Greg Land – July 2013

 

342977-75091-greg-landGreg Land went to ISU (Indiana State University) and received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts Degree in 1985. He started in the screen print business during his senior year of college and worked as a screen print artist for 10 years.

His passion was to draw comic books, so in the early 1990’s he started to put together a comic book portfolio to show to editors at the comic conventions and for submissions to comic companies. He got his first break into comics in 1994 with Sky Comics, on a title called Storm Quest. This work led to projects with DC Comics including Nightwing and the Birds of Prey.

In 2001 Greg started with CrossGen Comics and helped develop their top selling adventure book, Sojourn. His next step was illustrating several covers for Marvel, Top Cow and DC Comics.

His relationship with Marvel Comics has led to several exclusive contracts with them that has featured work on titles such as Phoenix End Song, Ultimate Fantastic Four (which introduced the Marvel Zombies), Ultimate Power and The Uncanny X-Men.

Land’s work has been the subject of some criticism, with critics saying he has lifted images from sources that include hardcore pornography, and copying them into his pages outright with minimal alterations to make the work appear to be an original drawing.

Land has agreed that he does employ photo reference to a large extent, and that he uses pornography as a source, but denies that the extent to which he does so is questionable. The A.V. Club included him in their 2009 list of “21 artists who changed mainstream comics (for better or worse)” for this reason.

Land resides in Florida with his family.