[3] Sprang was also a notable explorer in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, whose discoveries included "Defiance House", a previously unrecorded ancestral Puebloan structure.

[5][6][7] Dick Sprang was born in Fremont, Ohio, and became a professional illustrator at an early age, painting signs and handbills for local advertisers.

[9] He joined the staff of "the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in Toledo, Ohio"[10] shortly after graduating (circa 1934), continuing to produce magazine work concurrently.

[10]He left the newspaper in 1936 to move to New York City,[11][9] where he began "illustrating for the pulp magazines—the Western, detective, and adventure magazines in the era of the late 1930s".

[14] Continuing to seek comic-book work, Sprang submitted art samples to DC Comics editor Whitney Ellsworth, who assigned him a Batman story in 1941.

[11] Anticipating that Batman creator Bob Kane would be drafted to serve in World War II, DC inventoried Sprang's work to safeguard against delays.

[9] In 1955, Sprang got the chance to draw Superman, when he replaced Curt Swan as the primary artist for the Superman/Batman team-up stories in World's Finest Comics, on which he worked until his retirement in 1963.

[11] Sprang also worked on a couple of stories for the main Superman comic, "including the tale that introduced the first, prototype Supergirl".

[19] Comics historian Les Daniels wrote that Sprang's "clean line and bold sense of design" set him apart as "the supreme stylist" of the early Batman artists.

[23] The tardiness of Sprang's friend and frequent collaborator Bill Finger sometimes produced situations in which he would have to send in pencils for a story before the ending had been written, actions that "required some careful figuring".

[27] During the 1950s, "Gordon" continued to letter for DC on stories featuring Superman, Batman, Superboy and others, before leaving the company circa 1961.

In 1952 on a six week Glen Canyon river trip along with Harry Aleson and Dudy Thomas, Sprang discovered the "Defiance House", an ancestral Puebloan structure believed to have been previously unseen by non-Natives.

[28] Dudy Thomas had explored the western United States extensively and accompanied Sprang and Aleson on multiple trips through Glen Canyon by raft in the early-mid 1950s.

[9]Sprang received an Inkpot Award at the San Diego ComiCon in 1992,[33] and inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.