Greg Capullo

Early life

Greg Capullo began drawing at an early age, and remembers that he drew his first drawing of Batman when he was 4. His preference for Batman persisted into his adulthood, with his favorite DC Comics graphic novel being Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. He decided he wanted to be a professional artist early, having been influenced by creators such as John Buscema, Neal Adams, Gene Colan and Gil Kane. He also was influenced by artists outside of comics, such as painter Frank Frazetta, animator Chuck Jones, and Mad magazine caricaturist Mort Drucker.

Career

Capullo's first comic work was a publication called Gore Shriek, which was picked up and published by a comic book store in Albany, New York, called Fantaco Enterprises. Gore Shriek was a horror comic book specifically labeled Not Intended for Children because of the violent and graphic nature of it. Due to the success of the small comic series, when it had ended, Capullo began work for Marvel Comics where he worked on Quasar, X-Force, and What If??. He worked with Marvel Comics for three years on various works, before moving on to other publications and projects with different companies.

Briefly after Capullo had started work with Marvel, he had begun smaller independent projects away from the company. He had started involvement with separate labels and anyone who would hire him for miscellaneous odd-jobs that needed completion.

Todd McFarlane, who had left Marvel Comics to co-found Image Comics, noticed Capullo’s work on X-Force, and convinced him become the penciller on McFarlane’s comic, Spawn. Capullo's first issue of the book was #16, then took over as pencil artist with issue #26. Capullo has since done the cover art and pencils for many Image publications, including various Spawn tie-ins and variants, and Capullo’s own miniseries, The Creech. Capullo helped McFarlane in creating the artwork now seen on the two Halo 3-themed controllers.

In February 2007, Image Comics published The Art of Greg Capullo, a hardcover book showcasing Capullo’s artwork, ranging from widely recognized cover art to unknown never released pencils, early submissions samples and personal sketches.

Capullo provided layouts for Image's Haunt, which debuted in October 2009. The pencils for the layouts were done by Ryan Ottley up until issue 6, when Greg Capullo then took over pencilling for the series and became the regular penciller, inks are all done by Todd McFarlane.

In 2011 Capullo left the ongoing Haunt title in order to take on the art duties on Batman as part of DC Comics' 2011 company-wide title relaunch, The New 52, which paired him with writer Scott Snyder. The two creators worked together on the series for five years, creating a number of critically and fan-acclaimed stories, and reinventing classic characters for DC’s then-new continuity.

In On September 9, 2013, he appeared as a special guest judge on "Skulls and Villains", a third season episode of the reality competition TV series Ink Master.

Capullo is responsible for the art on Five Finger Death Punch albums The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 1 and The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 2, plus the first single "Lift Me Up" . He has also done artwork for heavy metal bands, Iced Earth and Disturbed.

In 2013, he was named on IGN's list of "The Best Tweeters in Comics" for his "invigoratingly aggressive" posts on Twitter.

In October 2016, Capullo revealed that he was working on a project that he described as "very Batman-centric, and very rock n’ roll." That December, he revealed that he signed a new contract with DC Comics.