Thomas Stanford Lyle (November 2, 1953 – November 19, 2019)[1][2] was an American comics artist, best known for his work on Starman and Robin for DC Comics, and Spider-Man for Marvel Comics.
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,[3][4]
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.[6] Dixon and Lyle also co-created the Electrocutioner in Detective Comics #644 (May 1992)[7] and Stephanie Brown in Detective Comics #647 (August 1992).[8]
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.[4]
In 1993, Lyle started working for Marvel Comics, as penciler of Spider-Man. He was one of the artists on the "Maximum Carnage"[9] and "Clone Saga"[10] 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.[11] He also co-created the character Annex in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #27 with writer Jack C. Harris.[12] Lyle penciled the three-issue miniseries Venom: Funeral Pyre, which co-starred the Punisher and introduced the villain Pyre.
Lyle's other work for Marvel included Punisher vol. 3 with writer John Ostrander from 1995 to 1997, a Warlock mini-series which he wrote himself in 1998,[4] and issues of Mutant X in 2000 and 2001.
He was the artist on the 2004 series Chickasaw Adventures for the Chickasaw Nation.[13]
Between 2005 and his death in 2019, he taught sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.[14]
