5 Writers Whose Work Was Shaped By Amazing Pre-Comics Careers
4. Jim Steranko - Escape Artist
Before cementing his place on Marvel's Mt. Rushmore, Jim Steranko worked a variety of performance based jobs. While finding some success as a musician, having opened up for the popular rock and roll outfit Bill Haley and The Comets, it was his stint as a Houdini style escape artist that had the greatest impact on Steranko's work.
Steranko would often force himself into precarious predicaments, relying on his wits, quick reflexes and sometimes dumb luck to escape bondage before disaster would ensue. While preforming at a carnival, Steranko had a near calamitous incident. When tied to a ferris wheel, Steranko's ropes snapped at an elevation of nearly eighty feet.
He would have splattered straight into the ground... had a ferris wheel car not serendipitously moved into place, catching his fall.
The situations Steranko would have to free himself from were not unlike the hazards his classic version of Nick Fury would endure. Steranko's escapades as an escape artist not only influenced his own work but also the work of comic legend Jack Kirby, as Kirby's popular Super Escape Artist Mister Miracle was inspired in part by Steranko's pre-comic carer.