My MARVEL Origin Story
When I was in college, I worked at a small Mexican diner where we would get the usual assortment of business-park workers on their lunch hours. I’ve never been the shy type and always welcomed a good conversation. One day a group of regulars came in and I noticed one of them was wearing a Malibu Comics t-shirt. After a short exchange, I convinced him that, even though I was fantastic at making tacos, I was looking for a career in graphic design and the creative arts. He gave me his card and, after taking an entry-level Photoshop test, I was hired into the world of iconic super heroes. While I was at MARVEL, it was an era of change in the comic book industry and publishing was going digital. The concept of using Adobe Photoshop for more than just editing and color correcting photographs was new. Not many people were using it as a painting tool and even fewer were using it in a fast paced bullpen production environment.
I started as a colorist on the night shift and eventually was promoted to Color Editor. My team was responsible for titles such as Spider-Man, The X-MEN, Venom, Wolverine, Captain America, HULK, Ghost Rider, The Fantastic Four and The AVENGERS.
Licensed titles from Disney, FOX, Paramount and SEGA were also part of the regular rotation of comics that would be assigned to my team.
The Bride Of VENOM
I was the color designer for the very first appearance of She-Venom. I created the color palette for the character and designed the interior page color schemes. I then worked with my team of colorists to bring the pages to life through visuals that would enhance the storyline.
The original comic title was The Bride Of VENOM.
With the regained popularity of the VENOM character and the success of Sony’s VENOM film, MARVEL re-released the original book as part of the True Believers series.
TRUE BELIEVERS: ABSOLUTE CARNAGE – SHE-VENOM #1
The comic book industry was part of the digital design revolution. During this time, we were pioneers on a new frontier. Coloring comic books had always been done by hand and the industry needed to adapt to the changing techniques of the printing industry and new software tools like Adobe Photoshop. Readers’ expectations were also increasing with the launch of visually ground breaking titles like Spawn and other titles from Image Comics. Marvel needed to stay competitive. The bull pen we worked in was a hot bed of information sharing and teaching techniques we were creating on the fly. I’m proud to say that today’s digital artists are creating with digital tools and software techniques that are directly inspired by those early days of a room full of colorists using Adobe Photoshop which was originally meant to edit and restore photos.
The coloring teams at MARVEL strived not to just pump out colored comic book pages, but to develop new techniques and processes that would make the art of the pages come to life. I fondly look back on this time, as it was the first step in my career and my first experience managing people and not just my creative team. By the end of my time at MARVEL, I was a manager of a robust night shift of roughly 40 creative and technical staffers. I managed tight deadlines and HR responsibilities, as well as color design and color editorial for my assigned titles.