I mentioned in the Dan Jurgens stats that when Dan left the main SUPERMAN title, the letter column said he’d drawn Superman continuously longer than anyone but Curt Swan. That’s pretty impressive, but from a certain point of view, today’s subject Tom Grummett could be said to surpass that.
Tom Grummett joined the Superman titles in mid-1991, becoming the regular artist on ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN starting with Issue 480. This followed the creative shakeup that happened when the fourth title, MAN OF STEEL, joined the family. Tom stayed on the book for a little over two years before he left to draw the SUPERBOY spinoff for a spell, while popping in quarterly to draw SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF TOMORROW.
Here’s where things get subjective. I’ve decided that since SUPERBOY was in the Superman family of titles, I’m counting his work here as a continuation of his streak. Not long after he leaves SUPERBOY, he comes right back to the mainline Super books as the regular artist on ACTION COMICS for a year. At that point, he returns to his original home, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, for about a year and a half.
He’s not the only artist to draw more than one Superman book as the regular penciller, but he IS the only one to leave a title and return to that title as a regular assignment. He also returns to SUPERBOY as the regular penciller at one point.
If you count his work on SUPERBOY, Tom Grummett regularly worked more or less continuously in the Superman universe as an artist from July 1991 to October 2000 – that’s nine years and three months.
On this chart, I’ve put the cover dates for the start and stop of each run on the titles so you can see how his work was more or less continuous.
That doesn’t beat Dan Jurgens’s overall streak on Superman, which was ten and a half years. However, Dan’s streak as an artist was only just over six years in length. While Dan has more overall issues of Superman drawn (119), Tom’s output was almost all part of a continuous streak, save a few later assignments.
If Dan is indeed the second most-prolific Superman artist, that probably makes Tom the third most-prolific one.
One of Tom’s later Superman assignments holds special meaning to me because I co-wrote it (with Jai Jamison and Andrew Wong.) In 2022, Tom drew the SUPERMAN & LOIS tie-in comic, officially titled EARTH-PRIME #2: SUPERMAN & LOIS. I’ve never met Tom in person, but it was the honor of a lifetime to see my script brought to life by his pencils. He’s on that short list of people that would have REALLY made me feel like my comic was a legitimate Superman comic.
You can even buy it right there on the sidebar. Or click here. Don’t let that cover fool you. If I have one regret about the whole thing, it’s that we didn’t get a classic Tom Grummett cover on our issue. I bet it would have flown off the shelves if more Superman fans knew he was a part of it.
Fortunately, one of Tom’s interior pages is very similar to the image used on the cover, so it’s easy to imagine what that would have looked like.
This page was one of three pages where I absolutely had to buy the original pencils. This is what a dream coming true looks like.
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