iFanboy Upstarts: Renae De Liz

Some artists are content just drawing comics, but others have ideas and a passion for more. Some like Jim Lee pursue the business side of things, while others like  Kazu Kibuishi branch out and form a home for a group of artists with the anthology series Flight. Artist Renae De Liz branched out herself from being “just” an artist in comics to being a creator and organizer with the Kickstarter-driven anthology series Womanthology.

Born in Alaska, De Liz got her start in professional comics when IDW tapped her in 2007 to draw Barbara Kesel’s Rogue Angel: Teller of Tall Tales miniseries. After that, IDW chose her to adapt the popular fantasy novel The Last Unicorn into comic book, but found time to fill-in on an issue of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box before beginning that in 2010. In 2011, De Liz stepped back from interior work and only did covers that year with Anne Rice’s Servant Of The Bones. She wasn’t taking a break though, as De Liz was working furiously on her female-only comic anthology Womanthology. De Liz mounted a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project, and it went wildly past her expectations and raised over four times her goal of $25,000. In 2011 she published the first graphic novel, subtitled Heroic, and has since done three other installments with the theme/subtitle of Holiday, Valentine and Space.

But while Womanthology remains her most well-known and identifiable work, De Liz is working to do more; she just announced she’d doing an adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan as well as a new superhero-themed series called Lady Powerpunch which spins out of her story from the first Womanthology graphic novel. And she’s getting a bit of attention because of DC’s Amethyst revival, even though she’s not drawing it; for years, De Liz has been working for fun on an Amethyst comic and was actually in the running to draw the new series inside the recently debuted Sword & Sorcery series but was passed over. De Liz has posted her work online, and has drawn a number of fans wondering what might’ve been.

Here’s an eclectic sample of Renae De Liz’s work to help you understand her style and reach in illustration and graphic storytelling. Let us know what you think in the comments!