Happy Birthday! Dan Jurgens Turns 57 Years Old Today

Dan Jurgens, legendary comic book writer and artist best known for drawing The Death of Superman and creating Booster Gold, turns 57 years old today.

Jurgens' professional career started in the '80s, working on comics like The Warlord and Green Arrow. During that time, he also created the character of Booster Gold and wrote and drew a series based on the property.

In the late '80s and early '90s, Jurgens worked on Flash Gordon, Justice League of America, Metal Men and more. He's best known for his decade-long run (usually as both writer and artist) of Superman, during which time he created Doomsday and worked on the best-selling Death and Return of Superman story, among others. In 2012, ComicBook.com named Jurgens as one of the top ten best Superman writers and Superman artists of all time.

Following the return of Superman, Jurgens wrote and drew Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time, which was the first big DC crossover story to play with elements of Crisis on Infinite Earths. During the recent Convergence event, there was a week of Zero Hour-themed comics, and in April, Jurgens drew a Zero Hour spread for Geoff Johns' Justice League.

Working at Marvel in the late '90s, he wrote and drew titles like The Sensational Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America.

In 2005, he launched a new Booster Gold series with writers Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz, later taking over the writing duties himself. He has been writing the character consistently since, on Booster Gold, Time Masters: Vanishing Point, Justice League International and in Convergence.

Even before that, Jurgens had worked on a number of popular time-travel stories including Armageddon 2001 and Superman: Time and Time Again.

Last year, Jurgens stepped into the world of the Dark Knight for the first time, taking on writing duties on both on Bat-Mite and Batman Beyond for the then-new DC You publishing initiative. Bat-Mite was a miniseries and is over, but Jurgens remains on Batman Beyond, and will continue to write it through Rebirth.

More recently, Jurgens wrote Superman: Lois and Clark, which brought the pre-Flashpoint Superman back to the DC Universe, along with his wife Lois and their son Jonathan. The trio currently star in the Jurgens-penned Action Comics.