Adam Warren (comics)

Last updated
Adam Warren
Born1967 (age 56–57)
New Hampshire, United States
Area(s)Writer, Artist
Notable works
 The Dirty Pair
Empowered
http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/

Adam Warren (born 1967) is an American comic book writer and artist who is most famous for his original graphic novel Empowered , an adaptation of the characters known as Dirty Pair into an American comic book, and being one of the first American commercial illustrators to be influenced by the general manga style. [1] He has also contributed to several Gen13 comics, worked as writer and character designer for the Marvel Comics series Livewires , and done numerous freelance works. His current project is Empowered, which he has been working on continuously since 2007. [2]

Contents

Early life

Adam Warren was born in New Hampshire. He began attending The Kubert School [3] in Dover, New Jersey in 1985, but was unsure about his future in comics after less than a year of attendance. Over the Christmas break of his first year, he chanced upon manga and anime, some of which was the original Dirty Pair, and this renewed his drive to become an artist. [1]

Career

After graduating from the Kubert School, Warren spent a year attempting to acquire the rights to produce a comic based on the Dirty Pair. He was finally able to make inroads with the help of Toren Smith and Studio Proteus, who had connections in Japan. Warren put together a portfolio of Dirty Pair–related work which Smith then took to Sunrise Studios, but they were unimpressed with the work and negotiations went nowhere. Smith then contacted Takachiho Haruka, the creator of the Dirty Pair, directly. Haruka was much more impressed with Warren's art and Smith's ideas and agreed to license the characters for an American comic. This directly resulted in Warren's first major work, Dirty Pair: Biohazards , which he co-wrote with Smith and published through Studio Proteus and Eclipse Comics in 1989. The next two Dirty Pair works would be co-written with Smith and released by Eclipse Comics. Starting with the fourth book, Sim Hell, it became a solo project and was released by Dark Horse Comics.

Throughout the '90s and into the 2000s Warren produced several Dirty Pair comics and trade paperbacks, a four-part Bubblegum Crisis series called Grand Mal [4] as well as cover, pin-up and other "freelance" art. During this time he provided numerous cover illustrations, most notably covers for the X-Men , Star Wars , Fantastic Four (while he was also penning a few stories), and Appleseed series, as well as some trading card art, and even in-house Christmas cards for Studio Proteus. Between Dirty Pair works he also penned a three-part Terminator series called Hunters and Killers in 1992. Towards the end of the '90s and into the early 2000s he was one of the main writers, and to a lesser extent artist, for the Gen13 series from Wildstorm comics. He has done art commission work for Spin Magazine and PSM magazine. His PlayStation comics usually relate to their major featured article and are found on the back page of the magazine. His art has also been featured in their swimsuit edition. He has also been known to do some translation and scripting work, Seraphic Feather and Cannon God Exaxxion being two of the only known credited examples.

Warren's latest completed works are Livewires and Iron Man: Hypervelocity. Although Warren had promised several times in the past to continue work with the Lovely Angels, it has been several years since his last major Dirty Pair work. To date at least two planned DP related series have failed to come to market; the first a side-story meant to follow the character Shasti and the second a DP/Superman cross-over. Warren also created several pictures based on the video game SSX 3 of the SSX series. [5]

Warren's latest work, which he is both writing and drawing, is a series of original graphic novels called Empowered . He describes the series as "an episodic 'sexy superhero comedy', mixing a twisted take on costumed crime-fighting, romance, and absurdist workplace humor with a strong dose of that 'manga flava'... and just a dash of the kinky." The first trade paper back was published by Dark Horse Comics in March 2007 after a slight delay, Volume Two was released in September 2007, [6] Volume Three in March 2008 and Volume Four was released towards the end of October 2008 after a delay of about a month or so. [7] Volume Five was released in late June 2009. Volume Six was released on September 21, 2010. The series is neither inked nor colored, but rather sourced directly from pencil drawings.

Drawing style

Warren makes very tight pencil layouts of the pages before they are inked, toned and colored. [8] According to Warren himself, everyone who saw the layouts said, to his chagrin, that they liked them better than the final colored pages. On Empowered he tried a new style, the pages are greyscale reproductions of pencil "layouts", and are neither inked nor toned. The layouts that he uses are cleaner and more tightened versions of his layouts for previous works. [8]

This pencil layout style is also seen on several of his Dirty Pair short stories, and in a pair of pages of Gen13 Magical Drama Queen Roxy, a Gen13 miniseries, where one of the characters starts a deconstructing/poststructuralist device that deconstructs the comic through all the stages of production: color, color guides, inked page, tight pencil layout, rough pencil layout and script.

Bibliography

Notes

  1. 1 2 Interview: Adam Warren Archived 2016-11-06 at the Wayback Machine at About.com
  2. ↑ Empowered profile at Dark Horse's website.
  3. ↑ http://www.kubertschool.edu/alumni.html Kubert School alumni page
  4. ↑ Bubblegum Crisis profile at Dark Horse's Website
  5. ↑ "SSX 3 Adam Warren Desktop Gallery 02". MerquryCity. Retrieved June 19, 2006.
  6. ↑ Kean, Benjamin Ong Pang (July 20, 2006). "SDCC '06: Adam Warren Talks Empowered". Newsarama . Retrieved August 22, 2006.[ dead link ]
  7. ↑ Adam Warren's journal entry at deviantART
  8. 1 2 Contino, Jennifer M. (March 23, 2007). "Adam Warren empowered with comic books". Pulse. Comicon.com. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05. Retrieved July 24, 2008. Well, for one thing, Empowered is nominally a superhero title, yet it's drawn by a clearly manga-influenced artist...The unique thing about Empowered's artwork is that it's reproduced directly from my very, very tight penciled pages...grayscale repro of this type is tricky, but can be highly rewarding, I've found...In fact, Empowered's pages are just a tightened-up and cleaner version of how I've been doing my (notoriously tight) layouts for the last decade or so. Somewhat to my chagrin, almost everyone (or, at least, every artist) who's seen my so-called "layouts" has said that they like them better than my published, inked-and-toned/colored pages...and roll with an extra-tight incarnation of my layout technique for this and other future work.

Related Research Articles

Wildstorm Productions is an American comic book imprint. Originally founded as an independent company established by Jim Lee under the name "Aegis Entertainment" and expanded in subsequent years by other creators, Wildstorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1998. Until it was shut down in 2010, the Wildstorm imprint remained editorially separate from DC Comics, with its main studio located in California. The imprint took its name from a portmanteau of the titles of the Jim Lee comic series WildC.A.T.S. and Stormwatch.

A penciller is an artist who works on the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms, with a focus on the initial pencil illustrations, usually in collaboration with other artists, who provide inks, colors and lettering in the book, under the supervision of an editor.

The inker is one of the two line artists in traditional comic book production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Kubert</span> American comic artist and writer (born 1962)

Andrew Kubert is an American comics artist, letterer, and writer. He is the son of Joe Kubert and brother of Adam Kubert, both of whom are also artists, and the uncle of comics editor Katie Kubert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Kubert</span> American comic book artist

Joseph Kubert was a Polish-born American comic book artist, art teacher, and founder of The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman. He is also known for working on his own creations, such as Tor, Son of Sinbad, and the Viking Prince, and, with writer Robin Moore, the comic strip Tales of the Green Beret.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Cassaday</span>

John Cassaday is an American comic book artist, writer, and television director. He is best known for his work on the critically acclaimed Planetary with writer Warren Ellis, Astonishing X-Men with Joss Whedon, Captain America with John Ney Rieber, and Star Wars with Jason Aaron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Kubert School</span> Private technical school for comics art in Dover, New Jersey, US

The Kubert School, formerly the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art and Joe Kubert School, is a private, for-profit technical school focused on cartooning and located in Dover, New Jersey. It teaches the principles of sequential art and the particular craft of the comics industry as well as commercial illustration. It is the only accredited school devoted entirely to cartooning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Adams (comics)</span> American comic book artist

Arthur Adams is an American comic book artist and writer. He first broke into the American comic book industry with the 1985 Marvel Comics miniseries Longshot. His subsequent interior comics work includes a number of Marvel's major books, including The Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur, X-Factor, Fantastic Four, Hulk, and Ultimate Comics: X, as well as books by various other publishers, such as Action Comics, Vampirella, The Rocketeer, and The Authority. Adams has also illustrated books featuring characters for which he has a personal love, such as Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Gumby, the latter of which garnered him a 1988 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Jenkins (writer)</span> British comic book writer

Paul Jenkins is a British comic book writer, screenwriter, novelist, and narrative director. He has had much success crossing over into the American comic book market. Primarily working for Marvel Comics, Jenkins had a big part shaping the characters of the company, helping via the Marvel Knights imprint to propel Marvel from Chapter 11 bankruptcy before choosing to focus on independent publications. He is also noted for his groundbreaking narrative work in the field of video games, and is recognized as one of the world's preeminent "cross-media" creators for his work across such multiple media as animation, video games, comic books, and film.

<i>The Dirty Pair</i> English-language comic based on the anime

The Dirty Pair is an original English-language manga written and illustrated by Adam Warren, based on the original Dirty Pair characters created by Haruka Takachiho.

Cam Smith is a British comic book artist and inker known to British comic book readers for his work on 2000 AD and in the American comic book market for his collaborations with Gary Frank, inking that would earn him an Eisner Award nomination.

Studio Proteus is a Japanese manga import, translation and lettering company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco. Other staff included translators Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason, and Frederik Schodt, letterer Tom Orzechowski and translator/letterer Tomoko Saito. The company worked with many different publishers, including Viz Media, Innovation Publishing and Eclipse Comics, but its main outlets were Dark Horse for mainstream titles and Fantagraphics' imprint Eros Comix for adult (hentai) titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amanda Conner</span> American comics artist and commercial art illustrator

Amanda Conner is an American comics artist and commercial art illustrator. She began her career in the late 1980s for Archie Comics and Marvel Comics, before moving on to contribute work for Claypool Comics' Soulsearchers and Company and Harris Comics' Vampirella in the 1990s. Her 2000s work includes Mad magazine, and such DC Comics characters as Harley Quinn, Power Girl, and Atlee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Hughes</span> American comics artist and illustrator (born 1967)

Adam Hughes is an American comics artist and illustrator best known to American comic book readers for his renderings of pinup-style female characters, and his cover work on titles such as Wonder Woman and Catwoman. He is known as one of comics' foremost cheesecake artists, and one of the best known and most distinctive comic book cover artists. Throughout his career Hughes has provided illustration work for companies such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros. Pictures, Playboy magazine, Joss Whedon's Mutant Enemy Productions, and Sideshow Collectibles. He is also a fixture at comics conventions where his commissioned sketches command long lines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Kolins</span>

Scott Kolins is an American illustrator, writer, and creator of multiple different superhero and science fiction comic books. His main credits are as a penciler but he is an established inker as well as colorist and has some credits as a writer.

Chris Warner is an American comic book writer, artist, and editor for Dark Horse Comics. He worked extensively on their mid-1990s line of Comics' Greatest World and Dark Horse Heroes. Warner has also worked sporadically for other companies, such as DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

<i>Empowered</i> (comics) American manga comic by Adam Warren

Empowered is an original English-language manga style comic written and illustrated by Adam Warren.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toren Smith</span> Canadian manga translator

Toren V. Smith was a Canadian manga translator and founder of Studio Proteus.

Keith Champagne is an American comic artist, who has also moved into writing, and is known for his work at DC Comics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Reinhold</span>

Bill Reinhold is an American comic book artist, known primarily as an inker.

References

Interviews

Preceded by Fantastic Four writer
2002		Succeeded by
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.