Latest Comic Guest Announcement - JOHN PAUL LEON

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Latest Comic Guest Announcement - John Paul Leon

Artist: Static, Earth X, The Winter Men, Challengers of the Unknown

Best known these days for his idiosyncratic covers for such titles as The Massive and DMZ, John Paul Leon is a graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts who began his career in 1992 drawing a three-chapter Robocop serial in Dark Horse Comics and Dark Horse's Robocop: Prime Suspect four-parter that followed immediately.

The following year he joined the embryonic DC imprint Milestone as the initial artist on Static. After drawing the first nine issues of that title he moved over to Milestone's Shadow Cabinet for which he illustrated all but two of the first 18 issues between 1994 and 1995. Increasingly Leon concentrated on covers and pin-ups with a resulting diminishing in his sequential art. However (fill-ins aside) the artist did draw two major 1996 projects for Marvel (the Logan: Path of the Warlord one-shot and the four-issue Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix) before embarking on a major relaunch within DC's superhero line in 1997.

The new Challengers of the Unknown kept him busy into 1998 after which he headed back to Marvel for his most high profile project to date – the Alex Ross-spearheaded Earth X. After completing the 1999 12-parter he returned to DC and Milestone to resurrect his co-creation for the four issues of 2001's Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool. Four years later, after more covers, fill-ins and one-shots, he co-created 2005's The Winter Men, a DC/WildStorm six-parter that wasn't wrapped up until 2009, the year he illustrated a Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandos one-shot for Marvel.

Since 2010, when he tag teamed artist Tom Raney on the four issues of Marvel's Black Widow: Deadly Origin, Leon's output has been almost exclusively covers although he recently illustrated a two-part serial for DC's Detective Comics.