Rex Maxon was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. His family moved to St. Louis, where Maxon studied Fine Arts. Here, he also worked on the staff of the St. Louis Republic. He moved to New York in 1917, where he started drawing for several New York newspapers, including The Evening World, The Globe and The Evening Mail. In March 1929, Rex Maxon succeeded Harold Foster as the artist on the daily 'Tarzan' comic. He drew the strip for the next 18 years.
Dutch edition of Maxon's 'Tarzan'. The text in the panels was edited out and a Dutch translation written underneath the images.
In 1931, Rex Maxon had a brief stint illustrating the new 'Tarzan' Sunday page for a couple of months, before Foster was brought back in for the Sundays. After leaving the 'Tarzan' comic in 1947, Maxon focused on illustrating cowboy stories for comic books. In October/November 1954 he and scriptwriter Matt Murphy launched 'Turok, Son of Stone' for Dell Comics in their Four Color Comics series. In March-May 1956 'Turok' received his own comic book title, 'Turok, Son of Stone', also published by Dell. Between 1956 and 1982 new issues were published by Gold Key Comics. Yet Maxon only drew the series until he retired from comics in 1960.
As an illustrator, Maxon was present in Spicy Detective, Private Detective and Speed Wester. In 1969 he settled in London and devoted all his time to painting. He passed away shortly after returning to the USA in 1973.
