Welcome to my private Kurt Schaffenberger album. Here you'll find rare and unique pics that are mostly not available elsewhere.*Click to make the pics larger and the right proportional size. Pics are captioned by row after the photos, at page bottom.
From the first row, left to right, top to bottom:
1st Row 1. A collage of Lois, Superman, and Lana Lang heads by Schaffenberger. 2. D.C.'s 80-Page Giant #39, a.k.a. Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #77, an all-Lois Schaffenberger extravaganza with a classic Giant theme -- Lois' Greatest Shockers! -- all by Schaffenberger (and one of his final Lois Lane covers, by the way). 3. Superman Family #175, featuring a Lois Lane cover by ... who else? By this time -- early to mid-1970s -- Lois' own magazine, plus Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and the Supergirl stories that ran first in Action and Adventure comics, had all been folded into one large magazine. Schaffenberger drew many of the covers (especially for many earlier issues in the run numbered #169-#200), and lots of the inside stories, too. He drew "The Private Life of Clark Kent" and "Mr. and Mrs. Superman" (Lois, natch) series for Family, too. 4. A typical (and fabulous) classic Schaffenberger Lois Lane cover, spotlighting the "Lois vs. Lana vying for Superman" theme many of the stories in the magazine.2nd Row A quartet of classic Schaffenberger Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane covers.
3rd Row Three more Lois Lane covers plus a page of comic art. Note that the second pic from left (issue #63) features a Superman head drawn by classic Golden Age artist Wayne Boring, though the rest of the page, even possibly Superman's body, was done by Schaffenberger. DC sometimes had its artists fill in for others, i.e., Schaffenberger drawing Lois Lane and Lana Lang heads on Curt Swan's bodies, if the editor thought the other artist did a better job with the character heads. But since Schaffenberger drew Superman plenty of times in the Silver Age, why they had Boring do the Man of Steel's head remains a mystery (see also Row 5, pic 4). The fourth picture is a page of comic art featuring Supergirl from a story in Adventure #388.
4th Row 1. Close-up of a splash page from one of my favorite Lois Lane Superman Family stories, in which she's turns into a robot (or "Bionic Girl," as the TV series was popular then). 2. Opening page of "The Davy Crockett Mystery," illustrated (and signed) by Schaffenberger for Forbidden Worlds #39. Schaffenberger often did the covers for ACG's Unknown Worlds and Forbidden Worlds, as well as some of the inside stories. 3. Inside art from the Little Golden Book called Buck Rogers and the Children of Hopetown. 4. Inside art from the Little Golden Book called Shazam: A Circus Adventure (Schaffenberger drew Captain Marvel and the Marvel family for Fawcet in the 1940s and 1950s as well as the DC revival in the 1970s. Note the man with the mustache on the far right of this pic -- it's a Schaffenberger self-portrait. He often drew these into his comic art pages.
5th Row More comic fun, from left: 1. A page from one of the Lois Lane 80-Page Giants illustrating Lois' hairdos through the ages; all drawn by Schaffenberger except for the center bottom pic, draw by fellow classic Silver Age artist Curt Swan. 2. A splash page from Lois Lane #78 featuring Lois and Lana, for a change... By this time, Schaffenberger's classic Lois Lane cover run had ended, though he would still do a few more. 3. An early Lois Lane splash featuring a familiar DC Silver Age story theme: a character gets a huge head, indicating a "super-brain." 4. A close-up of the cover to Lois Lane #21, featuring Lois and Lana fighting over Superman; the catch here is they both have gained superpowers. The cover is drawn by Curt Swan ... except for the Lois Lane head, done by Schaffenberger.
6th Row 1. Several panels from a Young Love story, one of DC's teen romance comics in the sixties, done by Schaffenberger. 2. A panel from the original comic art page of a Lois Lane story in which she dreams she travels into the past — and is still looking to uncover Superman's secret identity and fighting Lana Lang for his heart! 3. The cover of Lois Lane #39. 4. One of my favorite Lois Lane issues of all time, #49, featuring the heartbreaking cover story, "The Unknown Superman."
7th Row 1. and 2. Lois Lane was on a roll. The issues from the mid-40s through the 50s featured some of the best writing and artwork of DC's Silver Age. These two plus issue 49 comprise my top 3 favorite covers and stories. In Lois Lane #50, she goes back in time to try and stop Superboy from meeting Lana Lang; and in Lois Lane #51, a three-part imaginary tale (these unique narratives, which allowed the DC Universe to explore different timelines and other subjects it might not touch in a "regular" story, first began in the Lois Lane series) offered a look at what might happen if Superman married his three favorite gals: Lois, Lana, and mermaid Lori Lemaris. 3. This time, Lois fights the Catwoman, who normally appeared in DC's Batman series, who has literally turned Superman into a pussycat. Issue #70 was the Catwoman's first Silver Age appearance. 4. The magnificent cover to the first Lois Lane Annual. These 80-page annuals eventually became the 80-Page Giant series.
8th Row 1. The original cover art to Shazam #20, featuring Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel jr., and Mary Marvel, at left, fighting some scary Sumo wrestlers, a dragon and a flying robot. 2. Two Schaffenberger covers from ACG's Unknown Worlds. 3. A fabulous original art splash page from the run of Superman Family in the 1970s. 4. Several panels of original art from the run of The New Adventures of Superboy; Schaffenberger did almost all the covers and inside art for this early 1980s nostalgic series and proved, if anything, he'd gotten better with age.
There's no place like home.
*Remember: these photos are purely for entertainment purposes. I don't own the copyrights to any of these, and neither do you! Thanks.
Text © 2010 by Michael Karol; photos © 2010 by their respective owners
