Travis Charest

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A Danger Girl cover by Travis Charest

Travis Charest (February 2, 1969, Leduc, Alberta) is a Canadian comic book artist, penciller and painter, best known as the person who in 1994 took over from Jim Lee during his self-described sabbatical from drawing his hit series WildC.A.T.s. Up to that point, Charest was known primarily for his work on various DC Comics and Wildstorm Comics assignments like Darkstars and a WildC.A.T.s miniseries, and as a cover artist for DC Comics on such titles as The Outsiders and Batman.

He received the WildC.A.T.s assignment shortly after he joined Lee's Homage Studios, a facility in La Jolla, California where many of the artists working for Lee's Wildstorm studio work side by side.

Charest's run on WildC.A.T.s, initially with writer James Dale Robinson, and later with Alan Moore, saw his art evolve from being heavily influenced by the work of Lee, characterized by emphasized anatomy and cross-hatching, to a more sophisticated and distinct style emphasizing contours and solid areas of white and shadow. Currently, his style is more influenced by poster art from the 1920s and the work of painterly and realistic artists such as Moebius and Frank Frazetta, than by modern comic book action storytelling. With such a distinctive style, Charest easily became one of the most sought after artists.

Charest then went on take the assignment as regular penciller on the second WildC.A.T.s ongoing series, over scripts by his WildC.A.T.s/X-Men collaborator Scott Lobdell. However, it quickly became evident that Charest could not keep up with the pace of producing a regular comic, due to his attention to detail and consequently slow pace. He was replaced on the title by Sean Phillips and later left Wildstorm and Homage for French bande dessinee publisher Humanoïdes Associés.

His current project for that publisher, a Metabarons graphic novel, was started in April 2000, and has yet to be completed. His popularity remains high nevertheless, and the artist has maintained a level of approachability through his online groups on both Yahoo! and MSN.