R.I.P. Eduardo Barreto.

Far less publicized than the recent death of Joe Simon, but no less meaningful to me personally, was the passing of DC Comics artist Eduardo Barreto at age 57, on December 15, 2011.

Barreto came along at exactly the right time to become indelibly memorable for me. In the mid-eighties – before the John Byrne revolution began in 1986 with “The Man of Steel”, the Superman titles were dominated by two stellar names of the Silver Age and prior. Curt Swan (of course) on SUPERMAN and Gil Kane on ACTION COMICS – with each occasionally spelled by other familiar names such as Kurt Schaffenberger.


Along comes Eduardo Barreto in SUPERMAN # 397 (Cover Date: July, 1984) with interior art and cover (above) – and, as much as I LOVED the work of the other guys, Barreto was a breath of fresh air… and (perhaps) one of the very first “new names” to be associated with Superman in the eighties.


Beyond his not-frequent-enough contributions to the various Superman titles, Barreto may have been best known in comic books for a run on THE NEW TEEN TITANS that followed the iconic run by George Perez.

Barreto was also the artist of the JUGDE PARKER newspaper strip – and in 2011 (fittingly) retuned to Superman in a “Retro-Active Superman” one-shot, which presented a lead story done in '70s / '80s style by creators of the period, and was cover dated September, 2011.