[The Australian Panther]

[The art in the books is in general mediocre]
I wouldn't exactly say that, but Frank Stringer is not the most inspiring comic book artist. He was a good draftsman but somehow not an inspiring comic artist.
One of the strangest decisions Marvel ever made was to replace Jim Steranko with Springer on Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Ahh, No, guys!
What were they thinking?!
Frank Springer [Francis Hollidge, Bob Monhegan]
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/springer_frank.htm

cheers!

Link to the book: The Defenders 1

[crashryan]

One of the strangest decisions Marvel ever made was to replace Jim Steranko with Frank Springer on Nick Fury, Agent of Shield. Ahh, No, guys! What were they thinking?!

What they were thinking was, "Frank! Steranko's bailed on Agent of SHIELD and we're down to the wire on the deadline. We need you to knock out an issue pronto!"

I'm more of a Frank Springer fan than most people, but I admit he wasn't a good fit for SHIELD. He was an old-school comic artist and though he gave it the ol' college try, his stabs at Sterankism were kind of cringey. In my opinion some of his best work was for Grove Press' Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist. He got to draw lots of character and location stuff, perfect for his latent Caniffist tendencies (Springer started his career as an assistant to George Wunder).