Superman artist Al Plastino's daughter presents sketch to James Gunn

The daughter of a legendary Superman artist from Long Island extended her late father’s legacy to filmmaker James Gunn at the “Superman” premiere in Los Angeles Monday, presenting the writer-director with a sketch of the iconic comic book superhero.

“He said, ‘Thank you. I read the comics as a kid. I loved your father's work,’ ” said MaryAnn Plastino-Charles, 67, a creative director in Maryland for the EWTN radio and TV network. “I asked if he were a comic-book fan. He said, ‘Yes. Read them all the time growing up. I'm a big fan of your dad.’ ”

Longtime Shirley resident Al Plastino, who died in 2013 at age 91, was one of a trio of artists, along with Wayne Boring and Curt Swan, who defined the look of DC Comics’ Superman from the late 1940s to the late '60s. With writer Otto Binder in 1958, Plastino co-created the Legion of Super-Heroes, a teen-hero team that eventually became a bestselling franchise. That same year they created Brainiac, one of Superman's most enduring antagonists, and in 1959 debuted Supergirl.

Plastino-Charles had been invited to the premiere at Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre) as a family representative. “That's one nice thing about DC,” she says. “They are respectful of the artists who had started the whole thing. And so when I showed up, they treated me like royalty,” introducing her to the likes of Andy Muschietti, director of the 2023 DC superhero movie “The Flash,” and “Good Morning America” correspondent Will Reeve — son of the late actor Christopher Reeve, who starred as the Man of Steel in four 1978-1987 films — who has a cameo in the movie.

The informal presentation of the sketch took place at the post-premiere party in a tented lot across the street decorated as “Club Metropolis.” “They had me at a creator’s table,” Plastino-Charles says, along with Laura Siegel Larson, daughter of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel; DC Comics publisher and chief creative officer Jim Lee; and former Superman group editor Mike Carlin.

Plastino had drawn the sketch, on a roughly 8½-by-11-inch piece of paper, “somewhere between 2010 and 2011, I think,” his daughter says. Like many comic book artists, particularly those who are retired, Plastino would do commissioned work for fans, and “often would just grab some papers and start sketching all over the place,” she adds lightheartedly.

Plastino’s work had made headlines shortly before his death on Nov. 25, 2013. The original art for the 10-page story “Superman's Mission for President Kennedy” — which had its planned 1963 publication delayed in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination — turned up in an auction catalog though it had presumably been archived at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

It was pulled from auction and a court-ordered provenance investigation was done. One owner through the years had been musician Graham Nash, of Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Hollies. DC Comics subsequently bought the artwork, declining to say from whom or at what price, and donated it to the JFK Library.

“Superman,” which stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, opens in theaters Friday.