Douglas Curtis "Curt" Swan (February 17, 1920 – June 17, 1996) was an American comic book artist. The artist most associated with Superman during the period fans call the Silver Age of Comic Books, Swan produced hundreds of covers and stories from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Curt Swan, whose Swedish grandmother had shortened the original family name of Swanson, was the youngest of five children. Father John Swan worked for the railroads; mother Leontine Jessie Hanson had worked in a local hospital. As a boy, Swan's given name – Douglas – was shortened to "Doug," and, disliking the phonetic similarity to "Dog," Swan thereafter reversed the order of his given names and went by "Curtis Douglas," rather than "Douglas Curtis."
Having enlisted in Minnesota's National Guard's 135th Regiment, 34th Division in 1940, Swan was sent to Europe when the "federalized" division was shipped initially to Northern Ireland and Scotland. While his comrades in the 34th eventually went into combat in North Africa and Italy, Swan spent most of World War II working as an artist for the G.I. magazine Stars and Stripes. While at Stars and Stripes, Swan met writer France Herron, who eventually directed him to DC Comics.
