iFanboy Upstarts: Aaron Campbell

Comics have a long history of dark subject matter, be it in story and in art style. After the wave of Image-style artists in the 90s, this heavily shadowed chiaroscuro-esque technique has become very popular with artists like Mike Mignola and Sean Phillips leading the way, and even Frank Miller adapting it as his own for Sin City. And now a relatively new artists to comic is adopting it and taking it to Dynamite’s pulp comics with aplomb.

Albuquerque artist Aaron Campbell first popped up in professional comics as the artist of Dynamite’s Sherlock Holmes series in 2009 by Leah Moore and John Reppion. Since then he’s been a company man for Dynamite, drawing the ongoing series Green Hornet: Year One for twelve straight issues and doing the current Dark Shadows miniseries. In between all of this, both DC and Top Cow have brought him in for a The Darkness cover and a short in the back of House of Mystery, but Campbell is returning to Dynamite for his biggest project yet: The Shadow with Garth Ennis beginning this April.

When The Shadow #1 ships next month it will mark Campbell’s third anniversary in comics, and it looks like he’s going to have a long career ahead of him. Although none of Campbell’s art from The Shadow has been released, we’re glad to show you several pages of his previous work including some unique commissions and personal projects.

Comments

  1. He was fantastic in the Green Hornet Year One maxiseries that noone read.

    • Bite your tongue, I loved Year One. It was the best pulp comic I’d read in years. It really bummed me out when Dynamite phased it out along with Green Hornet Strikes.

    • GH: Y1 was one of my favorite books while it was coming out. I’ll still tell anyone who will listen about how freakin awesome it was

  2. I’m really excited to see what he does with The Shadow….dude’s got skills, and this pulpy-noir kinda thing is totally what he’s good at.

  3. Dark Shadows is only a mini-series? Bummer.

  4. Love this art-style, it is very much Michael Lark-esque whom I only disovered for the first time when he drew a recent issue of The Punisher. I remember thinking “No, not another damn fill-in artist! Who the hell is this dude anyway!?”
    Now I want him to be the full-time artist; nothing against Chechetto. But yeah, this Aaron Campbell is also brilliant, he packs everything with detail and grit, it’s just awesome.