Steve Sherman, an acclaimed puppeteer who was a longtime Jack Kirby assistant and collaborator, has passed away at the age of 72.
Sherman first became involved with the comic book legend, known as the “King of Comics,” in college, when Sherman and another young man, Mark Evanier, went to work in 1969 for a mail order company called Marvelmania, which was the official licensee for Marvel posters and things of that nature. Kirby, naturally, was often asked to produce artwork for the company. Marvelmania, however, had a number of issues with regards to actually paying people like Kirby for the art he produced and for mailing out the products that kids were sending in money for, and so Sherman and Evanier both quit out of principle.
Around this time, Kirby left Marvel to go work for DC Comics and he hired Sherman and Evanier to work as his assistants. The two young men served as Kirby’s assistant editors on his DC projects of the era, like the Fourth World titles such as New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle, which introduced Darkseid into the DC Universe. Sherman would later co-create one of Kirby’s final creations for DC during this period, the villainous Kobra, who has since become a mainstay in the DC Universe. During this period, Sherman also co-created a couple of other properties with Kirby that later became comic books for Pacific in the 1980s during the independent comic book boom, namely Silver Star and Captain Victory.
After Kirby went back to Marvel, Sherman moved to work for Filmation, the popular animation studio that did a number of comic book-themed projects during that time period. Sherman worked on the award-winning Star Trek animated series, as well as the live action Shazam! television series by Filmation (as the company expanded into doing some live action projects in the 1970s, as well).
Sherman then worked as a toy developer for a few years before going to work for Sid and Marty Krofft Productions, where Sherman worked as a puppeteer and also wrote material for their shows, including the award-nominated puppet-based political satire series, DC Follies.
While still at Kroft, Sherman opened up his own independent puppet studio with Greg Williams called, appropriately enough, Puppet Studio. The company produced puppets for the iconic children’s series, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, as well as the award-winning educational TV program, Beakman’s World.
Puppet Studio worked with Mattel on designing some toy lines, as well.
As a puppeteer, Sherman worked on some major films, including the first two Men in Black movies and Mighty Joe Young.
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