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Tom Lyle

American comic artist (1953–2019)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ2439846 ↗
Source-derived summary

Thomas Stanford Lyle (November 2, 1953 – November 19, 2019) was an American comics artist, best known for his work on Starman and Robin for DC Comics, and Spider-Man for Marvel Comics.

Career

Tom Lyle's comics career began in the mid-1980s penciling titles such Airboy, Strike!, and Airwolf for Eclipse Comics. From 1988 to 1990, he penciled DC Comics' Starman series with writer Roger Stern, introducing the second Blockbuster in Starman #9 (April 1989).

Lyle worked on the first solo Robin limited series with writer Chuck Dixon. The series was reprinted a number of times, and led to two sequel miniseries – Robin II: Joker's Wild and Robin III: Cry of the Huntress – by the same creative team. Dixon and Lyle also co-created the Electrocutioner in Detective Comics #644 (May 1992) and Stephanie Brown in Detective Comics #647 (August 1992).

Meanwhile, in 1991 he worked on The Comet for DC's Impact Comics imprint, which he pencilled and plotted, with writer Mark Waid contributing the scripts.

In 1993, Lyle started working for Marvel Comics, as penciler of Spider-Man. He was one of the artists on the "Maximum Carnage" and "Clone Saga" storylines which ran through the Spider-Man titles, during which time he designed the original blue hoodie-and-red spandex costume worn by the Scarlet Spider, a clone of Spider-Man. He also co-created the character Annex in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #27 with writer Jack C. Harris.

Editorial summary

“Tom Lyle” enters the record as american comic artist (1953–2019). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lyle, American and comic can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1953, 2019, 1988, 1990—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1953-11-02. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lyle, American and comic.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Tom Lyle” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lyle, American and comic provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2439846. VIAF identifies the subject as 138145003296261301632. The Library of Congress control number is n2015068068. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2019, 1988 and 1990.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tom Lyle”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tom Lyle primary sources, Tom Lyle archive and Lyle research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tom Lyle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.