Is an artist with experience in almost every aspect of comic book production. However, he is best known as an award-winning colorist whose work has appeared in nearly all of the most popular American comics. Battle of the Bands is, perhaps, Steve's most audacious project to date and marks a turning point in a varied, though comic book-specialized, career.
Steve's lifework began as a lowly high-school intern at Marvel Comics, where he was quickly recognized for his competence in sorting mail and fetching coffee. In a mere two years after being hired full-time, Steve went from answering phone calls to editing a line of books for Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.
After gaining valuable editorial experience, Steve decided to pursue more artistic endeavors, but as a freelancer, Steve soon found himself pigeonholed as a colorist. The work was easy for him, so for a while he neglected his true goal: to become a comic book writer/artist. Occasionally, Steve drew the odd penciling job on Power Pack, Excalibur and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (to name a few), but mostly he colored. And colored. And colored. In fact, Steve was one of the pioneers of comic book computer coloring who helped found Electric Crayon Productions, a company that—along with their office-mates, Comicraft—helped bring Marvel into the digital age.
Once his time with Electric Crayon was over, Steve got his artistic career back on track when he convinced Hyperwerks and Image Comics to publish his own creation, Weasel Guy. The comic first appeared in a critically acclaimed crossover, Weasel Guy / Witchblade and then in two issues of his own limited series, Weasel Guy: Road Trip.
Steve's next project drew upon everything he learned in the past—as an artist, as a Marvel editor, and from his work in production and pre-press at Electric Crayon. Along with his studio, Mad Science Media, Steve self-published Comiculture, a comics anthology magazine. Comiculture garnered plenty of critical acclaim, both for the concept and for the story content within, and Steve’s serialized crime story Joey Berserk & Claire was singled out often as a high point in a magazine full of top-notch stories.
Today, Steve is happy to report that only a fraction of his income now comes from coloring, and none of it from fetching coffee! He is doing more illustration work and is thrilled to be working on Battle of the Bands with TOKYOPOP!
- TokyoPop
