Frank Springer was born in the Jamaica neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, and moved with his family to nearby Nassau County, Long Island when he was nearly 10 years old.
Springer recalled in 2008, I was essentially a line artist and it was through one of the freelance jobs that I learnt that George Wunder, who wrote and drew Terry and the Pirates, was looking for an assistant and I was given his number.
[5] During the remainder of the 1960s and early 1970s period fans and historians call the Silver Age of comic books, Springer became a prolific penciler-inker across much of Dell's line, drawing issues of Ghost Stories, Movie Classic, Tales from the Tomb, Toka: Jungle King, and the movie/TV tie-in series The Big Valley, Charlie Chan, Iron Horse and The New People, among other comics.
Springer penciled and inked an origin-story retelling (scripted by Roy Thomas) sandwiched between Steranko's final two issues.
[6] Springer additionally drew Captain Marvel #13-14 (May–June 1969) and a Hercules back-up story in Ka-Zar #1 (Aug. 1970) before concentrating on his ongoing Dell work until 1973, when that company ceased publication.
[6] Springer's other 1980s comics include issues of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian and the company's toy-license titles based on the properties G.I.
Joe and Transformers; and, for DC, a return to the Secret Six in Action Comics Weekly, and issues of Manhunter and Green Arrow.
This was his last confirmed work in comics except for a single-page profile of the DC character Perry White in Superman Secret Files #1 (Jan.
[6] With the dark-humor writer-provocateur Michael O'Donoghue, Springer from 1965 to 1966 drew "The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist" in the magazine Evergreen Review.
Unlike its innocently bawdy contemporaries, "Phoebe Zeit-Geist" had a darker, sometimes brutal edge, with scenes of bondage depicted as actual torture rather than Bettie Page-like playfulness.
[9] Doonesbury comic-strip creator Garry Trudeau cited the strip as an early inspiration, saying, "[A] very heavy influence was a serial in the Sixties called 'Phoebe Zeitgeist'. ...
From 1971 to 1988 he was a regular contributor to the satiric magazine National Lampoon, occasionally using the pseudonyms Francis Hollidge[11] and Bob Monhegan.
[14] Springer also did a small amount of uncredited penciling on the comic strip The Phantom, assisting Sy Barry, and "for a really brief period" worked with writer-artist Stan Drake on The Heart of Juliet Jones.
[15] In 1995, after spending the majority of his life on Long Island (mostly in the towns of Lynbrook, Massapequa Park, and Greenlawn),[2] Springer and wife Barbara, whom he married in c. 1956-1957, moved to Maine,[2] where the artist turned to oil painting.
[16] Springer at one point was president of the National Cartoonists Society, and was a founding member of the Berndt Toast Gang, its Long Island chapter.