Happy Birthday: José Luis Garcia-Lopez, Brian Bolland, and Mark Verheiden
Today is a popular birthday for comic book creators! Three very different comic book luminaries all share March 26.
José Luis Garcia-Lopez was born in Spain in 1948 but moved to Argentina in 1952. Growing up he worked on several Argentinian comic strips, and in the late 1960s he began doing romance titles for Charlton Comics. Garcia-Lopez moved to New York in 1974 to work for DC. He’s best known for his art on Superman.
Brian Bolland was born in 1951 in Lincolnshire, England, and began drawing at age 10. He went to art school and published work in various underground magazines, then met Dave Gibbons at a comic convention in 1972. Gibbons recommended him to Bardon Press Features and Bolland began drawing comics professionally. In 1977, he found work on the new British comic 2000 AD, and soon became a regular artist on Judge Dredd. In 1979 Bolland began working for DC Comics, doing both covers and shorts. Perhaps his most famous image is the cover to Batman: The Killing Joke.
Mark Verheiden was born in 1956. He started writing comics in 1987, creating The American for Dark Horse. The following year he wrote his first Aliens comic. Verheiden then wrote several Superman stories and a Phantom maxi-series for DC Comics. He also works in television and film, and has contributed scripts to Smallville and other series. He currently serves as co-executive producer of the popular Battlestar Galactica television series.
Mark Verheiden was once a member of SFPA, the amateur press association (to which i still belong). (So were Joe Staton and William Gibson, for that matter).Whatever else he has done, before or since, i will always be grateful to Mark for introducing me to the music of Big Daddy.