Stan Lee | Jeff Smith | Mike Mignola

Stan Lee

             Born Stanley Martin Leiber on December 28th, 1922,  Stan Lee grew up between New York and Washington Heights, Manhattan, in a small apartment with his parents and younger brother. In his younger years, he did many small jobs, such as writing obituaries and delivering sandwiches, and selling newspaper subsciptions; he was extremely enthusiastic about writing and aspired to create a novel that  would someday become famous. Stan Lee graduated high school early at 16, and that same year, after having been influenced strongly by books and movies throughout early life, became an assistant at Timely Comics. This was also around the time that he shortened his name to "Stan Lee". Years later, TImely Comics evolved into Marvel. In 1961, alongside Jack Kirby, Stan Lee helped create and released Fantastic Four. Lee also worked frequently with Steve Ditko. Alongside these things, Lee has assisted in the inspiration, creation and publishing of multiple other Marvel heroes, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, and many, many others. Lee is included in the  Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame as of 1994, the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame as of 1995, and received a National Medal of Arts in 2008. Lee has worked as a publisher, writer, and editor, amongst other things, and has continued to create throughout the years. Lee released new work as recently as 2012, aged 90.

Jeff Smith

             Jeff Smith was born February 27th, 1960 in Mckees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Smith, intrigued by the idea of comics right from a young age, felt largely inspired by Peanuts and Carl Barks comcis, and his works with his Bone comics can be dated back to when he was as young as nine years old. For a long time he aspired to do newspaper comics, and while in college, he tried to balance animations and trying to do such; however, newspaper companies continuously tried to buy out his work, so that dream was dropped. Aside from that, for a while, Smith attempted to manage his own company in animation, but that also ended up to be something he was rather unsure of, and in the end he sold the company. Smith wanted control over his own work rather than having somebody take it and do the work for him. He wanted to be able to express his characters as he saw them without modifications or complete changes from outside sources. Neither animation nor newspaper strips would provide for this sort of freedom; and so, for a long time, Smith produced and published his comics, until his wife eventually left her job in order to assist him with sales. Smith's Bone comics are widely regarded as some of the greatest graphic novels of all time, recognized by fans and critics worldwide. The Bone comcis have been completed as of 2004, and another series of his, RASL, has been completed as well as of 2012. Smith's most recent works are on his ongoing comic, Tuki. 

Mike Mignola

            Michael Joseph Mignola was born September 16th, 1960 in Berkeley California, and grew up in Oakland nearby. From a young age, Mignola started drawing monsters for no reason other than that he liked it. He has explained in the past that he had a very strong, memorable moment around age 12, when he read Bram Stoker's Dracula and realized that that genre was exactly the way he wanted to express himself and what he wanted to make a career out of; through stories of the supernatural. His career began around 1982 after graduating from California College of the Arts for Marvel, where he worked on The Hulk ( as an ink artist) and Rocket Racoon (as the penciler), and throughout that time, he began to develop his own style. In the following years (between 1988 and 1990), he worked on larger name projects, such as Cosmic Odessy and Gotham by Gaslight. In 1993, Mignola moved to Dark Horse comics, where he created his comic Hellboy, which is completed, but has a subseries titled Hellboy in Hell. This series is ongoing as of today. Mignola worked as a production designer on the Disney movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and was Guillermo Del Toro's Blade II, as well as the Hellboy movie and its sequel, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Works Cited

Groth, Gary. "The Jeff Smith Interview." The Comics Journal. November 21, 2012. Accessed February 20, 2016.                                                                 http://www.tcj.com/the-jeff-smith-interview/.

"Stan Lee Biography." Bio.com. Ed. Biography.com Editors. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2016. <http://www.biography.com/people/stan-lee-21101093>.

Mignola, Mike. "Bio." Art of Mike Mignola. Mike Mignola, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2016. <http://www.artofmikemignola.com/Bio>.

"Mike Mignola Biography." Notable Biographies. Advameg, Inc., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2016. <http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Li-Ou/Mignola-Mike.html>.

-Lewis Cade