Dan Jurgens won’t even make his true debut on a Superman book until just under a year from where we are in 1986 continuity, but after covering Byrne and Ordway’s stats, it feels right to move forward and work out the numbers for some of the other prolific creators.
And boy are there numbers for Dan Jurgens!
Though a weird quirk of history and continuity and history, Dan is TECHNICALLY the first person to write and draw the Post-Crisis Superman. He was the writer/penciller on BOOSTER GOLD, which was firmly set on Post-Crisis Earth and featured a Superman team-up in issues 6 and 7. Those issues came out on April 19 and May 17, 1986, respectively – a full two months before THE MAN OF STEEL #1.
I’m going to cover those issues very soon during one of the “off” week’s for MAN OF STEEL. However since it’s a BOOSTER GOLD comic I’m not including it in my “official” tally of Superman books by Dan. For similar reasons, I’m excluding crossover titles like ZERO HOUR, even though they feature Superman. I’ve decided to draw the line at official Superman titles and branded Superman books. The only exceptions are two issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA that directly tied into the DOOMSDAY and FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND storylines.
The most notable takeaway is that wherever you decide the line is, Dan is clearly the most prolific Superman writer of all time. When it comes to his work as an artist, Dan is probably number 2, after Curt Swan. Getting an official count on Curt’s art is tricky, but by best back-of-the-envelope math put him comfortably ahead of Dan. I’m having a hard time coming up with anyone whose output would fall between his and Dan’s so I’m crowning Dan as the second most-prolific Superman artist.
Dan also happens to be the only artist who’s written and drawn a Superman book in the 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s, spanning five decades. (Jerry Ordway has drawn Superman books in those same decades, but doesn’t have a writing credit in all of them. ) Curt Swan spans SIX separate decades and just under 50 years, from his first issue in 1948, to his final issue 48 years later in 1996.
After his first Superman assignment penciling ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN ANNUAL #1 in 1987, Dan was brought into the main titles’ fold in 1989 during the EXILE storyline. Though he was technically a guest penciller until moving over to the regular assignment on ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN with Issue 455, I’m starting the clock on his regular tenure with SUPERMAN #29 a few months earlier.
Thus, going by the cover dates on the issues (and not the release dates), Dan Jurgens was consistently a regular Superman artist from March 1989 to May 1995, a span of 6 years and 2 months. In the letter column for his final issue as artist, #100, it’s claimed that with merely that span, Dan drew Superman regularly longer than anyone but Curt Swan.
My count of every issue he’s drawn puts him at 119 issues. It should be noted that many projects (like SUPERMAN/ALIENS and SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY: HUNTER/PREY) are double-sized issues and so if you were to count the actual number of pages drawn, you’d end up with a higher total than expected.
Though Dan left the main SUPERMAN book as an artist with Issue 100, he stayed on as the regular writer all the way through to SUPERMAN #150, which is typically treated as the end of The Triangle Era. This spans March 1989 to November 1999 – Ten years and eight months.
If you add up every Superman book Dan has written, you come up with 207 issues.
And just for the sake of completeness, here’s a list of issues that Dan drew but did not write.
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