Alex Ross

Nelson Alexander Ross, known simply as Alex Ross, was born in Portland, Oregon, on 22 January 1970. He is an American illustrator, comics artist and writer whose name is closely tied to a hyperrealist approach to superheroes. Since the 1990s he has worked for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and his work has been described as a meeting point of Norman Rockwell and George Pérez.

Ross grew up in Lubbock, Texas. His father was a minister of the United Church of Christ, and his mother, Lynette, a commercial artist who passed on many of the traits that define his style. He started drawing at three and first encountered superheroes through Spider-Man on The Electric Company. At sixteen he discovered the realistic illustration of Andrew Loomis and Norman Rockwell and resolved to bring that approach to comics. He studied painting at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he came across the work of Joseph Christian Leyendecker and Salvador Dalí, which encouraged him to paint his illustrations.

After working as a storyboard artist at the Leo Burnett agency, he reached NOW Comics, for which he painted the entire miniseries Terminator: The Burning Earth (1990). He then joined Marvel and developed with Kurt Busiek the project that became the limited series Marvels, published in 1994 and widely praised for its realistic art. In 1993 he produced his first superhero covers for DC Comics. In 1996 he published Kingdom Come with Mark Waid, though disagreements over who had conceived the concept temporarily distanced him from DC. Later, together with Paul Dini, he produced DC works such as Superman: Peace on Earth and Batman: War on Crime.

His work has earned many Eisner and Harvey awards, both as a painter and as a cover artist. His style is so recognisable that Mad magazine has parodied it, with characters gazing toward the horizon. It has shaped a way of depicting superheroes with realistic anatomy and faces, and has influenced many later cover artists.