George Tuska was a comic book and comic strip artist who was active in the 1940s to 1980s. He worked on Captain Marvel titles, crime fiction books like Crime Does Not Pay, had a long run illustrating Iron Man, and DC’s World’s Greatest Superheroes comic strip.

Tuska was born on April 26, 1916, in Hartford, Connecticut, then he moved to New York City when he was 17 years old. He studied art at the National Academy of Design and began his comics career at Eisner & Iger as a comic book packager. His first known published work in comics was in Mystery Men Comics #1 and Wonderworld Comics #3 at Fox Comics.

He worked with Harry A. Chesler’s studio and began contributing to Captain Marvel Adventures. Once he joined Fiction House, Tuska drew the “Shark Brodie” adventure feature and “Hooks Devlin” investigative stories in Fight Comics, and the “Glory Forbes” vigilante tales in Rangers Comics. He continued working with other studios while at Fiction House, including “Archie O’Toole” in Smash Comics at Quality, “Spike Marlin” in Speed Comics for Harvey, and “Cosmic Carson” in Science Comics at Fox.

In 1942, he was drafted into the US Army and was honorably discharged a year later. Once he was back home, Tuska went back to Fiction House, drawing stories that starred Camilla, Queen of the Jungle, Golden Arrow, Reef Ryan, Lady Satan, and Rip Carson.

Soon, he made a name for himself in crime books when he became the lead artist on Crime Does Not Pay. This led to more crime comics work with Atlas on Crime Exposed, Crime Can’t Win, Private Eye, and similar titles. Branching out to other genres, he war titles like Men in Action and Battle Ground; Western books Black Rider and Two-Gun Kid; and horror books like Menace and Strange Tales.

From 1954 to ’59, Tuska was the writer-artist on the Scorchy Smith comic strip, and then he was the artist on the Buck Rogers strip from ’59 to ’65.

Around the time that Buck Rogers was ending, Tuska started working with Marvel as a penciler and sometime inker on titles like The Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider, and X-Men. He spent nearly ten years working on Iron Man where he and Archie Goodwin co-created the Controller. Tuska, Goodwin, Roy Thomas, and John Romita Sr. created Luke Cage, he worked with Carole Seuling and Steve Gerber to create Shanna the She-Devil, and he was an artist on Planet of the Apes.

Later in his career, Tuska started working with DC on The Unexpected, The Superman Family, Justice League of America, World’s Finest Comics, and Masters of the Universe limited series. He drew The World’s Greatest Superheroes strip from ’78 to ’82. Once he stopped regularly drawing for comics he worked mostly on commission art until he passed in 2009.