John Totleben (born February 16, 1958 in Erie, Pennsylvania) is an American illustrator working mostly in comics.
After studying art at a vocational high school in Erie, Totleben attended the Joe Kubert School for one year. He then spent several years working for comics editor Harry Chesler, producing illustrations for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; these never saw print. His first published work appeared in Heavy Metal in 1979.
His first success ...
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John Totleben (born February 16, 1958 in Erie, Pennsylvania) is an American illustrator working mostly in comics.
After studying art at a vocational high school in Erie, Totleben attended the Joe Kubert School for one year. He then spent several years working for comics editor Harry Chesler, producing illustrations for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; these never saw print. His first published work appeared in Heavy Metal in 1979.
His first success in American comics, and still his best-known work, was as the inker (of pencilled art by Steve Bissette) for the DC Comics title Swamp Thing, when the series was being written and reinvented by Alan Moore; Totleben and Bissette joined the series in 1983, shortly before Moore. Totleben's style was unusual for the time, and is still distinctive among U.S. comics artists, for its fluid layouts and heavily detailed rendering (using a combination of stippling and hatching). He also painted covers for the series in oils and acrylic, and continues to...
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