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Tripwire’s 101 Greatest Comic Artists Of All Time: No.96: Syd Shores

Published

5 years ago

July 27, 2021

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No.96: Syd Shores

Syd Shores was another overlooked perennial who contributed significantly through all three iterations of Marvel, from the 40s to the 70s. Words: Andrew Colman…

Having grown up in awe of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, Shores apprenticed initially at Chesler in 1940 before Joe Simon brought him into the fold at the then nascent Timely as an inker. Shores quickly hit his stride with work on Captain America, Young Allies, USA Comics and All-Winners Comics.

His pencils, influenced by Simon and Kirby, rapidly captured the Timely look, his work on covers for Captain America and Young Allies being compulsive, dynamic and not out of place with the publisher’s number one cover illustrator Alex Schomburg. World War 2 ended his sequence of exceptional war covers for Timely, yet upon his return Shores adapted to the wholesale changes in the industry in the 1950s at Atlas, working on Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, along with several war, jungle and western titles.

After a hiatus towards the end of the ‘50s, where Shores worked elsewhere due to the implosion at Atlas, he returned to Marvel and began inking Jack Kirby on the revived Captain America series, along with his former protégé Gene Colan on Daredevil. Although by this point he was primarily a backup at the Marvel Bullpen, he did illustrate some of the more minor titles for the publisher, especially the horror and western series, along with the occasional return to pencilling for Daredevil.

Overall, Shores was one of the key professionals at Marvel, celebrated mainly as a virtuoso inker but also as an artist who could hold his own with the biggest names in the industry.

Read the first five entries so far here too