Dan Jurgens

Dan Jurgens (born June 27, 1959) is an American comic book writer and artist.

He is known for his work on the DC comic book storyline "The Death of Superman" and for creating characters such as Doomsday, Hank Henshaw, Jon Kent, and Booster Gold.

Jurgens had a lengthy run on the Superman comic books including The Adventures of Superman, Superman vol. 2 and Action Comics.

At Marvel, Jurgens worked on series such as Captain America, The Sensational Spider-Man and was the writer on Thor for six years.

After graduating from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1981, Jurgens' first professional comic work was for DC Comics on The Warlord #63 (Nov. 1982).

He was hired due to a recommendation of Warlord creator Mike Grell who was deeply impressed by Jurgens' work after being shown his private portfolio at a convention.

In 1984, Jurgens was the artist for the Sun Devils limited series (July 1984 – June 1985), with writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas.

Jurgens would make his debut as a comic book writer with Sun Devils. He began scripting from Conway's plots with #8 (Feb. 1985) and fully took over the writing duties on the title with #10 (April 1985).

In 1985, Jurgens created the character Booster Gold, who became a member of the Justice League.

Jurgens was one of the contributors to the DC Challenge limited series in 1986.

His first work on Superman was as penciller for The Adventures of Superman Annual #1 (1987).

In 1988, Jurgens provided pencil art for the Deadman short stories which were written by Mike Baron in the short-lived anthology Action Comics Weekly from issues #601–612.

He then had a run as artist of Green Arrow with writer Mike Grell from 1988 to 1990.

In 1989, Jurgens began working full-time on the Superman character when he took over the writing/pencilling of the monthly The Adventures of Superman.

Jurgens was the penciller of the 1991 limited series Armageddon 2001 and co-created the hero Waverider with Archie Goodwin.

Jurgens helped writer Louise Simonson and artist Jon Bogdanove launch a new Superman title, Superman: The Man of Steel in July 1991 and assumed the writing/pencilling of the main Superman comic book with issue No. 57 (July 1991).

He created a supporting hero named Agent Liberty in issue No. 60 (Oct. 1991) and then worked on the "Panic in the Sky" crossover in 1992.

During his run on Superman, Jurgens created two major villains, Doomsday and the Cyborg Superman.

Doomsday was the main antagonist in "The Death of Superman" storyline which saw the iconic hero killed in an issue consisting entirely of splash pages.

The Cyborg Superman was an existing character which Jurgens reintroduced in The Adventures of Superman #500 for the "Reign of the Supermen" storyline.

Jurgens wrote and drew Justice League America (#61–77 April 1992 – July 1993) and in 1993 pencilled the Metal Men four-issue miniseries, which was a retcon of their origin story.

Jurgens wrote and pencilled the crossover series Zero Hour and the Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey miniseries, both in 1994.

Jurgens scripted and provided layout art for the Superman vs. Aliens miniseries.

The story featured a battle between Superman and the aliens created by H. R. Giger (a.k.a. the Xenomorphs), from the titular film series.

He also had a brief run as writer and artist on Solar for Valiant Comics in 1995.

It was co-published by Dark Horse Comics and DC in 1995.

In the same year, he gave up the pencilling duties on Superman.

Also in 1995 he was writer/penciller on Solar with issue #46 from Valiant Comics wherein he worked with inker Dick Giordano and with penciller Tom Grindberg joining in with issues #51–54 after Jurgens relinquished penciller duties with issue #50.

In 1996 Jurgens and Italian artist Claudio Castellini worked on the highly publicized crossover Marvel vs DC.

Jurgens was one of the many creators who worked on the Superman: The Wedding Album one-shot in 1996 which featured the title character's marriage to Lois Lane.

Jurgens developed the Tangent Comics imprint for DC the following year.

In January 1996, Jurgens was writer and penciller of the new Spider-Man series, The Sensational Spider-Man, at Marvel Comics.

The title was initially conceived to be the flagship showcase for the new Ben Reilly Spider-Man.

The initial seven issues (#0–6, January–July 1996) were written and pencilled by Jurgens.

Jurgens pushed strongly for the restoration of Peter Parker as the true Spider-Man and plans were made to enact this soon, but Bob Harras, the new Editor-in-chief, demanded the story be deferred until after the "Onslaught" storyline.

Jurgens had by this stage become disillusioned with the immense amount of group planning and constant changes of ideas and directions and took this as the last straw, resigning from the title.

In a past interview several years after his Spider-Man run, Jurgens stated that he would like to have another chance on the character, since his run was with the Ben Reilly character during the Spider-Man Clone Saga, and not Peter Parker.

Jurgens wrote and pencilled Teen Titans (vol. 2) for its entire two-year, 24-issue run (October 1996 – September 1998).

George Pérez, the co-creator of The New Teen Titans served as inker for the series' first 15 issues.

After 10 years working on the Superman character, Jurgens ended his run as writer with Superman vol. 2 #150 (Nov. 1999).