Benjamin Marra
Benjamin Marra (born 1977 in Halifax, Nova Scotia) is an American illustrator and comic-book artist. His work has been mostly self-published in his own imprint: Traditional Comics. It mainly consists of comics in black & white stapled format, printed on low-quality paper and with a relatively low price. His drawing style is reminiscent of that of artists Paul Gulacy, Spain Rodriguez and pinball machine graphic illustrators.
Darick Robertson's Space Beaver, the first comic-book to leave an impression on him, was a science-fiction story featuring an anthropomorphic beaver who displayed massive violence on the strips. Reading this comic was an inspiration for Marra’s later work.[1]
His artistic training starts at the School of Visual Arts under David Mazzucchelli's tutelage and with alternative comic artist Dash Shaw as classmate, and then continues in Florence (Italy) where he studied painting in 1998. His style in his own words is "I kind of see what I’m doing as like what the Stooges and the Ramones were doing as a reaction to that big, self-indulgent arena rock aesthetic. Making it really raw, really punk rock, really earthy, DIY, really gut-level, very basic in its ecution. Not a lot of technical efficiency. Just, like, three-chord power pop songs. Really short. It’s supposed to hit you really fast, and it’s got a really emotional basis instead of a technical basis. It’s really based on people’s emotional response.".[2]
His illustrations and comics have appeared in diverse media such as Playboy, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Marvel Comics, Vice, Radar, Paper, Nylon, Widen+Kennedy y McCann-Erickson. He also works as web designer for the Major League Baseball Advanced Media.
Works
- Night Business (Traditional Comics, 4 issues, 2008)
- Gansta Rap Posse (Traditional Comics, 2 issues, 2009)
- Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd (Traditional Comics, single issue, 2010)
- Strange Tales II #3 (Marvel Comics, short story, 2010)
- The Naked Heroes (Traditional Comics, single issue, 2011)
- Drawings Inspired By American Psycho (Traditional Comics, single issue, 2011)
- Lincoln Washington Free Man (Traditional Comics, single issue, 2012)
- Terror Assaulter OMWOT (One Man War On Terror) (Fantagraphics Comics, single issue, 2015)
References
- ↑ An Interview with Benjamin Marra, Vice, 02/11/2009.
- ↑ An Interview with Benjamin Marra, GQ.
External links
- Benjamin Marra’s Website
- Traditional Comics’ Website
- Benjamin Marra's Blog
- Bibliography at The Comic Book Database
- Benjamin Marra: Sangre en la noche (Spanish Article on Benjamin Marra in Santiago García’s Blog))
- Marra: cómics ochenteros con putas y raperos (Edu Bravo’s spanish article in Yorokobu)