Jim Valentino

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Jim Valentino aka valentino (born October 28, 1952 in The Bronx, New York) is an American writer, penciler and editor of comic books.

He started his career in the late 1970s creating small press and mostly autobiographical comics which sprung out from him having literally sold pages layed out on the sidewalk while he leaned against a storefront. This is depicted in this early work. One of his first self published books may have been Valentino. The early-mid 1980s saw Normal Man which first appeared as a back-up story in Aardvark-Vanaheim's Cerebus, Dave Sim creator and Gerhard inker. Aardvark-Vanaheim's Dave and Deni (Then wife to Dave.) began publishing Normal Man as a 13 issue limited series but only did so until #8, when Deni began her own Renegade Press which finished the series.

The last issue was in 3-D and came with glasses. Later when at Image Jim had Normal Man come back for a special or two but has continued to honor his commitment to not continue the series as a whole. The original series was reprinted early on but has since been out of print. Next he maybe drew some issues of Myth Conceptions which may of had 1 or 2 different publishers. In the late 80s he began to work for Marvel Comics on their super-hero titles. His most notable work for the company was as writer and artist on the future-set super-hero series Guardians of the Galaxy.

He left Marvel in 1992 to co-found Image Comics with Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane and Marc Silvestri. Valentino originated several projects at Image, which he published through his own "Shadowline" imprint. Unlike at Marvel, where Valentino worked on characters owned by that company, at Image the original "Shadowline" titles were all creator-owned.

Of these the titles the most notable was the super-hero series ShadowHawk, which initially he wrote and drew himself. He began another series in black and white called Silver Age that was a semi-autobiographical novel that was about a boy coming of age and comic books in the 1960s but stopped work on it. Also during this time he repackaged most or all of his earliest autobiograpical work into a trade paper back which also had an introduction by Dave Sim.

In the late 1990s, he became the executive director of Image Comics. Under his directorship the company moved away from super-hero centric books, shifting focus towards independent properties. The results were mixed. On one hand, Valentino's efforts led to the discovery of a number of talented creators, including David Mack and Brian Michael Bendis. On the other hand, under Valentino Image Comics saw a significant drop in overall sales.

In 2003, Valentino was replaced as director of Image by Erik Larsen, another co-founder of the company. Since then Valentino has returned to writing and illustrating his own comics, and serves on the board of directors of comic industry charity A Commitment To Our Roots.

[edit] External links

• [1] Jim Valentino website