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Dan Spiegle (December 10, 1920 – January 28, 2017) was an American comics artist and cartoonist best known for comics based on movie and television characters across a variety of companies, including Dell Comics, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics.
Spiegle began his professional cartoonist career in 1949 drawing the comic strip Hopalong Cassidy for the Mirror Enterprises Syndicate. He continued to draw this strip after it was bought out by King Features in 1951, until it was cancelled in 1955.
Spiegle began work on Maverick comics before any publicity photographs of series star James Garner were available, so he met the actor on the set and the resultant drawings of Garner in the subsequent comics are eerily exact. In 1972, Spiegle explained in an interview:
Spiegle continued on these titles as licensor Western Publishing Company moved away from its business partner Dell to publish comics itself under its Gold Key Comics imprint. Through the 1960s, Spiegle worked on Space Family Robinson, which made its debut three years before TV's Lost in Space, The Green Hornet, and The Invaders, as well as such titles as Korak, Son of Tarzan, Brothers of the Spear, and many of Gold Key's mystery/occult titles. In 1966, at the height of popularity of the James Bond film series, Spiegle provided naturalistic backgrounds and human characters while cartoon animal artist Paul Murry drew Mickey Mouse and Goofy for the short-lived Mickey Mouse Super Secret Agent. As comic-book historian Scott Shaw notes, "What's even weirder about these stories is that in them, none of the 'real' human characters seem to notice anything remotely unusual about occupying space with a three-foot-tall talking cartoon mouse!" Spiegle and writer Donald F. Glut co-created the Doctor Spektor character in Mystery Comics Digest #5 (July 1972). Spiegle drew the comic book adaptation of the 1979 Walt Disney Pictures feature film The Black Hole.
Spiegle later moved to DC Comics, and worked on many of their features, such as Unknown Soldier, Tomahawk, Jonah Hex, and Teen Titans Spotlight until the early 1990s. His most notable work was the "Nemesis" backup series in The Brave and the Bold with writer Cary Burkett, and on Blackhawk with Mark Evanier. He and writer Bob Rozakis created the character Mister E in Secrets of Haunted House #31 (Dec. 1980).
Although the character Crossfire was created by Mark Evanier and Will Meugniot in DNAgents published by Eclipse Comics, Spiegle penciled and inked every issue of the comic book Crossfire, as well as Crossfire and Rainbow, and Whodunnit?, which featured Crossfire. Evanier and Spiegle also did all five issues of Hollywood Superstars for Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.
Spiegle provided the art for (1993–1994) and Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny (1995), published by Dark Horse Comics. He drew Nintendo Power magazine's "Nester's Adventures" feature (formerly "Howard & Nester") in its later stages until it was discontinued in 1993. In the mid-1990s, he drew the short-lived revival of Terry and the Pirates after Tim and Greg Hildebrandt left. Spiegle worked with the Bank Street College of Education as an illustrator of a number of "Bank Street Classic Tales" published in Boys' Life magazine, Bible stories for the American Bible Society,Coates p. 60 and in 2008, he teamed up with Evanier again for a new Crossfire story, drawing the character's portion of the cover of, and the eight-page story "Too Rich to Be Guilty" in About Comics' fancifully numbered Many Happy Returns #2008. With no cover date on it or on another work that year — pages 3 to 20 of "Ragin' Abe Simpson and the Flying Hellfish in: War is Smelly" in Bongo Comics Group's licensed TV title Simpsons Comics #144 — it is difficult to ascertain which was his last published comics work but it is likely the Graphic Classics adaptation of Clarence E. Mulford's "Hold Up", penned by Tim Lasiuta, published in March 2011.
Spiegle died on January 28, 2017, at the age of 96.
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