ALEX ROSS CHANGED THE course of superhero stories. Hitting the scene in the early 1990s, when such comics were in a phase of hyper-exaggerated art, Ross and his fully painted approach offered a new vision of these fantastic concepts, referencing photographs of models to bring unprecedented realism to the genre.
It’s an approach rooted in Ross’s first exposure to superheroes as a child growing up in Texas, when he saw a live-action. “That was the most uniquely exciting and abstract thing I’d ever seen, and I just wanted to the character, to dress up as the character, and subsequently draw the character,” says Ross, who moved to Chicago at 17 to study at the American Academy of Art and now, at 53, lives with his family in a suburb he prefers not to name.
