Brent Eric Anderson was born in San Jose, California in 1955 and grew up on the West Coast. His favorite comics – on the rare occasion he was allowed to read them – were Archie, Stumbo the Giant, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, and Dennis the Menace. His mother, influenced by the widespread bias against comics in the 1950s, favored classic children’s literature, such as Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

“In junior high school, I discovered the wonderful world of Marvel Comics at the Rexall drug store in Felton, CA. The Fantastic Four were my favorite. They were a super-powered family who helped each other fighting villains, as well as in fighting with each other on occasion. I was part of a family like that, minus the super-powers! I started writing and drawing my own comics on ruled school binder paper, creating a pantheon of characters of my own, including Radium (illustrated here.)

“Three-and-a-half years later I started publishing fanzines with a couple of my friends. In 1976, three of those friends and I drove to New York City in an Auto Driveaway car. (Along the way we may have met Jesus in Iowa, who helped us restart our stalled car, but I digress.) Our first two weeks in NYC we lived in a transient hotel on 33rd Street, but the old refrigerator was breeding cockroaches, so we moved to Clifton, New Jersey. My first professional published work for Marvel Comics was a pin-up for Doc Savage Magazine, and a frontispiece for The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Magazine.

“My professional career really took off in 1979 with Ka-zar the Savage, written by Bruce Jones. The Marvel Graphic Novel: X-Men “God Loves, Man Kills,” written by Christopher Claremont, followed in 1982. Since then I’ve had some part in the creation of a wide-ranging list of works, including the innovative cinematic comic, Somerset Holmes, again with Bruce Jones (and his wife April Campbell), the heroic space-opera, Strikeforce:Morituri, written by Peter Gillis, and the award-winning Astro City with Kurt Busiek. Other credits include J. Michael Straczynski’s Rising Stars, Green Lantern: Legacy, “The Last Will and Testament of Hal Jordan,” (with Bill Sienkiewicz), written by Joe Kelly, and contributions to New 52 Action Comics #2, and a six-issue run on the New 52 Phantom Stranger, for DC Comics.

“Astro City, created and written by Kurt Busiek, has been published for more than twenty years. Being offered the series was an incredible opportunity to professionally co-create an ever-expanding pantheon of comic book characters in their own stand-alone universe, just as I did fifty years ago in junior high school.
“I have finished the black and white lineart on an original graphic novel, El Jaguár: Out of the Shadows, written by Shirley Johnston. The story involves a young man from southern Mexico, whose supernatural initiation gives him the power to pass between the borders of life and death, escorting three stranded children through that borderland to be reunited with their parents.

“On a completely different note, I am collecting material and jotting down ideas for a newspaper-style comic strip “You Get What Get” (which could wind up simply being called “Yantze,” the name of the lead character) a comedic look at working class suburbia very much like the one I was raised in and never grew out of.

“My greatest joy in drawing comics comes when I can add nuance and believability to a character, and illustrate a scene with just the right expression that captures the perfect mood of the moment. When the characters come to life I feel alive. That’s why I’ve dedicated my professional and personal life to creating comics.

“I live in northern California with two cats, my wife, Shirley, and my son, Bryce.”