American comic book artist (1916-1982). He was born in
South Dakota into a
farming family. He joined the
Marine Corps and was stationed in
Norfolk, Virginia. He later studied at the
Chicago Art Institute and the
Minnesota School of Art before starting to work at
National Publications (which later grew up to be
DC Comics) in 1937. He did some
pencilling for characters like
Slam Bradley and
Dr. Occult, though his work was signed by
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (a common practice at the time, when a publisher would push some "
star" artists as the
creators of as many books as possible).
After
Superman proved to be a great
success in 1938, Boring began working on Superman comics nearly full-time, quickly becoming one of the most
prominent and
recognizable artists to work on that character. His version of the
Man of Steel was more
muscular than Siegel and Shuster's version and more
clean-cut. It was also much more cleanly and clearly drawn. Boring had been inspired by early
Flash Gordon comics, and that helped him create some of the wild
science fiction stories that became more popular during the
1950s and
'60s.
After 30 years of working on both the Superman comic books and the daily Superman
comic strip, Boring was fired by DC, along with a number of older artists, in the late '60s. Afterwards, he
ghosted
backgrounds on the Sunday "
Prince Valiant" strip and worked briefly for
Marvel Comics. One of the greatest artists Superman ever had ended his
career working as a
bank security guard. The world is not fair.
Research from http://www.wayneboring.com and http://www.comic-art.com/bios-1/boring01.htm