Ross, Alex

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Alex Ross

Born January 22, 1970 (Portland, Oregon)
American artist, illustrator

"I just fell in love with the notion that there were colorful characters like this, performing good, sometimes fantastic deeds.… I wanted to bring these characters to life."

By most accounts, Alex Ross has been the single best artist working in comic books and graphic novels since his breakthrough in the mid-1990s on Marvels, written by Kurt Busiek (1960–; see entry). Publishers Weekly called him "the preeminent painter of superheroes of his generation," and Booklist claimed that Ross was "arguably comic books' only genuine superstar, whose artistic touch turns any title into a bestseller." More than any other artist of his generation, Ross returned some of the grandeur and power to the classic superheroes of Marvel Comics and DC Comics. A great part of the undeniable allure in Ross's work derives from his sheer skill as an illustrator and painter: he has consistently shown an uncanny ability to breathe life into his heroes with drawings done from living models, and his work in gouache (a kind of watercolor paint) shows a richness of color rarely seen in comics. Yet it is the intangible qualities in his work—the reverence with which Ross seems to view his heroic subjects, the bold command that they seem to exert over their world, the sense that some characters, especially Superman and Batman, exhibit the qualities of gods—that make Ross the most noted comic artist in many years.

"The world is my oyster!"

Ross was born Nelson Alexander Ross on January 22, 1970, in Portland, Oregon. His father, Clark, was a minister; his mother, Lynette, was a former commercial illustrator who had put down her paintbrush to devote herself to being a mother. From a very early age, Ross was drawn to art: his mother kept sketches of television characters he drew from the time he was three, and by the age of four, Ross told interviewer Ken Plume on the IGN Web site, "The idea of being a comics artist was pretty key in my mind." By 1978, Ross's parents had relocated to Lubbock, Texas, where his father was a minister at the United Church of Christ. With his older siblings now out of the house, Ross devoted ever more of his time and attention to drawing.

Best-Known Works

(Text by Ron Fortier) Terminator: The Burning Earth (1990).

(Cover art; text by Louise Simonson) Superman: Doomsday & Beyond (1993).

(Text by Kurt Busiek) Marvels (1994).

(With Mark Waid) Kingdom Come (1997).

(With Steve Darnall) Uncle Sam (1997).

(With Paul Dini) Superman: Peace on Earth (1999); Batman: War on Crime (1999); Shazam!: Power of Hope (2000); Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth (2001).

(With Jim Krueger) X Trilogy: Earth X, Universe X, and Paradise X (2000–02).

(Text by Paul Dini) JLA. 3 vols. (2002–05).

Ross didn't draw just anything—he specifically drew superheroes. In Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross, a lavishly illustrated tribute to Ross's work with DC Comics stories, noted author and graphic designer Chip Kidd resurrected numerous drawings and paper cutouts that Ross created when he was just a child. Ross explained to Kidd his early attraction to superheroes: "They're the ultimate people.… As an adolescent you need order in your world, and superheroes have that, a sense of ethics that would never change—they would never be less than perfect, fighting for their ideals." Ross studied the artistic styles of comics creators like Neal Adams (1941–), George Pérez (1954–), and Bernie Wrightson (1948–), but he was also influenced by prominent magazine illustrators such as Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) and Andrew Loomis (1892–1959), from whom he adopted a love for realistic portrayal of human expressions and a fascination with the impact of low-angle lighting. On his Web site, Ross wrote: "I idealized people like Rockwell, who drew in that photorealistic style [drawings that looked like photographs.] When I was sixteen or so, I said to myself, 'I want to see that in a comic book!"'

Through high school, art was Ross's fascination and his refuge. He didn't go out on a lot of dates or engage in other school activities like sports. "Art," Ross told Plume, "was the one thing I had that worked well for me … that would stand me out against my peers." By the time he was nearing graduation from high school, Ross knew that he wanted to go to art school at the American Academy of Art in Chicago—the same school his mother had attended years before. At the American Academy of Art, Ross received excellent technical instruction in artistic methods. Working with live models for the first time, he realized that he had a talent for capturing the human body that was not shared by his fellow students. He told Plume how excited he was to think that perhaps he did have the skills to make a living through his art: "So it's funny that I was basically realizing that I can be a human camera, and I can print out—through my hand—what my eyes are seeing, and I'm so impressed with myself and thinking, like, 'My god, the world is my oyster!"'

Realizes a dream

Upon graduating from the academy in 1989, Ross was determined that he would make his living painting for comic books, but he took a realistic approach to realizing his dream. He didn't expect to break in right away, especially with his distinctive approach (Ross was painting when most comic book artists were using ink). Instead, he counted on getting a normal job and perfecting his art until he could break into the business. He took a job as a storyboard artist for the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago, which meant that he drew illustrated versions of advertising pitches. But, he related to Plume, "I was never without my eye on the door," because he really believed this job was "a stepping stone to getting work in comics." By the end of 1989, his determination began to pay off, and he was hired to create the art for Terminator: The Burning Earth, with script by Ron Fortier. He finished his full day at work and returned home to work for hours on his comics job. Terminator wasn't a big success: Its publisher, Now Comics, went out of business and Ross wasn't paid for all his work. But it was a start, and it helped bring his art to the attention of others in the industry.

By the early 1990s, one comics writer who especially liked Ross's work was Kurt Busiek. Together, Busiek and Ross began work on a new series aimed at retelling the origins of the bestknown characters created by Marvel Comics over the years, including the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, and Spider-Man. The series, called Marvels, was issued first as comic books, then collected into a large-format graphic novel in 1994. Busiek was heralded for bringing a new narrative approach to the comic book, for he viewed the superheroes from the vantage of a photographer seeing both the good and the bad in the characters. Ross was acclaimed for the new life that he breathed into the characters. The bodies of the heroes looked real, and real emotions washed across the faces of people; light and shadow played an important role, and were rendered realistically; and the art overall was rendered with rich color and real depth.

Several of his Ross's techniques are more common to fine artists than to his peers in the world of comics. Like most comic book artists, Ross's art begins as a pencil sketch. But unlike most comic book artists, Ross bases his drawings on real models: he carefully selects models based on their resemblance to the superheroes and villains he wants to create. Ross poses his models and uses careful lighting to get just the effects he desires; he takes many photographs, and uses these photographs to guide his drawings. "The connection to a person grounds me to the work," Ross related to Chip Kidd in Mythology.

With his drawing complete, Ross next paints over the entire sketch in black and white, working carefully to get the right tones and shading. Then he paints atop this with gouache (pronounced gwash), a kind of watercolor paint that is much heavier and richer in color than regular watercolors. Finally, Ross uses an airbrush (which blows paint out a tube as a fine mist) to get his final effects. "I get a softening from [the airbrushing] that you don't perceive consciously, something you can't do with a brush stroke." He's done, he told Kidd, "when I don't see the answers anymore, when I don't know what else to do with it."

Ross rejoined Busiek to produce cover art for Busiek's acclaimed Astro City series, published intermittently from 1997 to 2005, but he also began a long-standing relationship with DC Comics in 1993 when he signed on to produce a cover for a new Superman novel. DC editor Charles Kochman told Kidd that he knew he wanted to sign Ross for the job after seeing his rendering of the Human Torch in Marvels: "I'd never seen comic book illustration that realistic. It was as if the man were really on fire. I thought, if the Human Torch were real, this is what he would look like. It was startling, especially in the context of the time—no one was painting superheroes then, at least not in the way Alex was." Ross's work on the Superman cover and Marvels, claims Kidd, catapulted Ross to stardom. He quit his job in advertising and devoted all his energies to painting superheroes.

Builds a varied career

Ross's long fascination with superheroes went beyond creating the art; since he was a teenager, he had been dreaming up a sweeping story that reexamined the entire world of DC Comics superheroes. Now that he had won industry acclaim, Ross got the green light to work on the project with writer Mark Waid (1962–), then best known for his stories about the Flash and Captain America. The story they created was called Kingdom Come, and it featured an epic confrontation between DC's first generation of heroes—including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—and a new generation of heroes turned to evil purposes and led by Captain Marvel. The entire story is seen through the eyes of Norman McCay, a minister who, along with the Spectre, provides moral commentary on the action of the story. (The character of McCay was based on Ross's father, who also served as the model for Ross's artwork.) Kingdom Come was greeted by positive reviews and won a series of awards, including Ross's first Harvey Award for Best Artist (he had already won several other Harveys, a prominent comics industry award). Reviewers praised the story's epic scale, but they especially drew attention to the luminous artwork and to Ross's masterful treatment of Superman, the world's best-known comic character.

[Image not available for copyright reasons]

Following Kingdom Come, Ross turned in a completely different direction when he began to work with writer Steve Darnall on the series Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is a dark tale that forces its lead character—the very symbol of the United States, depicted as a crazed derelict—to confront the dark secrets and misdeeds often overlooked in the American past. Ross pictured Uncle Sam at various points in American history, and his art often echoed visual images from famous paintings. Ross told Kidd: "It was technically the hardest thing I've ever worked on because it required so much more research than the super hero stuff." With its dark vision of the American past, Uncle Sam did not sell especially well in the United States, though reviewers as always applauded the artwork. The book was a real success in Europe, however, and British comic giant Alan Moore (1953–; see entry) called it "the most eloquent use of a superhuman archetype for a great many years.… As a portrait of a fond American dream at last waking to itself, Uncle Sam is genuinely inspiring and deserves to be read more than once," as quoted in Mythology.

With the successes he had in his other work for DC Comics, Ross became the natural choice for a series of graphic novels commemorating the 60th anniversaries of DC superheroes, starting, of course, with Superman. Written by Paul Dini (1957–), Superman: Peace on Earth tells of a mature Superman who decides to use his immense powers to try to battle world hunger, at least for one day, by delivering food to the hungry all over the world. Yet his goal proves impossible to reach, for the hungry riot to gain access to food and a bullying dictator doesn't want to give up to Superman any control over his people. The book provided Ross with an opportunity to fully explore the visual and thematic elements of the character who had meant the very most to him over the years. "In this story," he told Kidd, "Superman may be a stand-in for [Jesus] Christ, but he is also undoubtedly a metaphor for America.… We tried to show that the best of intentions cannot always be rewarded or even be the right thing to do in every case." Ross put it slightly differently to interviewer Richard von Busack on the MetroActive Web site: "Superman can remind us of certain ethics and moral choices. A lot of my personal makeup, my belief systems, right and wrong, were based in Superman.… What I want to bring back is a sense of morality to comics."

Ross and Dini explored similar territory in Batman: War on Crime . Ross painted a Batman without the Batmobile and hightech gadgets of the movie, depicting him instead as the dark-clad avenger, swooping silently down to instill fear into the hearts of criminals. The story ends with Batman helping to direct a young boy, whose parents had been killed, away from a life of crime. Dini and Ross also teamed up on stories about Wonder Woman and Shazam. The graphic novels were carefully written and painted to appeal to a broad audience, a point that was of real importance to Ross, who is convinced that superhero stories have important lessons to teach young people. "We're trying to make [these stories] something that can be brought to your children without shame," he told von Busack.

After finishing the commemorative books for DC in 2001, Ross worked on a variety of other projects. He teamed up with Jim Krueger to create the X Trilogy, which includes Earth X, Universe X, and Paradise X. In these stories, Ross revisits Marvel Comics characters in a world where regular people have gained superpowers and the superheroes must try to keep order. While Ross thought up storylines and characters, and did some covers for this series, other artists were brought in to do the majority of the art. Into the mid-2000s, Ross also worked on the acclaimed JLA series, which offered him additional opportunities to explore the figures from DC Comics.

Alex Ross's Superman

Alex Ross's favorite character, and the one for which he is best known, is Superman. When offered a chance to take on the job of depicting Superman, Ross wanted to create a character who was timeless. "Superman should never reflect any fashionable trend or other affectation of a specific era—hairstyle, speech patterns, etcetera," noted Ross in Mythology. "He is beyond that. He is out of time." Though Ross studied images of Superman from the character's beginnings in 1939 up to the mid-1990s, he ended up basing his depiction of the world's most powerful man on Frank Kasy, a friend who is also an illustrator and artist. Ross's Superman is mature, and the weight of his years and his experience is written in the lines on his face and the slight sag in his chin; he is muscular, though not puffed up like a modern bodybuilder. Perhaps most importantly, Ross depicts Superman as having a striking presence that is more than the sum of his physical attributes, and somehow a reflection of the moral weight carried by the "Man of Steel."

By the mid-2000s, Ross was widely sought after as a cover artist for comic books and related books and graphic novels, and he had won nearly every award the comics industry had to offer. Yet his stardom had also spread beyond the world of comic books. His artwork graced posters, convention programs, magazines, T-shirts, and movies (notably, 2004s Spider-Man ), and he has created action figures, statues, and toys based upon his artwork. The pen-and-ink sketches he uses to start his paintings were priced starting at $1,000, and his paintings sold for between $10,000 and $25,000. Yet for all his renown, Ross remains dedicated to his life dream of creating superhero comics, rendered with all the talent and dedication of one of the greatest artistic talents ever to paint men in capes.