| Robert Venditti | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer |
| Notable works | The Surrogates |
Robert Venditti is a comic book creator. Venditti is most notably known for his work on the Top Shelf Productions title The Surrogates, which was adapted to a major motion picture starring Bruce Willis directed by Jonathan Mostow for Disney.[1]
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Robert Venditti attended the University of Florida where he received a B.A. in Political Science and later went on to earn an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida.[2]
Venditti was born in Memorial Hospital and raised in Hollywood, and Pembroke Pines, Florida. At eighteen years old he moved to Gainsvelle to attend college, undergraduate; after which he worked as a clerk at a law firm in southern Florida with aspirations to practice law. Later, deciding against a career in law, he worked as a fuel truck operator until he went back to college at the University of Central Florida.
While there, he also worked at the book store chain Borders Books in Winter Park, where his interest in the comic book industry was encouraged by a regular customer of the store. Writing off the customer's encouragement of comic books as beneath him, Venditti is quoted in an interview with the comic book website Project Fanboy as saying,
I thought, erroneously, what everybody thinks, “comics are for little kids,” because I was in Grad school and I was gonna be the next Hemingway.
Finally succumbing to the customer's encouragement, Venditti read Kurt Busiek's Astro City, liked it, and decided to pursue a career in comic books.
After meeting publisher Chris Staros in 2002, Venditti eventually began working packing boxes for Top Shelf Productions trying to work his way up in the company. In December 2002 Venditti submitted his title The Surrogates, to Staros in hopes that it would be passed along to someone interested in publishing the work. Instead of passing the work along, Top Shelf decided to keep the title and published the first book in July 2005. Venditti currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia and his prequel to The Surrogates, Surrogates: Flesh & Bone was released in July 2009.
Owly, Volume 1: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer ISBN 978-1-891830-62-4 Andy Runton (author), Andy Runton (artist), Chris Staros & Robert Venditti (editors) Published: 2004, Top Shelf Productions
The Surrogates (Volume 1) ISBN 978-1-891830-87-7 Robert Venditti (author), Brett Weldele (artist) Published: 2006, Top Shelf Productions
The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone (Volume 2) ISBN 978-1-60309-018-6 Robert Venditti (author), Brett Weldele (artist) Published: 2009, Top Shelf Productions
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel ISBN 1423116968 Rick Riordan (author), Robert Venditti (author/adapted by), Attila Futaki (artist) Published: 2010, Hyperion Books
The Homeland Directive ISBN 978-1-60309-024-7 Robert Venditti (author), Mike Huddleston (artist) Published: May, 2011, Top Shelf Productions