Jeremiah "Jerry" Ordway (born November 28, 1957) is an American writer, penciller, inker and painter of comic books.
He is known for his inking work on a wide variety of DC Comics titles, including the continuity-redefining classic Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985—1986), his long run working on the Superman titles from 1986—1993, and for writing and painting the Captain Marvel original graphic novel The Power of Shazam! (1994), and writing the on-going monthly series from 1995-1999. He has provided inks for artists such as Kirby, Gil Kane, John Buscema, Curt Swan and Steve Ditko.
Ordway was inspired in his childhood by Marvel Comics, and dreamed of drawing Daredevil, Spider-Man, and Avengers. (To date he has only worked on the latter.)
Among the artists he considers influential are Kirby, Gil Kane, John Buscema, Curt Swan, Steve Ditko, all of whose pencils he would later ink over. He also cites Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and Roy Crane as early inspirations. He also 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.
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.
Before beginning his professional career as an inker, Jerry Ordway broke into comics as an artist (and publisher) for small-press comics fanzines. Ordway discovered Marvel comics in "June of 1967," and wrote in 1975 (aged 17) that he had "been drawing superheroes [ever] since." His first published work, a story entitled "The Messenger", appeared in Tim Corrigan's Superhero Comics #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. Ordway's own hero "Proton" headlined the 'zine, which also 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, Wisconsin, between 1978 and 1979, he also 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.
DC Comics
Having produced comics-related artwork for fanzines and licenced 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." 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." During the mid-1980s, he "shared a studio with other artists, including Machlan, Pat Broderick, and Al Vey."
At DC, he would go on to co-create and illustrate titles such as All Star Squadron and Infinity Inc with writer Roy Thomas. Ordway inked DC Comics Presents Annual #4 (1985) over artist Eduardo Barreto's pencils, he was one of several artists who contributed art for Batman Annual #9 (July 1985), and more notably also inked George Pérez's pencils on the epic crossover miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985. Ordway also inked legendary Superman artist Wayne Boring's pencils for a retelling of the definitive Golden Age Superman origin story written by Roy Thomas in Secret Origins #1 (April 1986), which he considers a particular favorite. Ordway was also the penciller and inker for the DC Comics adaptation of the 1989 Batman film which was published as a "movie special".
Particularly highly regarded for his inking, Ordway has however noted that "Inking is a weird job, because as much as you put into it, the page still belongs to the penciler."
Superman
In 1986, along with writer/artist John Byrne and writer Marv Wolfman, Ordway was one of the architects trusted with revamping 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 Man of Steel, it was swiftly relaunched as Adventures of Superman, continuing the numbering of the original Superman comic, with Wolfman as writer and Ordway as primary artist.
When Wolfman departed the title, John Byrne briefly took over scriptwriting duties before Ordway assumed the mantle of writer-artist and took over the series solely. Switching from Adventures of Superman, Ordway took over as writer-artist on the companion title Superman between 1989 and 1991, before later returning to Adventures.. as writer. While writing for the Superman family of titles, he helped devise the epic "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 artist throughout his career.
In 1988, during the 50th anniversary celebrations for Superman, he inked over John Byrne's pencils for a Time magazine cover and interior spread celebrating the Man of Steel's anniversary. Ordway has also 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 (DC Comics, 1990). He also produced the cover art for the prestige format graphic novels, Superman: The Earth Stealers in 1988 (where he also inked over Curt Swan's pencils) and Superman For Earth (1991), among other work.
In 1989, he would take time off from his monthly work on Superman and illustrate the comic book movie adaptation to director Tim Burton's blockbuster movie, Batman.
Captain Marvel
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. An early example of the one-shot Original Graphic Novel, it proved to be a success, and was followed by an on-going monthly series, also titled The Power of Shazam! (which ran between 1995 and 1999). Ordway wrote and provided painted covers for the entire run of the regular series, as well as illustrating fill-in issues between series-regular artists Peter Krause and Mike Manley. Towards the end of the series run, he again took on the dual role of writer & artist.
During the mid-1980s, Ordway provided covers and occasional artwork to titles from a number of different comics companies. Companies included Richard and Wendy Pini's WaRP Graphics, AC Comics, Charlton Comics, Paragon Publications and fan-turned-pro Marty Greim. For Eclipse Comics, Ordway provided pencils for a short "Epilogue" story in Mark Evanier's DNAgents #18 (Jan 1985). He also produced Munden's Bar for First Comics, and provided pencils and inks on an issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.
For Image Comics, Ordway co-created the character WildStar (with Al Gordon) in 1993, and published his creator-owned one-shot The Messenger in July 2000.
Although the vast majority of Ordway's professional work has been produced for DC, between inking All-Star Squadron and Crisis on Infinite Earths for DC, Ordway inked issues of Marvel's Fantastic Four. He produced occasional work for Marvel between 1984 and 1988, and also wrote and illustrated a three-issue arc for Marvel's Avengers (vol. 3) #16-18 (1999).
Other DC work
As well as inking most of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths, Ordway also inked the second of DC's continuity-redefining event titles in 1994 by inking writer-artist Dan Jurgens' pencils on Zero Hour. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the original Crisis, DC published Geoff Johns' Infinite Crisis limited series (Dec 2005 - Jun 2006), for which Ordway provided the artwork for the flashback scenes set on Earth-Two, including a recreation of the cover to Action Comics #1, which he cites as another favorite piece of his. In the wake of Infinite Crisis, he inked over Dan Jurgens' pencils once again in the "History of the Multiverse" back-up stories in the weekly comic book Countdown (issues #39 and #38, Chapters 11 and 12) (October 2007).
In 2001, he drew the one-shot Just Imagine... Stan Lee with Jerry Ordway Creating the JLA as part of comics legend and Marvel-stallwart Stan Lee's foray into the DC Universe, in which the two of them re-imagined DC's Justice League of America. He inked the last year (May 2002 - May 2003) of the Batman family title Agent of the Bat (#88 - #100), and also provided the artwork for a six-issue story arc in Wonder Woman (vol. 2, issues #189-194), with writer Walt Simonson in 2003.
Recent work includes pencilling three issues of The Brave and the Bold (volume 2) (#11-13, May—July 2008) with writer Mark Waid, and pencils for Justice Society of America Annual #1 (Sept. 2008), alongside some interior artwork for the on-going Justice Society of America series during late 2008.
