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The legendary comic book artist Gene Colan has died, aged 84.

Colan was still drawing until shortly before his death, which came following a broken hip and complications from liver disease, according to his friend Clifford Meth. The New Yorker sold his first comic work in 1944, and joined Marvel Comics’ predecessor, Timely Comics, in 1946 before freelancing for DC’s forerunner, National Comics, drawing Western and romance comics.

He is best known for his work during Marvel’s Silver Age on such superheroes as the Sub-Mariner, Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange and Daredevil whose book he pencilled between 1966 and 1973 for all bar three issues. He and Stan Lee co-created the Falcon for Captain America, the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books. Colan also drew the highly popular Tomb of Dracula series, as well as many issues of Steve Gerber’s satirical Howard the Duck title.

Colan moved back to DC in the 1980s, working on Batman and Wonder Woman, and collaborated on new titles Night Force, Silverblade and Jemm, Son of Saturn. Independent work in the years that followed included a Predators miniseries and two issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Dark Horse. He won an Eisner Award with writer Ed Brubaker for an issue of Captain America that appeared in 2009; he had been inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame four years earlier.