Lee was keen to recruit more artists to draw his burgeoning roster of superheroes and signed up such former Timely artists as Gene Colan, John Romita and Buscema on generous terms. Because Lee was at this point writing all the stories, he had evolved a form of writing new to comics to save time: previously, artists would draw from detailed scripts. Now, “Stan more or less gave me a rough outline over the phone of what he wanted,” Buscema would recall, “and I took it from there and developed the books.”Once he had mastered the new Marvel method, Buscema’s visual storytelling abilities proved highly accomplished: from the 1970s onwards his archetypal style, at once sinewy and elegant, became synonymous with the Marvel “look”. Over the next three decades, at one time or other, he was to illustrate almost every title the company published, including Thor, Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers. But it was with two experimental series in particular that his name became associated: Silver Surfer and Conan the Barbarian.The series for which Buscema is most acclaimed, and which the artist admitted contained his favourite work, was Silver Surfer, starring the silver-skinned eponymous “sky-rider of the spaceways” in a double-sized monthly title.

Written as a modern-day morality play by Lee, about an alien space knight who had given up everything and been banished to Earth for saving the planet, the character was Marvel’s noblest and most tragic hero and briefly attracted a following among students with his sub-Hamlet philosophising. But 18 issues later, in 1970, the comic closed, another victim of falling sales.That same year, Conan was launched, featuring the wandering barbarian created in the 1930s by the sword-and-sorcery writer Robert E Howard. Keen to draw it from the start, Buscema was turned down for being too expensive to “gamble on some new kind of project”. Years later, after Barry Smith (the founding artist) left the series, Buscema took over and was to draw the title for most of the rest of its 275-issue run: “I loved doing Conan, he’s a very interesting character. I’m basically realistically oriented, and I really have a hard time relating to characters who fly or crash through buildings.”Such straight talking was typical of Buscema.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, he never hid behind a nom de plume. Whilst willing to sing the praises of the publishing house which had supported him for most of his comics career, he publicly admitted he didn’t like Spider-Man (Marvel’s flagship character): “I think it’s dull. I feel that way about most superheroes.”Always loyal to the company, he never bothered to conceal his utter boredom with its products: the Marvel mainstay who collaborated with Lee on How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, one of the best teaching manuals ever published (and continuously in print since 1976), and who in later years taught design and anatomy at a workshop, was the same no-nonsense professional who bluntly described his m?er as “a job that keeps me out of debt, and that’s the only thing I look at it as”.Buscema retired officially in 1996, and in July last year was guest of honour at America’s largest comic convention in San Diego, at which a collection of his private drawings, The John Buscema Sketchbook, was unveiled. Fittingly, his final published work was in collaboration with Stan Lee, on a one-off comic called Just Imagine Stan Lee with John Buscema Creating Superman.

Ironically, it was published by the one comics publisher he had never previously worked for: DC Comics.Alan Woollcombe. Lawrence Leifchild Toynbee, painter and teacher: born London 22 December 1922; married 1945 Jean Asquith (six daughters): died Malton, North Yorkshire 3 January 2002. His pictures of cricket, rugby, squash and more obscure pursuits like Real Tennis are rare in being true to how the game was played while aesthetically making no compromise.”Toynbee was probably the leading artist in recent times to specialise in cricket,” says Stephen Green, curator at Lord’s cricket ground. “He knew how to play games.” Toynbee was a member of the MCC, and Lord’s has a fine collection of his work, of which Hit to Leg and his charming painting of the Oxford University ground, Cricket in the Parks, Oxford, are notable examples.Born in London in 1922, Lawrence Toynbee came from a singular lineage. His father was the historian Arnold Toynbee, author of the monumental A Study of History and a Companion of Honour.