According to his authorized biography, Jim Steranko's grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine to settle in the anthracite coal-mining region of eastern Pennsylvania. Steranko's father, one of nine siblings, began working in the mines at age 10, and as an adult became a tinsmith. Steranko's early childhood, during the American Great Depression, was spent in a three-room house with a tar-paper roof and outhouse toilet facilities. He slept on a couch in the nominal living room until he was more than 10 years old. Steranko's father and five uncles showed musical inclination, performing in a band that played on Reading radio in the 1930s, Steranko has said.

Steranko began drawing while very young, opening and flattening envelopes from the mail to use as sketch paper. Despite his father's denigration of Steranko's artistic talent, and the boy's ambition to become an architect, Steranko paid for his art supplies by collecting discarded soda bottles for the bottle deposit and bundled old newspapers to sell to scrap-paper dealers. He studied the Sunday comic strip art of Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and Chester Gould, as well as the characters of Walt Disney and Superman, provided in "boxes of comics" brought to him by an uncle. Radio programs, Saturday movie matinées and serials, and other popular culture of the time also influenced him.

Steranko in 1978 described some influences and their impact on his creative philosophy:

As an illusionist and musician

By his account, he learned stage magic using paraphernalia from his father's stage magician act, and in his teens spent several summers working with circuses and carnivals, working his way up to sideshow performer as a fire-eater and in acts involving a bed of nails and sleight-of-hand. At school, he competed on the gymnastics team, on the rings and parallel bars, and later took up boxing and, under swordmaster Dan Phillips in New York City, fencing. At 17, Steranko and another teenage boy were arrested for a string of burglaries and car thefts in Pennsylvania.

Up through his early 20s, Steranko performed as an illusionist, escape artist, close-up magician in nightclubs, and musician, having played in drum and bugle corps in his teens before forming his own bands during the early days of rock and roll. Steranko, whose first band, in 1956, was called The Lancers, did not perform under his own name, claiming he used pseudonyms to help protect himself from enemies He also claims to have put the first go-go girls onstage. The seminal rock and roll group Bill Haley and his Comets was based in nearby Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Steranko, who played a Jazzmaster guitar, often performed in the same same local venues, sometimes on the same bill, and became friendly with Haley guitarist Frank Beecher, who became a musical influence.

Early art career

During the day, Steranko made his living as an artist for a printing company in his hometown of Reading, designing and drawing pamphlets and flyers for local dance clubs and the like. He moved on after five years to join an advertising agency, where he designed ads and drew products ranging from "baby carriages to beer cans".

After first attempting to find work at Marvel Comics in 1965, Steranko instead entered the comics industry with Harvey Comics, landing assignments under editor Joe Simon, who was "trying to create a line of super heroes within a publishing company that had specialized in anthropomorphic animals." For Simon and Harvey Comics, Steranko created (or helped create) and wrote the characters Spyman, Magicmaster and the Gladiator for the company's short-lived superhero line, Harvey Thriller. Shortly afterward, he showed his "Secret Agent X" proposal to Paramount Television's animation unit in New York City (nothing became of it), and met with Marvel editor Stan Lee. Steranko inked a two-page Jack Kirby sample of typical "Nick Fury" scenes (first published in 1970 by Supergraphics in the extremely limited edition "Steranko Portfolio One", and then again thirty years later in slightly altered form in the 2000 trade-paperback collection Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.), leading to Lee's assigning him the "Nick Fury" feature in Strange Tales, a "split book" shared each issue with another feature.

Future Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, then a staff writer, recalled Steranko's arrival at Marvel:

Silver Age Steranko

The 12-page "Fury" strip was initially by Lee and Jack Kirby, with the latter supplying such inventive and enduring gadgets and hardware as the Helicarrier ... an airborne aircraft carrier ... as well as LMDs (Life Model Decoys) and even automobile airbags. Marvel's all-purpose terrorist organization HYDRA was introduced here as well.

Steranko, hired as an unknown commodity with "little experience in comics", began his stint on the feature by penciling and inking "finishes" over Kirby layouts in Strange Tales #151 (Dec. 1966), just as fellow new Marvel artist John Buscema had done on the issue prior. However, "according to legend, John [Buscema] was surprised and annoyed at this, and erased Kirby's pencils and drew the story in his own style". A.M. Viturtia suggests that this played a part in the decision that "with the next issue, Stan Lee decided to change the artist [to Steranko]". Steranko also began drawing the every-other-issue "Nick Fury" cover art two issues later (also initially over Kirby layouts), and, in a rarity for comics artists, took over the series' writing with #155, after Lee was initially replaced by Roy Thomas. He additionally became the uncredited colorist along the way.

"Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." soon became one of the creative zeniths of the Silver Age, and one of comics' most groundbreaking, innovative and acclaimed features. Ron Goulart, in his Comix: A History of Comic Books in America, wrote, "[E]ven the dullest of readers could sense that something new was happening. ... With each passing issue Steranko's efforts became more and more innovative. Entire pages would be devoted to photocollages of drawings [that] ignored panel boundaries and instead worked together on planes of depth. The first pages ... became incredible production numbers similar in design to the San Francisco rock concert poster of the period".

Steranko introduced or popularized in comics such art movements of the day as psychedelia and op art, drawing specifically on the "aesthetic of Dali," with inspiration from Richard Powers, ultimately synthesizing a style he termed "Zap Art." Viturtia notes that Steranko drew on the James Bond novels, and writes that the influence went both ways: "Although Steranko was primarily influenced by spy movies, after Nick Fury came on the comics scene, the directors of those same movies began to borrow heavily from Steranko himself!" Viturtia states that Steranko influenced the pop artists he drew from, too. He absorbed, adapted and built upon the groundbreaking work of Jack Kirby, both in the use of photomontage (particularly for cityscapes), and in the use of full- and double-page-spreads. Indeed, in Strange Tales #167 (Jan. 1968), Steranko created comics' first four-page spread, upon which panorama he bombastically noted, "to get the full effect, of course, requires a second ish [copy of the issue] placed side-by-side, but we think you'll find it to be well worth the price to have the wildest action scene ever in the history of comics!" All the while, Steranko spun outlandishly action-filled plots of intrigue, barely sublimated sensuality, and a cool-jazz hi-fi hipness. And he created his own version of Bond girls, pushing what was allowable under the Comics Code at the time.

One notable example is a silent, one-page seduction sequence in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2, described by Robin Green in Rolling Stone:

When reprinted in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Who Is Scorpio? (Marvel Enterprises, 2001; ISBN 0-7851-0766-5), however, Steranko's original final panel was reinserted. In a black-and-white long shot with screentone shading, the couple is beginning to embrace, with Fury standing and the Contessa on one knee, getting up.

Steranko "combined the figurative dynamism of Jack Kirby with modern design concepts", wrote Larry Hama. When Steranko took over the series, he recostumed Fury from suits and ties to "a form-fitting bodysuit with numerous zippers and pockets, like a Wally Wood spacesuit revamped by Pierre Cardin. The women were clad in form-fitting black leather a la Emma Peel in the Avengers TV show. The graphic influences of Peter Max, Op Art and Andy Warhol were embedded into the design of the pages ... and the pages were designed as a whole, not just as a series of panels. All this, executed in a crisp, hard-edged style, seething with drama and anatomical tension".

Fury's adventures continued in his own series, for which Steranko contributed four much-reprinted 20-page stories: "Who is Scorpio?" (issue #1); "So Shall Ye Reap...Death" (#2), inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest; "Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill" (#3), a Hound of the Baskervilles homage, replete with a Peter Cushing manqué; and the spy-fi sequel "What Ever Happened to Scorpio?" (#5). Yet after deadline pressures forced a fill-in "origin" story by another team in issue #4 (and the aforementioned Comics Code-derived censorship), Steranko produced merely a handful of additional covers, then dropped the book. Decades afterward, however, their images are among comics' best known, and homages to his art have abounded ... from updates of classic covers with different heroes in place of Fury, to recreations of famous pages and layouts. (See "Homages", below.)

Steranko also had short runs on Captain America (three issues out of four, missing a deadline that required Kirby to draw an issue over a weekend) and X-Men, for which he designed a new cover logo. Steranko also dabbled with a romance story, as well as a horror story — "At the Stroke of Midnight", published in Tower of Shadows #1 (Sept. 1969) — that precipitated a breakup with Marvel. Though that seven-page story would go on to win a 1969 Alley Award, editor Lee, who had already rejected Steranko's cover for that issue, clashed with Steranko over panel design, dialog, and the story title, initially "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House". According to Steranko at a 2006 panel and elsewhere, Lee disliked or did not understand the homage to horror author H. P. Lovecraft, and devised his own title for the story. After much conflict, Steranko either quit or was fired. Lee phoned him about a month later, after the two had cooled down. Steranko returned briefly to Marvel as the cover artist for 15 comics, beginning with Doc Savage #2-3, Shanna the She-Devil #1-2, and Supernatural Thrillers #1-2 (each successively cover-dated Dec. 1972 and Feb. 1973), and ending with Nick Fury and His Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 (April 1973).

In 1973, Steranko became founding editor of Marvel's official fan magazine, FOOM, which superseded the two previous official fan clubs, the Merry Marvel Marching Society and Marvelmania. Steranko served as editor and also produced the covers for the magazine's inaugural four issues before being succeeded editorially by Tony Isabella. He had previously been associated with Marvelmania, producing two of the club's 12 posters.

Steranko gradually withdrew from comic books during this time. Projects such as the history of comics and his own publishing efforts took up more and more of his time.

Publisher and paperback artist

Writing, penciling, inking and coloring his own work, Steranko was unable to meet the monthly publication deadlines of the comics business of the time. For these and other reasons, he gravitated away from the rigors of producing full monthly comics in favour of covers and special projects. He branched into other areas of publishing, including most notably book-cover illustration. Lacking any experience as a painter, his decision to effectively quit comics in 1969 led him to "an artist friend who earned his living as a painter", from whom Steranko obtained an "hour-long lecture", and the suggestion that he work in acrylics rather than oils, for the sake of speed. From these inauspicious beginnings, he compiled a portfolio of half-a-dozen paintings ("two Westerns, two pin-up girls, two gothic horror and one sword-and-sorcery") and met with Lancer Books' art director Howard Winters, to whom he immediately sold his fantasy piece. This led to a career illustrating dozens of paperback covers, popularly including those of Pyramid Books' reissues of the 1930s pulp novel of The Shadow.Steranko also formed his own publishing company, Supergraphics, in 1969, and the following year worked with writer-entrepreneur Byron Preiss on an anti-drug comic book, The Block, distributed to elementary schools nationwide. In 1970 and 1972, Supergraphics published two tabloid-sized volumes entitled The Steranko History of Comics, a planned six-volume history of the American comics industry, though no subsequent volumes have appeared. Written by Steranko, with hundreds of black-and-white cover reproductions as well as a complete reprint of one The Spirit story by Will Eisner, it included some of the first and in some cases only interviews with numerous creators from the 1930s and 1940s Golden Age of Comic Books.

Other ideas for Supergraphics work included the proposed Talon the Timeless, illustrations of which appeared in a portfolio published in witzend magazine #5, and a pinup girl calendar, "The Supergirls", consisting of 12 illustrations of sexy superheroines in costumes recalling such superheroes as Captain America and Green Lantern. Through Supergraphics he also published the magazine Comixscene (retitled Mediascene and finally Prevue), which began as a folded-tabloid periodical on stiff, non-glossy paper, reporting on the comics field. It evolved in stages into a general-interest, standard format, popular culture magazine, running from 1972 through 1994. In its later years, it was criticized for doing double duty as a catalog for Steranko's retailing business, particularly its erotica.

Steranko wrote, drew, and produced the illustrated novel Red Tide in 1976, for Byron Preiss Visual Publications/Pyramid Books. Aside from occasional covers and pinup illustrations, Steranko has rarely worked in comics since, although he did illustrate a serialized comics adaptation of the Peter Hyams 1981 sci-fi thriller Outland, for Heavy Metal magazine. A 1997 attempt to negotiate Steranko's return to S.H.I.E.L.D. did not bear fruit. Since 2007, he has worked with Radical Comics, doing covers, character and logo designs for its Hercules title and Ryder on the Storm.

Film and television work

For the movie industry, Steranko has produced a number of posters for various films, and was a conceptual artist on Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), doing production designs for the film and designing the character of Indiana Jones. He also served in a similar capacity as project conceptualist on Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and wrote the episode "The Ties That Bind" of the DC Comics animated TV series Justice League Unlimited.

In 2003, Steranko worked with the History Channel to create a documentary titled Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked.

He has "amassed an enormous portfolio of more than sixty projects (which he called the 'Theater of Concepts') designed to be seen in multimedia form".

Awards

Steranko has won awards in fields as varied as magic, comics and graphic design. A partial list includes:

• In addition to himself being inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006, Steranko's series Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was inducted, along with Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four, into comic fandom's Alley Award Hall of Fame in 1969.
• That same ceremony, Steranko took three 1968 Alley Awards, for Best Pencil Artist, Best Feature Story ("Today Earth Died", Strange Tales #168; first page depicted above), and Best Cover (Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #6).
• The following year, he won 1969 Alley Awards for Best Feature Story ("At the Stroke of Midnight", Tower of Shadows #1) and Best Cover (Captain America #113).
• 1970 Shazam Award: Outstanding Achievement by an Individual: Jim Steranko (for The Steranko History of Comics)
• The DragonCon's Julie Award (2003)

Exhibitions

Steranko's work has been exhibited internationally in more than 160 shows. Among others, his work has been shown in the following locations:

• The Louvre Museum, Paris, France (1967)
• The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (1978)
• The Sydney Opera House, New South Wales, Australia (January 1986)

Steven Ringgenberg: "Steranko's Marvel work became a benchmark of '60s pop culture, combining the traditional comic book art styles of Wally Wood and Jack Kirby with the surrealism of Richard Powers and Salvador Dalí. Steeped in cinematic techniques picked up from that medium's masters, Jim synthesized a style he christened 'Zap Art' ... an approach different from anything being done in mainstream comics, though it did include one standard attraction: lots of females in skintight, sexy costumes. Countess Valentina Allegro De Fontaine (sic) made her debut in Strange Tales #159 (Aug. 1967) by flooring Nick Fury during a training session, proving that she could take care of herself! She looked like a character who had just stepped out of a James Bond poster".

Mark Evanier: "Jack based some of his characters (not all) on people in his life or in the news.... Big Barda's roots are not in doubt. The visual came about shortly after songstress Lainie Kazan posed for Playboy...and the characterization between Scott 'Mr. Miracle' Free and Barda was based largely ... though with tongue in cheek ... on the interplay betwixt Jack and his wife Roz. Of course, the whole 'escape artist' theme was inspired by an earlier career of writer-artist Jim Steranko".