| Ad Astra: Astro City: The creators |
| [Kurt Busiek] [Brent Anderson] [Alex Ross] [The rest of the crew] |
Kurt Busiek is one of those creators who work for years in the comics biz to become an overnight sensation. Born in 1960, he started reading comics in 1974. When he was in high school he convinced his friend Scott McCloud to start reading comics. They then teamed up to produce their first comic book: The battle of Lexington. Kurt Busiek found it a learning experience. He states: "The battle of Lexington was where Scott [McCloud] and i both learned how to do comics."
After high school they both went to the same college, Syracuse University.Before they graduated from college, Scott McCloud found work at DC's production department and Kurt sold a six page "Tales of the Green Lantern Corps" script to then editor Ernie Colon. This story appeared in Green Lantern #162 and was Kurt's first pro job. That story appeared in december 1982, together with Kurt's first issue of Powerman and Iron Fist. For the next twelve years Kurt worked mostly as a freelancer doing everything from Red Tornado to Micky Mouse to Vampirella.
When Kurt was editing Open Space, a science fiction anthology series for Marvel, he came into contact with Alex Ross, who did an Open Space story which never got published. When Kurt was invited to contribute a story to Eclipse's Miracleman: Aphocrypha miniseries, he wanted Alex Ross to illustrate it. Athought his didn't work out, Kurt was shown a project Alex was working on, which would eventually become Marvels. At that point it was an idea Alex had for a painted superhero anthology book simply called Marvel. Kurt came up with the idea of taking the Marvel heroes and showing them from the p.o.v. of a normal citizen in the Marvel Universe. They sent a proposal to Marvel, and when Tom DeFalco got to see the proposal he said: "Don't do the stories about the heroes. Do the stories about the events." So that's how Marvels was published, as a four-issue series showcasing the major events in the Marvel Universe from the forties to 1972.
Marvels became a hit with fans and pro's alike, and scoped up numerous awards. Because of this Kurt Busiek was asked to work with guys like Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino and Mark Silvestri. Kurt, however felt like nothing much had changed: "I'm still doing mini-series, one-shots. Admittedly I'm doing mini-series on a higher scale. I'm doing Youngblood: year one instead of The legend of WonderWoman."
This has changed with Astro City. Astro City is Kurt Busiek's first creator owned regular series since Eclipse's the Liberty Project. Kurt intends to stay a long time on this project and there has even been talk of some spinoff projects.
| [Kurt Busiek] [Brent Anderson] [Alex Ross] [The rest of the crew] |
Besides Astro City Kurt at the moment writes three other ongoing series, all for Marvel:
Thunderbolts, Aventgers and Iron Man. He also writes the 12 issue limited series
Avengers Forever.
This bibliography comes straight from the horses mouth, Mr. Busiek himself and is based on a e-mail he sent to the Astro City mailing list. It contains all of his comics/prose work, except for his editorial work or the work he did for the fanzines and such titles as Marvel Age.
Brent Eric Anderson was born in 1955. He was raised on traditional children's literature. He wasn't allowed to read comics but once he sneaked them in and his mother saw how they stimulated his artistic nature, he was allowed to read them. He learned to draw through trail and error until college, where he received an excellent art training from James Smythe (a classicist fond of proclaiming his artistic feet to be "firmly planted in the seventeenth century, working my way back to the sixteenth."). He started working in comics in the late seventies, mostly working for Marvel. His first critical acclaimed series was Ka-zar the savage (1980-1981), one of Marvel's earliest direct market titles. From there on he went to do one of the first Marvel graphic novels, X-men: God loves, man kills, together with Chris Claremont. He then worked on various projects before doing Strikeforce Morituri together with Peter Gillis. After doing 20 issues they both got of the book and Brent once again worked on a wide variety of comics, but never on a regular series until Astro City.
| [Kurt Busiek] [Brent Anderson] [Alex Ross] [The rest of the crew] |
At the moment Astro City is Brent's only regular title. An interview with Brent Anderson is available on the Westfield website, talking about his experiences with Astro City.
Alex Ross first became known for his artwork in Terminator: Burning Earth for Now comics. Later he did a Open Space story for Kurt Busiek which is how the two met.Unsatisfied with his work let him to leave the comics field. The next couple of years he worked in advertising untill Kurt Busiek brought him back to paint a story for Miracleman: Aphocryptia, a three-part miniseries from Eclipse, published in 1992. Although he didn't work together with Kurt on this story, he did show Kurt his drawings of Marvel characters. Alex Ross had at that time some vague ideas about a sort of painted anthology showcasing his favourite Marvel characters. Kurt added the idea of viewing these heroes thru the p.o.v. of a common citizen in the Marvel Universe.
Together they went to Tom DeFalco, who wanted them to do the series about the major events in Marvel history, rather then about specific heroes. The series, simply called Marvels, showcased the most important moments in Marvel history from the origin of the first Torch to the Kree/Skrull war. The series was both a critical- and sales succes, for a major part due to the breath-taking artwork of Alex Ross. It also led to a mini-hausse in painted comics, mostly from Marvel. Today Alex Ross is one of the most in demand cover artists.
| [Kurt Busiek] [Brent Anderson] [Alex Ross] [The rest of the crew] |
Alex Ross' first major project after Marvelswas Kingdom Come miniseries from DC, written by Mark Waid andmore or less DC's answer to the succes of the series mentioned above. This series is now available in trade paperback and deluxe hardcover format. After Kingdom Come, Alex's last major project was the two-issue Uncle Sam miniseries for DC. He's still very much in demand as a cover artist and as a designer for projects like Marvel's Earth X.
You can find an interview with Alex Ross about Kingdom Come at Westfield's website.
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