Mike Hawthorne


Mike Hawthorne is an American comic book artist and artist, known for his work on books such as Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, the Superior Spider-Man, and Deadpool.

Career

Mike Hawthorne began his career self publishing his comic series, Hysteria, with his company Thinktank Comics. He debuted in comics with Matt Wagner's Grendel: Red, White, and Black. Some of his early work includes The Un-men, Fear Agent, Umbra, G.I. JOE: Origins, Whiskey Dickel, Three Days in Europe, one story arc of Queen & Country, and Conan: Road of Kings.
He's gone on to work for virtually every comic publisher in the United States, and many of his works have been published overseas, like the comic book . He has worked for both Marvel and DC comics and drawn all of the most popular characters for both companies. Some notable examples books series he's worked on are Batman, Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Daredevil, Hulk, X-men, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. In fact, Hawthorne has worked on over 130 comic books at Marvel comics alone. Hawthorne illustrated 5 of the , including the top four spaces and the eighth space.
He was nominated for an Eisner Award for his work with Greg Rucka on Queen & Country, and nominated for a Harvey Award for his work with Steve Murphy on their limited series Umbra.
Hawthorne is also the author and artist of the best selling graphic novel, , and is currently working on an upcoming book with .
Hawthorne has self-published multiple books through Kickstarter, like his art books All City, , Little/RED, , and instructional and educational manuals, The Drawing Cheat Codes and . He is also a professor at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. There is a mural in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Hawthorne went to University, that features his art of La Borinqueña, a Puerto Rican Superhero.

Artistic Style

Hawthorne's style of artwork combines the unique and creative comic book form with the accuracy and attention to detail of realism. He has a background in anatomy and figure drawing, and anatomic correctness is always present in his art. He is also praised for his particular style of drawing cityscapes and clouds.

Cinematic Approach to Comics

Hawthorne has a gift for cinematic storytelling in comics, valuing the ability to tell a story without any dialogue. His talent to portray a combination of emotions in one illustration shows his masterful use of visual storytelling. He says to picture yourself as the cameraperson, and utilizes other cinematography framing techniques like long shot, medium shot, close-up, extreme close-up, worm's eye view and bird's eye view. He describes it as the combination of and how you can incorporate all of those pieces to create a uniform and cohesive story with very little or no dialogue at all. That way, the dialogue adds to the story rather than carrying it.

Personal life

Hawthorne is originally from New York, but now lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife and three children. Hawthorne is a 1993 graduate of William Penn Senior High School. It was there that he met his wife Despina, with whom he has three children. Hawthorne earned a scholarship for a summer program by the Governor's School for the Arts, and graduated in 1998 from Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

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