ![]() According to Steranko's authorized biography, his grandparents emigrated from Ukraine to settle in the anthracite coal-mining region of eastern Pennsylvania. Steranko was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. ![]()
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