Jim Webb’s early childhood was formed by his love of comics and growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Jim distinctly remembers learning to read from of comics, and even then he knew early on that drawing and creating comics was his life’s ambition. This propelled him to become a student at the High School for Art and Design. It was a natural that living in New York, he would attended the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1981. A student at SVA, his most profound creative influence was Will Eisner and his focus on story, storytelling and how it all worked. Jim also credits Harvey Kurtzman, art spiegelman, and Sam Vivano for their expertise and guidance. Upon graduating from SVA in 1984, Jim interviewed at Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates. Jim credits that interview with Neal Adams to refine his work methods, upgrade his drawing skills and overall level of professional presentation.
Jim Webb’s first work published work was a part of the Bonus Book program developed by DC Comics to shepherd new talent into the field. The Bonus Book program was based on a cold submission policy and it was editor, Andy Helfer who called Jim to pencil a Justice League International Bonus Book. It was his first taste of professional experience drawing iconic characters like Batman, Big Barda, Martian Manhunter, and Rocket Red 7.
In 1993, Jim was hired to illustrate an Eerie story, written by Richard Howell for Harris Publications. Unfortunately an editorial shuffle moved Howell out, but luckily the new editor, Melony Crawford Chadwick hired Jim for an 8-page prequel story for Hyde-25 #0.
The story was to lay the groundwork for a 3-issue miniseries written by Tom Sniegowski revolving around the Hyde-25 serum. Jim penciled the series completely, and again the internal Harris publishing policy swing in a different direction. Other mini-series and the entire Hyde-25 series has yet to see publication.
Richard Howell, went on to be the founder and publisher of Claypool Comics and commissioned Jim for 3-issues of the new title, Elvira Mistress of the Dark. All three issues were well received and Jim continued with Claypool Comics doing several back-up stories in the Claypool title, Soul Searchers. Continuing a string of work on strong and powerful women, Jim was hired to pencil an issue of Lady Justice. Jesse Chambers, then an editor for Big Entertainment in 1995 had seen his previous work (the Elvira run and other series work) on many femme fatals and hired Jim to pencil an issue of Lady Justice.
In 1999, Digital Webbing’s Ed Dukshire published Jim’s first creator-owned character called Innocent Faith, Demon Hunter as a feature in Digital Webbing magazine. This time around, it was Jim filled the roles of creator, writer, artist and letterer. It was about this time that the animation field presented Jim with new venues to explore.
In 2006, Jim created a faithful adaptation of the Rachael Robbins character named Blondezilla! Blondezilla (http://www.evildread.com/interviews/rachael_robbins.php) is a “half blonde bombshell, half homage to Toho’s classic monster”. Robbins, a former Playboy model blended horror and comedy to create Blondezilla, a hybrid that may be prompted by her own infectious sense of humor. Robbins was very inspired by the work and credits Jim as her visual storyteller in the realm of comics.
Jim closely followed that endeavor with his second creator-owned property, The Adversary. Changing the approach to his previous creation Innocent Faith, Jim infused the character with his influences from the world of animation and distilled storytelling to create a wholy new character, The Adversary. It is this character which is his current on-going project.
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Jim first started in animation doing art revisions for Broadcast Arts in 1992, followed by his key framing work at Magnet Pictures, and storyboard work for Curious Pictures. Penny Maelander, a production supervisor at Broadcast Arts was an inspirational influence on Jim during his formative animation years at BA, Magnet Pictures, Curious Pictures and finally MTV Animation. At MTV Animation, Jim did animation layouts, backgrounds,and revisions for the broadcast shows Beavis and Butt-Head, and Daria that ran on the cable network from 1997 to 2002.
Jim continued his storyboard work for The Venture Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venture_Bros.) at Noodle Soup Productions (http://www.imdb.com/company/co0117056/) where he met Stephen DeStefano (http://stephendestefano.blogspot.com). It was DeStefano was helped Jim realize the different forms of quality storyboarding. Jim was able to unite his comics storytelling experiences with animation at 4-Kids Productions where he did storyboards, and clean-up on the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT allowed Jim grow in both fields and to fulfill many of his goals as a sequential artist.
In 2005 Jim created character designs for TV Land working again for Penny Mayleander. Working closely with Dave Erwin at DC’s licensing design department Jim created action designs based on the then new Legion of Superheroes cartoon.
Jim currently teaches “Storyboard Art” at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY
Date of Birth: January 6th, 1971
Website: http://jimwebb.us
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