Dave Simons was a comic artist who drew various superhero stories for DC and Marvel Comics. He was particularly renowned for his inking techniques, though equally adept with the pencil as well.
David Lloyd Simons was born in 1954 in New York City. He joined the Coast Guard and settled in New York, where he attended workshops by John Buscema and befriended Ken Landgraf and Armando Gil. Landgraf helped him publish his first comics and illustrations. Near the end of the 1970s Simons joined Marvel Comics, where he mainly worked as an inker on the black-and-white titles. Most of his early inking jobs were done for Gene Colan's series 'Howard the Duck' and 'Tomb or Dracula'. He also had a notable run as inker on the original 'Ghost Rider' (a creation of Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas and Mike Ploog) in the early 1980s. He also did occasional pencils, starting with a 'Ghost Rider vs. Team America' issue and then runs on 'Conan', 'Spider-Man' and 'Red Sonja'.
In the early 1990s he joined Marvel's rival, DC, where he worked on series like 'Deathstroke', 'Forgotten Realms' (pencils by Rags Morales), 'Spellhammer' and 'Dragonlance'. For the Walt Disney Company he also made comics based on the title character of the 1988 film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'. He reinvented himself near the end of the decade by entering the animation industry. He made storyboards for various cartoon TV shows, such as 'Captain Planet' (1990-1992), 'Exosquad' (1993-1994), 'The Zula Patrol' (2005-2008) and 'Maya and Miguel' (2004-2007). The only of these animated shows he also made a comic book adaptation about was 'Courage the Cowardly Dog' (1999-2002). With writer Sebastian Mondrone, he created the 'Beastball Saga'.
He passed away from cancer in 2009.
