Alex Schomburg - Biography

Biography

Alex Schomburg was born on May 10, 1905 in Puerto Rico, and moved to New York City in the early 1920s, where he began work as a commercial artist with three of his brothers. In 1928, the brothers' partnership ended and Schomburg found work with the National Screen Service, creating lantern slides and working on movie trailers there through 1944.

During the 1930s, in addition to working for the NSS, Schomburg freelanced Better Publications, producing interior line art for Thrilling Wonder Stories and other of the company's pulp magazines. His skill at drawing anything mechanical soon had him illustrating aviation covers for Flying Aces and electronic equipment for the Hugo Gernsback pulp Radio Craft. Schomburg's first science fiction-themed cover was for the September 1939 issue of Startling Stories.

The following decade, Schomburg freelanced primarily for Timely Comics, the 1940s forerunner of Marvel), displaying his talent for slam-bang action tableau. In dynamic covers featuring Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, other Timely superheroes or any combination thereof, Schomburg filled every square inch with flamboyant characters, flames, knives, guns, explosions, Nazis, Japanese, and pretty girls in need of rescue. He mastered the use of the airbrush, signing many of his airbrushed covers "Xela". Schomburg drew between five and six hundred covers during this Golden Age of Comic Books.

In the early 1950s, Schomburg left comics and spent the remainder of his career on covers for science fiction magazines and book covers, including the Winston juvenile series.

In 1986, Jon Gustafson's book about Schomburg and his work, entitled Chroma: The Art of Alex Schomburg, was published by Father Tree Press.

Schomburg died on April 7th, 1998.