iFanboy Upstarts: Connor Willumsen

You don’t make it in comics by being someone else. Although many artists grow up admiring (and aping) their favorite artists, it isn’t until they find themselves that they have a real shot of making it. And this week’s iFanboy Upstarts has synthesized some of the International comic greats and found his own way that weaves in and out of the superhero mainstream and into various fields of comics.

American artist Connor Willumsen has worked in and around comics both here and in Europe, but he does it on his own terms. After doing various self-published mini-comics and editorial illustrations, he made his formal debut in 2008’s Popgun Vol. 2 with a story he wrote and drew entitled “Out of Focus.” He returned a year later for Popgun‘s third volume, and was picked by DC to illustrate Kurt Busiek’s Witchlands (originally titled American Gothic), but the series has been delayed due to Busiek’s illness. 2009 did see Willumsen do piece-meal work across the comics landscape on everything from Proof to Madman: Atomic Comics. He did illustrate a full-length graphic novel called Les âmes sèches (French for “The Dry Souls”) with writer Antoine Ozanam, but it was published by the European publisher Casterman and hasn’t been translated to English. In 2010 he did a series of covers for various Boom! comics including Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? Dust To Dust and The Calling: Cthulhu Chronicles before engaging in a surprising new publisher: Marvel Comics. Although he only did two issues before leaving the publisher, his Untold Tales of Punisher Max #2 (with writer Jason Latour) and Wolverine MAX #1 (with writer Jason Starr).

With Willumsen’s next major project still unannounced, all we can do is wait and see. But after you his work below, you have to admit whatever it’ll do will be worth reading and admiring.