Mark A. Nelson

Mark A. Nelson is a prolific artist, primarily of fantasy subjects, who has drawn widely for comics, illustrated role-playing games and worked for computer games (Raven Software, where he was senior artist in 1998-2004, Big Rooster, Emergence Games, Sega Games).

Nelson was born on 28 November in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and was educated at Moorehead State College, at Cleveland Institute of Art and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He later worked as a professor of art at Northern Illinois University for over twenty years.

His comic strip credits have included Starslayer (First, 1985), Aliens (Dark Horse, 1988-89), Feud (Marvel/Epic, 1993) written by Mike Baron and Blood and Shadows (DC, 1996), written by Joe R. Lansdale. His work has also appeared in Graphic Classics from Eureka Productions, and he has also contributed to IDW Comics, Eclipse Comics (Airboy), Now Comics, Kitchen Sink Comics and Just Imagine Comics.

His illustrations have been published by Hero Illustrated, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance Publications, Borderlands Press, Roadkill Press, Ziesing Books, Journal Wired, Byron Priess, Sight and Sound Books, Worldbook-Childcraft, David C. Cook and Fantasy Newsletter.

Nelson has had a long association with the role-playing games industry and has produced illustrations for many Dungeons and Dragons books and Dragon magazine.since the mid-1980s. He had also produced artwork for games including Villains and Vigilantes (Fantasy Games Unlimited), Earthdawn and Shadowrun (FASA) and Orpheus (White Wolf). He also produced illustrations for the collectable card game Magic: The Gathering.

He has published two collections of artwork: From Pencils To Inks: The Art of Mark A. Nelson (2004) and Strange Thoughts and Random Images (2008).

Nelson nowadays works as a conceptual artist creating digital skins and textures for computer games. He was the lead instructor of the Animation Department of Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wisconsin.

He now lives in Missouri City, Texas, with his wife, artist Anita C. Nelson. They jointly run Grazing Dinosaur Press.

Rudy Nebres

Rudy Nebres was one of a group if talented Filipino artists who found work in the USA with DC and Marvel, amongst them Alfredo Alcala, Alex Nino, Nestor Redondo and Tony De Zuniga.

Born Rodolfo D. Nebres (pronounced NAY-bres) in the Philippines on 14 January 1937, Rudy was able to attend art school in Manila thanks to the sacrifices of his parents, who sold their possessions to pay for his tuition. He made his first professional sales as a teenager and was already working regularly before he graduated.

After  graduating, he found work with ACE Publications and  Graphic Arts Service (GASI), where he worked on various stories including 'Baby Face' (1958-59) for Extra Komiks, 'Kamay ni Dimas' (1962) for Ditektib Komiks, 'Themesong' (1963-64) for Redondo Komix, 'Anino ng Agila' (1964) for CRAF Klasix, 'Blanca Negra' (1965) for Hiwaga Komiks, 'Babaing Bakulaw' (1965) for Espesyal Komiks with writer Galo Burgos, 'Ang Paborito ni Linda' for Hiwaga Komiks with writer Mer. A Abella, 'Nakabakas sa Langit' (1965-66), for Pioneer Komiks with writer Angel Ad Santos, 'Suicide Sammy' (1967) for Aliwan Komiks with writer Greg Igna de Dios, 'Javlin and the Pirates' 1968) for Pilipino Komiks,'Magkuwento Ka Puso' (1968) for Aliwan Komiks, 'Micaela' (1968) for Aliwan Komiks, 'Talagang Gusto Kong Magpakatino!' for Kislap Komiks (1971-72) and many others.

Rudy Nebres began working for DC Comics in 1972 when DC Comics publisher Carmine Infantino and Editor Joe Orlando visited the Philippines on a scouting trip.  He was given assignments on such DC mystery titles such as The Unexpected, House of Secrets and Ghosts, but was not working as regularly as he wanted. He continued to draw for Filipino comics such as 'Ginintuang Rehas' for Sixteen Magazine (1973-74), 'Huwag Mo Akong Tangisan!' for Kislap Komiks (1973-74) and 'Paper Doll' for Kislap Komiks (1974-75).

Nebres moved to the United States in 1975 and promptly found much more success when he started working for Marvel Comics on such prestigious titles like Dr. Strange, The Avengers, Iron Fist, Master of Kung Fu and The Hulk. His speciality, however, was sword and sorcery and his talents for drawing the muscular heroes  like Conan, Kull, Red Sonja and John Carter are renowned. His ability is to draw exaggerated musculature without losing the realism of the figure. He has put this down to a strong grasp of anatomy. "The key is the collarbone. If that's off, the whole drawing will be wrong," he has said.

He found much further acclaim when he started working for Warren Publishing on Creepy (1978-82), Eerie (1978-83), 1984 (1978-79), 1994 (1980-82), The Rook (1979-82), Vampirella (1980-82) and The Goblin (1982), where he turned in stories that represented an extraordinary evolution in his art characterized by profuse, graceful hatching, dynamic figurework and imaginative compositions. Tim Perkins has said, "His line work was very stylised and yet still had all the contemporary licks of his fellow Filipino artists. Instantly recognisable amongst the group his work flowed with the same lushness of line that the others had, but with a greater dynamic, which probably explained his use of super-heroic titles, when the others were considered, wrongly in my honest opinion, not to be suitable for superhero comics."


Nebres was in demand as an inker. Editor Ralph Macchio recalled working with Doug Moench and John Buscema on 'Warriors of the Shadow Realm' (Marvel Super Special #11-13) in 1979: "We needed an inker to work on John's brilliant pencils who would brink his own flair to the pencils but not over-power the delicacy of what John had drawn. We were astonished at how faithfully [Rudy] rendered John's pencils yet added his own special touch."

He next spent 10 years working with Neal Adams for Continuity Studios doing storyboards and animatics, but was able to work on Continuity comics titles like Armor (1986-90), Toy Boy (1986-87), Megalith (1989) and Ms. Mystic (1989).

He went freelance again afterwards and has since worked on a variety of titles and companies like Spider-man, Conan and Punisher for Marvel, as well as a Negation one-shot in an issue of Crossgen Chronicles for Crossgen Comics in 2002.

The Art of Rudy Nebres, a collection of fan commissions, was published by SQP Inc in 2000.

Nebres currently lives in Edison, New Jersey, with his wife Dolores. They have two children Melvin and Edwin.

In a 2012 interview, Neil Adams said that Nebres "has got to be one of the nicest guys in comics. He's very humble, almost too self-effacing. he's humble to the point that I want to hit him in the head and say, 'You're better than you think you are. You're great.' He's that humble, but he puts better lines on the page than any artist or inker I know."

Examples of Rudy Nebres's work can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.

Arthur Nash

Arthur Nash was a contributor to Look and Learn, his artwork appearing in 1981. Nash was also a contributor to Treasure. Nash also illustrated Alice in Wonderland but is otherwise unknown.

Examples of Arthur Nash's artwork can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.

Dean Motter

Dean Motter is a Canadian artist, illustrator and graphic designer best known as the creator of Mister X and Terminal City, two highlights of the "comics aren't for kids" boom of the 1980s/90s.

The history of Mister X began in the early 1980s: Motter was then sharing a studio with Ken Steacy and Paul Rivoche and the character went through a lengthy development process before independent publisher Vortex Comics began insisting that work the comic book needed to begin. Motter provided a story outline from which Gilbert Hernandez created a script, illustrated by Jaime Hernandez. After only four issues, the Hernandez brothers quit, citing non-payment by Vortex, and Motter wrote issues 5 through 14, which were illustrated by Seth (Gregory Gallant).

Mister X himself was an architect, the creator of Radiant City, which has been designed on the principals of psychetecture, driving its citizens mad.

Although the character continued to appear, it was in the hands of other writers and artists. Motter later used the characters in Electropolis and returned to them in the mini-series Mister X: Condemned, published in 2008-09 by Dark Horse.

Motter has earlier co-created The Sacred & the Profane with art by Ken Steacy, which he later described as being influenced by the Symbolists and the Pre-Raphaelites, aesthetics he had wanted to introduce into comics since his days as an art history student. Mister X was influenced by Art Deco, German Expressionism, film noir, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, mid-20th century industrial design and the futuristic artwork of SF and popular mechanics magazines of the pulp era.

Motter's influences, thanks to his upbringing in Canada, were European, especially French, when it came to comics, although for Mister X he acknowledged the heavy influence of Will Eisner and Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Motter, born in 1958, began reading comics around the age of 8 or 9 and was also a fan of vintage horror and science fiction films. He produced comic pages for his college newspaper and freelanced for Media Five, a tabloid magazine published in London, Ontario, whilst at college. After moving to Toronto, he was a regular at the Silver Snail comic book store. The owner of Silver Snail produced the SF magazine Andromeda in 1977-79, reprinting stories by Arthur C. Clarke and A. E. Van Vogt. Mottor worked as art director and designer for the magazine.

Another acquaintence, Marty Herzog, began working as a creatove director with CBS Records Canada, which led to Motter designing album covers for numerous bands, creating the cover art for Anvil's Metal On Metal (1983 Juno Award winner), Seamless by The Nylons (1984 Juno Award winner) and Jane Silberry's No Borders Here (1985 Casby Award winner). He was awarded the Best of the 80's Album Cover award by the Toronto Art Directors Club for Honeymoon Suite in 1985.

The Sacret & the Profane was originally published as a 5-part serial in Star+Reach in 1977-78. Motter and Steacy subsequently revised and coloured the strip for Epic Illustrated in the early 1980s; the revision was then reprinted as a graphic novel by Eclipse in 1987. The story has echoes of James Blish's A Case Of Conscience as it concerns Sister Marianna, a nun aboard a spaceship of the Catholic Interstellar Crusade – in effect, a flying church – who has begun to question her faith. After attacking an alien vessel, the human crew start to fall prey to an invading alien force.

Following on from his work on Mister X, Motter was invited to produce a comic based on Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner,  drawn by Mark Askwith, a former Silver Snail manager who went on to become a TV producer.

In 1990, Motter relocated to New York, working for Byron Preiss Visual Publications where he was art director and senior designer, as well as editing a series of graphic novels based on the stories of Raymond Chandler. He subsequently joined DC Comics as manager of the Creative Services Department. This latter job allowed him to freelance and, for Vertigo, he produced Terminal City, drawn by Michael Lark.

Reverting to freelance, he continued the Terminal City saga with Aerial Graffiti, also drawn by Lark. The two also teamed up for the Batman graphic novel Nine Lives, winner of the Will Eisner Award in 2003. Motter's other works have included The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (adapted for Classics Illustrated), Batman: Gotham Knights, Grendel: Red, White and Black, Hellblazer and 9-11: Artists Respond. Further stories have appeared Superman Adventures, Star Wars Tales, Will Eisner's The Spirit, and Wolverine.

Examples of Dean Motter's artwork can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.

José Muñoz

Jose Munoz is nowadays best known for his work on the series Alack Sinner, which has been hugely popular in Europe for over thirty-five years. The detective series and the many volumes that have spun off from it are characterised by the artist's heavy use of chiaroscuro and the exaggerated (often grotesque) faces and figures.

José Antonio Muñoz was born on 10 July 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and studied painting, sculpture and drawing at the Escuela Panamericana de Arte where he was taught by Alberto Breccia and Pablo Pereyra.

At the age of 18 he pupblished his first comic strips in the pages of Hora Cero and Frontera, magazines strongly associated with Hector Oesterheld. Muñoz drew several episodes of Oesterheld's Ernie Pike and also illustrated 'Precint 56' by Ray Collins (Eugene Zappietro) for Mixterix, then edited by Hugo Pratt.

For many years Muñoz worked in Francisco Solano Lopez's studio, which was set up in the early 1960s to capitalise on the vast amount of artwork that could be supplied to British comics. Lopez, at his peak, had six assistants, working on weekly and monthly assignments ranging from weekly science fiction and football yarns (Kelly's Eye, Raven on the Wing, etc.) to monthly war titles (for War, Battle, Air Ace, etc.). The studio's output was immense and for the most part it is impossible to distinguish the work of individual artists.

Muñoz travelled to Europe for the first time in March 1971 and in Spain, via a mutual friend, Oscar Zarate, met Carlos Sampayo, a fellow Argentinean who, shortly after, settled in Madrid. Muñoz, meanwhile, settled in London where he was working regularly for Lion, drawing a number of short-lived strips – 'A Stitch in Time', 'The Treasure-Hunt Twins', 'Lost in Limbo Land' and 'Sark the Sleeper' – ahead of Lion's imminent folding into Valiant, where he would draw a few stories featuring Adam Eterno.

At this time, he was being encouraged by Breccia and Hugo Pratt during trips to Paris and Lucca to create his own work, but Muñoz's separation from his wife and daughter led to him living in a commune and earning money washing dishes.

Again, Oscar Zarate persuaded him to visit Carlos Sampayo at his home in Castelldefels, Spain. Here, the two began to develop the character Alack Sinner, who was to debut in AlterLinus and Charlie Mensuel in 1975. The two also began working on other albums, including El bar de Joe [Joe's Bar] and Sophie Goin' South, both published in 1981. The following year Muñoz was named Best Artist at Lucca. Alack Sinner won the Best Foreign Comics Album award at Angoulême in 1978 and 1973. Another collaboration with Sampayo, Billie Holiday, won the Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material in 1994.


Very little of his work has been seen in the UK. Escape magazine's tenth issue featured 'Joe's Bar' in 1987 and Viet Blues was serialised in Crisis in 1990-91. In Europe Muñoz has continued to work with increasing recognition. He collaborated with American author Jerome Charyn on Au croc du serpent (1996) and Panna Maria (1999) and continues to collaborate with Sampayo on such titles as Dans les bars (2002), Le livre (2004) and further adventures of Alack Sinner.

In 2002 he was awarded the Max-und-Moritz-Preis in Germany for his life's work and, in 2007, he became only the fourth non-French language creator to receive the Grand Prix at Angoulême.

Examples of artwork by Jose Muñoz can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.

Russell Myers

Russell Myers is an American cartoonist whose popular "Broom-Hilda" appears in American newspapers. The strip, featuring a 1,500-year-old, beer-guzzling, cigar-smoking, man-crazy witch and her friends, was launched in 1970 and is syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. At least 25 collections of the strip appeared in 1971-87.

Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, on 9 October 1938, Myers was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father, a college professor, taught at Tulsa University. He attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, where artist Archie Goodwin was a fellow student, and the University of Tulsa. Interested in cartooning from an early age, Myers began illustrating greetings cards for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City in 1960 when his first cartoon submissions were rejected.

"Broom-Hilda" was based on an idea by Elliott Caplin (brother of cartoonist Al Capp), who suggested the characters, which Myers designed. Caplin submitted the strip to the Chicago Tribune Syndicate and it began appearing on 19 April 1970. Myers won the National Cartoonists Society's Humor Comic Strip Award for 1975 for his work on the strip.

Myers married his wife Marina in 1964. Living in Grants Pass, Oregon, the Myers family includes son Stewart and daughter Rosie. His hobbies include reading, collecting old cars and hanging out at our local Saturday night dirt track, where he sponsors a car.


Examples of Russell Myers' artwork can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.

Sheldon Moldoff

Sheldon Moldoff, one of the architects of the comic book Golden Age, died from kidney failure on 29 February 2012, aged 91. Mark Evanier noted in a tribute published on 3 March 2012 that Moldoff was the last surviving artist to have contributed to Action Comics #1, perhaps the most collectable of all comic books; although Moldoff did not contribute Superman's debut, he did contribute artwork to that issue – a sports strip filler on the inside back cover. It was his first professional appearance.

Born in Manhattan, New York, on 14 April 1920, Sheldon Douglas "Shelly" Moldoff was the son of Russian-born immigrants Ben Moldoff (Baruch Moldanski) and his wife Kate. He was raised in The Bronx. After teaching himself to draw, he was introduced to comics by illustrator Bernard Baily, who lived in the same apartment house as Moldoff and his family. At 17, he broke into the comic book industry, selling his first strips to Vincent Sullivan, the editor at National Periodicals.

Moldoff drew covers for the first appearances of The Flash (Flash Comics #1) and Green Lantern (All-American Comics #16) in 1940. In April 1940 he created the character Jon Valor, The Black Pirate, for Action Comics (#23) and took over the artwork (from Dennis Neville) for Hawkman (in Flash Comics #4). In All Star Comics (#5, Jul 1941) he introduced Hawkgirl.

Drafted in 1944, Moldoff returned to drawing in 1946, working for Standard, Fawcett, Marvel and Max Gaines' EC Comics. In 1948, he packaged two horror titles (This Magazine is Haunted and Tales of the Supernatural) which he first took to Fawcett Comics; when Fawcett turned them down, he took them to Max Gaines at EC who offered him a percentage of the profits. Gaines launched Tales from the Crypt a few months later and Moldoff was threatened with blacklisting if he tried to take legal action.

Moldoff subsequently took his dummies back to Fawcett, who paid him $100 for the titles (the latter became Strange Suspense Stories when it launched in 1952) and offered him as much work as he wished to take on. Fawcett folded the titles in 1953 and Moldoff became the assistant to Bob Kane, ghosting Kane's Batman comic strips. Although the work was anonymous – the strips were signed as by Kane – it was steady work; Moldoff also sold strips to DC Comics independently and thus kept himself busy until 1967.

During this period, he helped create the original Bat-Girl (Betty Kane), Batwoman, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Clayface and, as the stories began to grow more outlandish, Bat-Mite, Ace the Bat-Hound, Zebra Batman and the Merman Batman.

In the 1960s, DC made an effort to update Batman and a number of other long-term artists, were let go. Kane's contract was renegotiated in 1967 and he moved into TV animation where he created Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, for which show Moldoff produced storyboards. He was also the writer, producer and storyboard director of Marco Polo Junior versus the Red Dragon (1972) and Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu (2001).

Moldoff also continued to draw the occasional strip, drawing giveaway promotional comics for Big Boy and Red Lobster restaurants, Blockbuster Video and others. His last work for DC Comics appeared in 2000's World's Funniest one-shot where he illustrated a chapter of Evan Dorkin's Superman and Batman tale.

Moldoff was "outed" in 1991 when Julius Schwartz admitted at a convention "All the years I was buying artwork from  Bob Kane, I wasn't buying it from Bob Kane, I was buying it from Shelly Moldoff." Moldoff became a regular at conventions, selling drawings and signing autographs.

Moldoff and his wife, Shirley, retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he died. Shirley predeceased him in 2002; he was survived by his children, Richard Moldoff, Kenneth Moldoff, Ellen Moldoff Stein and seven grandchildren and great-grandchildren.


Examples of Sheldon Moldoff's artwork can be found at the Illustration Art Gallery.