Frank Springer

American comics artist

Frank Springer (December 6, 1929 – April 2, 2009) was an American comics artist best known for Marvel Comics' Dazzler and Nick Fury, Agent of S. H. I. E. L. D As well, in collaboration with writer Michael O'Donoghue, Springer created one of the first adult oriented comics features on American newsstands: "The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit Geist" in the magazine Evergreen Review. A multiple winner of the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award, Springer was a president of the Society and a founding member of the Berndt Toast Gang, its Long Island chapter.

Frank Springer was born in the Jamaica neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, and moved with his family to nearby Nassau County, Long Island when he was nearly 10 years old. He graduated from Malverne High School in Malverne, New York, in 1948. Following his discharge, he began freelancing in New York City, soon becoming assistant to cartoonist George Wunder on the comic strip Terry and the Pirates, on which Wunder had succeeded creator Milt Caniff. Springer recalled in 2008,

quote|I was essentially a line artist and it was through one of the freelance jobs that I learnt that George Wunder, who wrote and drew Terry and the Pirates, was looking for an assistant and I was given his number. I called him up, was hired and I stayed there for five years doing some backgrounds and foregrounds, answering his mail, coloring the Sunday strips. That was good training, watching a professional churning this stuff out, day after day, writing the synopsis, then writing the strips and so on. I loved the strips when I was growing up. I grew up on Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant; those were the main adventure ones. There were a lot of adventure strips at that time, Buck Rogers, Smilin’ Jack and all of that, so I leaned toward all of that rather than the gag cartoons.