Bernie Wrightson

Bernie "Berni" Wrightson is an American artist known for his horror illustrations and comic books. (born October 27, 1948, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.)

 Biography

He received training in art from reading comics, particularly those of EC, as well as through a correspondence course from the Famous Artists School. In 1966, Bernie began working for The Baltimore Sun newspaper as an illustrator. The following year, after meeting artist Frank Frazetta at a comic-book convention in New York City, he was inspired to produce his own stories. In 1968, he showed copies of his sequential art to DC Comics editor Dick Giordano and was given a freelance assignment. Wrightson began spelling his name "Berni" in his professional work to distinguish himself from an Olympic diver named Bernie Wrightson, but later restored the final E to his name. His first professional comic work appeared in House of Mystery #179 in 1968. He continued to work on a variety of mystery and anthology titles for both DC and its principal rival, Marvel Comics. In 1971, with writer Len Wein, Bernie co-created the muck creature Swamp Thing for DC. He also co-created Destiny, later to become famous in the work of Neil Gaiman. Bernie had originally been asked by DC to handle the art for its revival of The Shadow, but he left the project early on when he realized he could not produce the necessary minimum number of pages on time. By 1974. he had left DC to work at Warren Publishing, for whose black-and-white horror-comics magazines he produced a series of original work as well as adaptations of stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. In 1975, Bernie joined with fellow artists Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, and Barry Windsor-Smith to form The Studio, a shared loft in Manhattan where the group would pursue creative products outside the constraints of comic book commercialism. Though he continued to produce sequential art, Bernie at this time began producing artwork for numerous posters, prints, calendars, and even coloring books. Bernie spent seven years drawing approximately 50 detailed pen-and-ink illustrations to accompany an edition of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, which the artist considers among his most personal work. Bernie illustrated the comic book adaptation of the film Stephen King-penned horror film Creepshow,. This led to several other collaborations with King, including illustrations for the novella " Cycle of the Werewolf" and the restored edition of King's apocalyptic horror epic, The Stand. Bernie has contributed album covers for a number of bands, including Meat Loaf. The " Captain Sternn" segment of the animated film Heavy Metal is based on a character created by Bernie. He did production design for the characters the Reavers in the 2005 film Serenity [1].

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Bruce Jones

Bruce Jones, whose pen names include Philip Roland and Bruce Elliot, is an American comic book writer, novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter whose work included writing Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk from 2001-2005.

                                                     Biography

Jones broke into comics in the early 1970s when he moved to New York City from his native Kansas City, Missouri, looking for work as a comics artist. He made his professional debut with Major Publications' black-and-white horror-comics magazine Web of Horror #3 (April 1970), writing and drawing the six-page story "Point Of View". Jones went on to write for Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics Creepy and Eerie, and, under the pseudonym Philip Roland, for rival Skywald's line. During this time he wrote his first novel, The Contestants.         Bruce later freelanced for Marvel Comics, writing stories for Ka-Zar and Conan the Barbarian, as well as writing and drawing anthological science fiction and other stories for Marvel's black-and-white magazine line. In 1979, Bruce met April Campbell and formed a writing partnership. From 1982-1984, Jones and Campbell, who formed the company Bruce Jones Associates, packaged, edited, and chiefly wrote the Pacific Comics titles Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds, as well as Somerset Holmes, Silverheels, and Pathways to Fantasy. During this time, Jones published the short story collection The Twisted Tales of Bruce Jones, with a cover and occasional illustrations by Richard Corben. When Pacific went bankrupt after publishing several issues of Bruce Jones Associates' comic book line, subsequent issues were published by Eclipse Comics. In the late 1980s, Bruce wrote artist Richard Corben's "Rip in Time" series, published in TK, and he played the space pilot in the "Relief Station" segment of Corben's and co-writer-director Christopher Wheate's direct-to-video feature The Dark Planet. By the early 1990s, Jones had shifted to screenwriting, working on HBO's The Hitchhiker TV series and several television movies with writing partner and now-wife April Campbell Jones. He also wrote a series of thriller novels including Sprinter, Maximum Velocity, and Game Running. From 1990 to 1992, Bruce took over as writer of the newspaper comic strip Flash Gordon, then drawn by Ralph Reese, occasionally assisted by Gray Morrow. He returned to Kansas City with his wife and children in 2000 and wrote two more novels, Still Life and Death Rites, under the pseudonym Bruce Elliot. In 2001, he was contacted by Marvel editor Axel Alonso, with whom Bruce had worked when Alonso was at rival company DC Comics. Alonso offered him a job scripting the then-floundering comic The Incredible Hulk. Sales of the title rose significantly, and in 2003, Bruce noted that he planned to stay on as Hulk writer "until they [Marvel] throw me off". However, the following year he signed a two-year contract with rival company DC Comics. In the interim, he scripted the five-issue series Call of Duty: The Precinct #1-5, a naturalistic drama about the New York City Police Department. Other work includes a seven-issue stint on Nightwing, a Deadman series for Vertigo, and various limited series for DC comics, including Man-Bat, OMAC, and Vigilante. In 2005, Bruce's 10-page story "Jenifer" from Creepy #63 (July 1974), drawn by Bernie Wrightson, became the basis for filmmaker Dario Argento's segment of Masters of Horror, a Showtime television series. The "Jenifer" episode was an erotically tinged horror story involving a deformed young woman which provided Argento with his best critical notices in years. In 2008, he started a new series, The War that Time Forgot. In 2008, he also replaced Greg Rucka as the writer for "Checkmate".

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