Longest Tenure by an ARTIST

[butchmapa]

Was going through a recent issue of Astro City, and I was comparing Brent Anderson's recent art to his older stuff from the Image days.

Then I had a thought: How many ARTISTS can say that they've had longer runs on a one title? In this case, I'm talking about years on a comic, not specific issues.

Astro City has been around for 20 years, but has had a sporadic publishing schedule, with only about 100 issues produced in those two decades (still an impressive number). Most of them done by Brent.

First thing that comes to mind is Cerebus by David Sim, of course. 300 issues over ... 26 years I think?

Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon and Todd McFarlane on Spawn have both been around for almost 25 years. Though I believe Todd's artistic involvement on Spawn has only been through inks/embelishments for the majority of the run?

I'm sure Curt Swan had a monster run on Superman or Action Comics, but I can't figure out how long he was involved and for how many issues.

Ditto for Sergio Aragones and Groo.

Ben Dunn on Ninja High School: almost 200 issues and at about 29 years!

Elf Quest - 40 years! No idea on number of issues.

Balent on Tarot-- about 100 issues over 16 years.

Mignola has drawing Hellboy for two decades, though the output is much lower than the others on this list.

Other contenders but far from the record: Dick Dillin (JLA), Bagley (Ultimate Spidey), Charlie Adlard (TWD)

[MRP]

Stan Sakai on Usagi Yojimbo since the mid-80s. First appearance was in Albedo #2 in 1984. Then appeared in Critters before getting his own series that moved form Fantagraphics (38 issues) to Mirage (16 issues) before finally ending up at Dark Horse where it is still going (153 issues and counting), plus relevant minis and special projects like Senso and Space Usagi.

-M

[Dark-Flux]

Kirby did 100+ issues of Fantastic Four

I think its also worth noting that Gerhard acted as background artist on Cerebus #65-300.

[wwise03]

Ryan Ottley and Charlie Adlard have a good chance of getting really high numbers with Invincible and Walking Dead, both of which show no sign of ending anytime in the near to medium future.

[cgh]

Eduardo Risso drew all 100 issues of 100 Bullets.

[TotalSnorefest]

A lot of manga artists would definitely qualify here.
On Bagley though, sure it's not record-setting or anything but his initial tenure on Ultimate Spidey was like 110+ issues with no breaks, and it soon became a double-shipping series too. Cranking out a flagship title for Marvel twice a month has gotta be a tough job. You can really tell he has to rely a lot on inkers and colourists to keep making the deadlines, there's a point around issue #80 where for an arc or two very few panels even have backgrounds. Not hating on the guy btw, loved that series and Bagley was instrumental in that.

[Joker]

I don't find how long you worked on a book interesting if you're slowly putting out the issues. Say, Nonplayer...

I'm more interested in amount of issues. Larsen, Adlard, Sakai, Sim/Gerhard etc.

[dogwelder]

Sal Buscema drew 123 issues of Spectacular Spider-man.

[butchmapa]

Sal Buscema drew 123 issues of Spectacular Spider-man. - whoa. Had no idea...but yeah, he was on the book all the time when I was growing up.

Anyone have a clue on Curt Swan's Superman numbers? He probably easily hit over 200 issues (but maybe across multiple books)

Bagley (and Bendis) DID break a record, right? You kinda had to narrow it down though, something like longest continuous run on a Marvel book or something. Bested Lee and Kirby's FF run.

Sakai and Ottley for sho! Incidentally, I had no idea Sakai letters Groo. That's pretty awesome.

[TotalSnorefest]

Bagley (and Bendis) DID break a record, right? You kinda had to narrow it down though, something like longest continuous run on a Marvel book or something. Bested Lee and Kirby's FF run.

Yeah I think it was something like longest unbroken streak of continuous issues by an unchanging creative team. Have to squint a little to make it work, but hey. Bendis is still on that book some 16 years later and they occasionally rope Bagley back in for big events.

[MRP]

Dick Dillin had 2 long runs on different titles-he did at least 1 story in every issue of Blackhawk from #64 in May of 1953, staying on the title when it switched to DC and continued until issue #241 in June/July of 1968. Meanwhile in Nov 1967 he started on Justice League of America with issue #57 and pencilled every issue until he died, his last issue being #183 in October 1980.

-M

[Rod G]

Was going through a recent issue of Astro City, and I was comparing Brent Anderson's recent art to his older stuff from the Image days.

Then I had a thought: How many ARTISTS can say that they've had longer runs on a one title? In this case, I'm talking about years on a comic, not specific issues.

Astro City has been around for 20 years, but has had a sporadic publishing schedule, with only about 100 issues produced in those two decades (still an impressive number). Most of them done by Brent.

First thing that comes to mind is Cerebus by David Sim, of course. 300 issues over ... 26 years I think?

Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon and Todd McFarlane on Spawn have both been around for almost 25 years. Though I believe Todd's artistic involvement on Spawn has only been through inks/embelishments for the majority of the run?

I'm sure Curt Swan had a monster run on Superman or Action Comics, but I can't figure out how long he was involved and for how many issues.

Ditto for Sergio Aragones and Groo.

Ben Dunn on Ninja High School: almost 200 issues and at about 29 years!

Elf Quest - 40 years! No idea on number of issues.

Balent on Tarot-- about 100 issues over 16 years.

Mignola has drawing Hellboy for two decades, though the output is much lower than the others on this list.

Other contenders but far from the record: Dick Dillin (JLA), Bagley (Ultimate Spidey), Charlie Adlard (TWD)

Fred Perry did Gold Digger for 200+ issues (the first 50 in B&W).

[TooFlyToFail]

Kentaro Miura has been writing, and drawing, the Berserk manga for close to 27 years. If you've seen the detail he puts into his art...good lord.

Takehiko's Slam Dunk (276 chapters) and Vagabond (ongoing, currently 327 chapters) has master class artwork, and draws every page with a paint brush, should earn him mention, and praise as well.

[CaptCleghorn]

Dave Sim's 300 issues of Cerebus.

[MRP]

Dave Sim's 300 issues of Cerebus.

Which is what the OP mentioned as the first thing that came to mind, and was looking for other examples to rival that...

-M