Jerry Ordway

Jeremiah Joseph Ordway (born November 28, 1957) is an American writer, penciller, inker and painter of comic books.

Ordway discovered Marvel comics in "June of 1967," and wrote in 1975 (aged 17) that he had "been drawing superheroes [ever] since."

Ordway's own hero "Proton" headlined the 'zine, which featured a pin-up of a character "called Acrobat" who was "the first superhero [Ordway] created. His birth was Dec. 1969."

Spending the late 1970s working as a painter in a commercial art studio in Milwaukee, between 1978 and 1979, he provided illustrations for a number of fanzines and pro-zines, including Omniverse and The Comics Journal.

His first professional work was for Western Publishing's Golden Books on young-reader Marvel books, and the Superheroes Golden Beginning Stampbook '79.

His first published work, a story entitled "The Messenger", appeared in Tim Corrigan's Superhero Comics No. 4 (April, 1975), and his own self-published fanzine Okay Comix followed in May–June, 1975.

Okay Comix featured stories by Ordway and his friend Dave Koula, and art predominantly by Ordway himself.

Jerry Ordway attended Milwaukee Technical High School, where he took a three-year commercial art course, before joining a commercial art studio as a typographer in 1976.

He subsequently worked his way "from the ground floor up at the art studio" between 1978 and 1981.

Among the artists Ordway considers influential are Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, John Buscema, Steve Ditko, all of whose pencils he would later ink over.

He cites Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and Roy Crane as early inspirations.

He names contemporaries such as Lee Weeks, John Romita Jr.., Ron Garney, Mike Weiringo and Alan Davis, and inkers such as Joe Sinnott, Dick Giordano, Tom Palmer and Klaus Janson.

Before beginning his professional career as an inker, Jerry Ordway entered the comics industry as an artist and publisher for small-press comics fanzines.

Having produced comics-related artwork for fanzines and licensed publishers, Ordway attended "a talent search at the 1980 Chicago Comicon," held by DC Comics.

After showing them his "DC related artwork from the Golden Books," he "walked away with a promise of work."

This work began in the summer of 1980 for "DC's anthology comics", (including Weird War Tales and Mystery in Space ) in which he "inked Carmine Infantino, Trevor Von Eeden, as well as Joe Staton, and Dave Cockrum."

During the mid-1980s, he "shared a studio with other artists, including Machlan, Pat Broderick, and Al Vey".

After continuing to work at the art studio for a further six months, inking comics for DC by night, Ordway began "freelancing full time in February 1981."

At DC, he would illustrate All-Star Squadron, a series which he helped launch in an insert preview in Justice League of America No. 193 (Aug. 1981).

Ordway has produced a large number of covers for DC from 1982 onwards, including for issues of Secret Origins and the painted cover art to the hardcover reprint collection The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told.

With writer Roy Thomas, he co-created Infinity, Inc. in All-Star Squadron No. 25 (Sept. 1983) and the new team was launched in its own series in March 1984.

He is known for his inking work on a wide variety of DC Comics titles, including the continuity-redefining Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985–1986), his long run working on the Superman titles from 1986 to 1993, and for writing and painting the Captain Marvel original graphic novel The Power of Shazam! (1994), and writing the ongoing monthly series from 1995 to 1999.

He has provided inks for artists such as Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, John Buscema, Steve Ditko, John Byrne, George Perez and others.

Ordway inked DC Comics Presents Annual No. 4 (1985) over artist Eduardo Barreto's pencils, was one of several artists on Batman Annual No. 9 (July 1985), inked George Pérez's pencils on the epic crossover miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985 and Superman artist Wayne Boring's pencils for a retelling of the definitive Golden Age Superman origin story written by Roy Thomas in Secret Origins No. 1 (April 1986), which he considers a particular favorite.

In 1986, along with writer/artist John Byrne and writer Marv Wolfman, Ordway revamped Superman, in the wake of the Ordway-inked continuity-redefining maxiseries Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Launching, with a revised origin and new continuity, in Byrne's miniseries, The Man of Steel, Superman soon returned to featuring in a number of titles.

After the titular title Superman was cancelled and replaced with The Man of Steel, it was relaunched as The Adventures of Superman, continuing the numbering of the original Superman series, with Wolfman as writer and Ordway as artist.

When Wolfman departed the title with issue #435, Byrne briefly took over script writing duties before Ordway assumed the mantle of writer-artist and took over the series solely with issue #445 (Oct. 1988), making his writing debut two issues earlier with #443 (Aug. 1988).

Ordway had also served as co-plotter on a few issues during both Wolfman and Bryne's writing tenures (issues #426, 435–437, 439–442, and 444).

During the 50th anniversary celebrations for Superman, he inked John Byrne's pencils for the cover of the March 14, 1988 issue of Time magazine and an interior spread celebrating the Man of Steel's anniversary.

He produced the cover art for the prestige format graphic novels, Superman: The Earth Stealers in 1988 where he inked Curt Swan's pencils and Superman For Earth (1991), among other work.

Ordway was the penciller and inker for the DC Comics adaptation of the 1989 Batman film which was published as a "movie special".

Ordway has noted that "Inking is a weird job, because as much as you put into it, the page still belongs to the penciler."

Switching from The Adventures of Superman, Ordway became the writer-artist on the companion title Superman vol. 2 between #34 (Aug. 1989) and #55 (May 1991), before later returning to Adventures of Superman as writer and sometimes as cover artist from issues #480 (July 1991) to #500 (June 1993).

Ordway was the writer and primary artist for the story in which Clark Kent proposes to Lois Lane (Superman vol. 2 #50).

While writing for the Superman family of titles, Ordway cowrote such storylines as "Panic in the Sky" and "The Death of Superman" storyline in 1992.

After seven years working on the character, Ordway largely left the Superman titles in 1993, although he would make frequent returns to the character as writer and throughout his career, co-writing Adventures of Superman with Karl Kesel from issues #539–540, 558–562, 564–567 in 1996, and 1998–1999.

In 1994, Ordway masterminded the return of the original Captain Marvel to the DC Universe with the 96-page hardcover graphic novel The Power of Shazam!, which he both wrote and painted.

The story saw Ordway depict the revamped origins of the former-Fawcett Comics superhero.

In Nov. 2017, he drew the variant cover for Action Comics #992 (cover dated Jan. 2018).