iFanboy Upstarts: Keron Grant

In terms of career trajectory, Keron Grant is like artist Travel Foreman in many ways; both quickly rose from the independents to doing lower tier books for the Big Two and then took a break from comics. For Foreman, he came back in force on DC’s Animal Man late last year but for fans of Keron Grant, we’re still waiting for that return.

The Jamaican-born artist got his start in the back pages of Dale Keown’s Pitt doing pin-ups in the late 90s, and was quickly roped in by Image co-founder Rob Liefeld to work on his breakaway company Awesome Entertainment. Grant worked on a series called Century that never saw the light of day, and then a one-off comic called Gazillion and a short-lived reboot of Jeph Loeb & Jeff Matsuda’s Kaboom. Before long, bigger companies took notice and Grant was pulled over to be a fill-in artist for DC on titles like Young Justice 80-Page Giant and Legion of Super-Heroes. DC couldn’t keep ahold of the artist long, as Marvel woo’ed him over to draw the A-List series Iron Man. Grant drew a half-dozen issues before teaming with Adam Warren on an over-looked but great three-issue stint on Fantastic Four smack dab in the Waid/Wieringo era. After that he drew a one-off issue of Grant Morrison’s New X-men run before shifting over to launch a new New Mutants series. Grant only lasted a couple issues on that book before being  lured back to DC to launch a rebooted Son of Vulcan series, which unfortunately didn’t grab readers the way people had hoped. It was 2005 by the time Grant finished, and he took an unexpected hiatus from comics to work as an illustrator for magazines, movies and video games. From time to time he’s cropped back up in comics doing pin-ups and covers for the one-shot Deadpool Corps: Rank & Foul to DC’s Static Shock Special #1. Grant’s entered into that category of comic artists that left comics right at the precipice of a breakthrough in their career like Kieron Dwyer and others, coming back from time-to-time on limited engagements but presumably making a better living outside the breakneck world of comics. Fans of his work would do well to track down his early 00s comic work, as well as the limited edition art books he’s released over his hiatus from comics.

Grant’s recent work brings to mind greats like Bart Sears if he was inked by Bill Sienkiewicz or modern counterparts like Kaare Andrews, but his storytelling is more attuned with modern storytellers like Paul Pope and Corey Lewis. It’s tough to say when or if this artist will ever mount a full-scale return to comics, but publishers would be foolish not to drop him a line just in case. Here’s examples of his work — tell us what you see in those lines and what you’d like to see him draw.