The View From Table #20

At the NCS Reuben Awards dinner, I had the pleasure of being seated with artist Joe Staton and his wife Hilarie. Also at table #20 was Boston cartoonist Dave London (no relation to Bobby). Seated next to me was an 80-something gentleman, retired from a career in advertising, whose father worked at the MIT Radiation Lab during WWII.

Sy Barry is a retired expert practitioner of the classic comic book art style I appreciate so much. He received the King Features Elzie Segar Award, in recognition of the enduring influence of his art.

Sy had a humorous and very warmly received acceptance speech. He lives north of Boston, in Andover.

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2025/08/18/celebrating-sy/

The Boston Globe

From Superman to MLK, 97-year-old Andover resident and comic artist honored in Boston for his legendary career

By Ryan Yau Globe Correspondent, Updated August 18, 2025, 1:39 p.m.

The National Cartoonists Society celebrated 97-year-old Andover resident Seymour “Sy” Barry on Friday during the 79th annual Reuben Awards.

Held at the Westin Copley Hotel as part of the organization’s weekend-long conference, the NCS honored Barry with the Elzie Segar Award, which recognizes artists for their contributions to the “profession of cartooning,” according to the event’s website.

Barry earned acclaim during his career for illustrating the popular adventure comic strip “The Phantom” for more than three decades, and was a prolific penciler and inker for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. He’s also credited with co-creating Superman’s famous flying dog, Krypto, who recently made his live-action, big-screen debut in the new “Superman” film.

“That’s a beautiful finale of my life, really,” Barry said of receiving the award during an interview with the Globe at his assisted-living residence in Andover prior to the event. “It’s wonderful now that I’m being recognized. It took 30 years for them to come up with the award, but I’m very grateful.”
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Born in 1928, Barry grew up in New York City during the Great Depression. Despite being raised in a poor household and moving around the city frequently to live with relatives, Barry never let his tumultuous childhood shake his passion for art.

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“I just automatically had a pencil very often in my hand,” Barry said. “I didn’t always have paper around, so I used to use the brown wrapping bags I had. I’d just draw on them and draw figures.”

Barry pointed to “Archie” and “Blondie” strips, as well as the animated Disney classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” as early influences that shaped his imagination. But it was “The Phantom,” an action comic strip about a costumed crime-fighter that debuted in 1936 — two years before Superman’s arrival in the first issue of “Action Comics” — that truly inspired him to become an artist.

“I thought, you know, I would love to do that strip, so I can give it a real punch and draw the Phantom a little different, a little more heroic,” Barry said. “Then finally in 1961, I got onto ‘The Phantom,’ and it came true. It was incredible.”

Prior to taking over as illustrator for “The Phantom,” Barry worked as a penciler and inker, drawing Superman and Batman stories, among other titles.

In 1955, while working at DC Comics, Barry said he was tasked by his editor, Julius Schwartz, to “design a dog for Superman” in a story written by Otto Binder and penciled by Curt Swan. Barry, who previously drew Rex the Wonder Dog, designed Krypto as a white great dane with a red cape. Krypto made his first appearance in “Adventure Comics” issue #210 as the companion of Superboy, a younger version of Superman.

“The dog had more fur when I drew it,” Barry said, noting how Schwartz “didn’t think it was practical for production,” so they made Krypto more of “a hairless dog.”

In 1957, Barry illustrated “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story.” The comic pamphlet, which told the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was widely distributed around churches and schools to advocate for nonviolent protest. For many years, the artist of the pamphlet was uncredited, until Barry confirmed himself as its illustrator during a 2018 comic book convention appearance.

“It was teaching children to get along with each other and not be racist and be compassionate. I was so amazed to see that it came out,” Barry said.

Barry retired in 1994, and remained on Long Island with Simmy, his wife of 72 years. They had three children together.

Simmy died in 2020, and later that year, Barry moved out of New York for the first time into an assisted-living facility in Andover so that he could be closer to his son David, who lives in Burlington.

“It was too much to live with so many of her things around. It was too tough to stay there,” Barry said.

Beyond his work in comics, Barry has always been passionate about making children happy. Over the years, he has auctioned off illustrations in support of children’s hospitals, and in 2023, founded the charity Draw for Life with David, raising funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Barry will never forget a 2011 visit to a children’s hospital, where he was able to brighten up the day of a boy undergoing cancer treatment by drawing the Phantom for him.

“I always had a weak spot for children. When I would draw funny things for them, and I would see their faces light up and they started laughing, I was so grateful,” Barry said.

For Barry, receiving the award in Boston was a nice reminder that his five-decade career as an illustrator was time well spent. “It was glory for me, because I was doing something I really loved, and it showed in the work too,” Barry said.