Dan Jurgens Draws Superman Again — In Thumbnails For An Action Comics Cover

Veteran comic book writer/artist Dan Jurgens has been focusing primarily on the writing side of that equation for a while now — his last full comic book issue as an artist was Convergence: Superman #2 in 2015 — but he’s apparently still getting at least a little bit of drawing in, providing a guiding hand for some of the talented artists working with him on Action Comics.

The cover of last week’s Action Comics #964, from artist Clay Mann, was a remarkable and striking work that managed to look at the two facets of Superman and Clark Kent in a cool, creative way that hadn’t been done before (at least that we can remember) — and when a comics blogger (Martin Gray, whose work is excellent, so check that out) asked Jurgens whether or not he helped out on the image, Jurgens agreed that he did, and shared his original sketch of the idea, while praising Mann and saying that the artist took the finished product to “a whole other level.”

You can check it out below.

For those not in the know, Jurgens’s current run on Action Comics is dealing with the fallout from last year’s decision on the part of the pre-Rebirth creative teams to reveal Superman’s identity to the public.

After the death of the New 52 Superman and the re-emergence of the pre-Flashpoint Superman as the central hero of the title, fans got to see not only the pre-Flashpoint Doomsday show up and throw down with the man he once killed, but a new and fully-human Clark Kent, who claims Superman put him up to the whole “pretending he was somebody else” thing.

The central mystery of the current storyline is Superman (and, soon, his wife, the intrepid investigative reporter Lois Lane) trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of the new Clark Kent without tipping the world off to their (Lois and Clark’s) new civilian identities in the process.

Jurgens, who first drew Superman in the ’80s, would become one of the character’s most enduring and beloved writer/artists throughout the ’90s. Among other things, he was a chief architect of the Death and Return of Superman storylines, as well as Superman’s wedding to Lois Lane.

Action Comics #965 is headed to newsstands next week, on October 12. Action Comics Volume 1: Path of Doom (written by Jurgens) is reportedly coming to comic shops and book retailers in February 2017.