Modern DC Comics Owes Everything to These 5 Artists and One Changed Its Future Forever

DC Comics has played a key role in making the superhero as popular as it has become. Characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Lex Luthor, Green Lantern, the Joker, Harley Quinn, Darkseid, and numerous others have become icons who have all inspired even more characters. We talk a lot about the heroes and the villains, the supporting cast members, and the stories, acting like the DC Multiverse is real. However, it’s really the work of thousands of people over the last 88 years, each of them adding to the legend of DC Comics. One of the most important parts of any comic is the artist and DC has hired some of the greatest artists ever, especially in the modern day.

Now, I’m probably older than you, so for me, when I saw modern day, I mean 1980 to today. The last 46 years of comics changed the industry forever, with some artists playing a bigger role in the success of DC than others. The most important modern DC artists are legends, creators who helped set the visual standard for the publisher over the last five decades. These five modern DC artists helped define the publisher, and one of them changed their future forever.

5) Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

There are few more artists more important to the history of DC Comics than Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. The Spanish-Argentinian artist came to DC in 1974 and worked his way up throughout the rest of the ’70s. His simple, clean linework fit the publisher’s characters beautifully, capturing the aura of heroism and power that makes DC characters so great. Name a DC Comics published in the 1970s and ’80s, and he drew an issue of it. Readers loved his work and it was soon decided that he was going to be the artist who worked on all the art for DC merchandise.

If you were a kid in the ’80s buying anything DC related, Garcia-Lopez probably drew the art on the package. He created a book of character sheets, setting the costume standard for every hero and villain, that was given to every creator and advertiser (that you can buy nowadays). He quite literally set the standard for DC art for decades. His work is flawless and he helped an entire generation of fans fall in love with the heroes of the DC Multiverse.

4) Alex Ross

Alex Ross was the son of a preacher who loved comic books. He was born in 1970 and came up reading Bronze Age DC and Marvel, falling in love with the characters and the vibe of heroism they represented. He’d become an artist in his later years, his art style taking inspiration from the great American artist Norman Rockwell. He’d have his breakout moment at Marvel Comics with Marvels, a story that took readers back to the Golden Age to tell the history of the early years of the Marvel Universe. His painted art made superheroes realistic and a superstar was born. His next major project was at DC, Kingdom Come with writer Mark Waid, a story about why the heroes of the old days were better than those of the ’90s.

Ross has created some of the greatest DC artwork ever. He’s able to truly bring these characters to life in a way that most artists can’t. His work at the publisher has mostly been covers and posters, but those images are iconic. Kingdom Come is legendary, Justice is his perfect love letter to the Satellite League of the Bronze Age, and we’ve even gotten to see his pencils unpainted. He’s helped set the modern standard for what DC’s heroes look like, making legends real.

3) Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland was born in 1951 in England. He came to prominence working on 2000 A.D.‘s Judge Dredd strip from 1977 to 1980. In 1982, he teamed up with Mike W. Barr for Camelot 3000 and American fans got to see just what he was all about. His clean, thin linework gave the worlds of Mega-City One and the DC Multiverse a sense of realism that they were often missing, his unique style unlike any other out there. His work is polished, yet he can bring this fantastic dirty quality into it. He does horror as well as he does superheroes, and has proven to be one of the most versatile artists in the industry.

Most fans know him as the artist of the iconic Batman: The Killing Joke, bringing Alan Moore’s seminal classic to life (although the less we saw about his modern recolor of the story, the better). He was also the cover artist for numerous legendary DC series, like Animal Man, The Invisibles, Wonder Woman, and numerous trade paperbacks. Much like Ross, he brought what felt like a new style to comic art and has become one of the great legends of the industry, helping to define what DC means visually in the minds of readers.

2) George Perez

So, the fact that George Perez is number two is going to make some people mad, but I have my reasoning. Perez was born in 1954 and began his career at Marvel in 1974, eventually becoming the artist on The Avengers, where he became a superstar. He’d make the move to DC in 1980 (I was able to get his first DC work at the time – he did the cover to Green Lantern (Vol. 1) #132) and would team up with writer Marv Wolfman for New Teen Titans. This book was a monster hit from the beginning, single-handedly reversing the fortunes of DC after 1978’s catastrophic DC Implosion. Perez worked in the Marvel method, helping plot the book and helping with dialogue, becoming one of the biggest stars in the industry.

The two of them would go on to do Crisis on Infinite Earths and The History of the DC Universe, changing the publisher and the comic industry forever. He would go on to reboot Wonder Woman for the newly singular DC Universe, helping her to become even more popular than ever by focusing on Greek myth. Perez would yo-yo back and forth between Marvel and DC in the ’90s, returning to DC in the ’00s and working there sporadically until his death in 2022. Perez work helped define pre-Crisis DC with books like New Teen Titans and Justice League of America, helping establish a house style for the company that inspired generations of artists, and brought them into the modern day beyond, his clean, detailed style one of the most beloved of all time.

1) Jim Lee

Jim Lee changed comics forever in the ’90s. The artist came to prominence thanks to his work on Punisher War Journal and Uncanny X-Men, with Marvel giving him his own X-Men title before he left the company to found Image Comics. However, at first, he was going to go to DC (he was reticent because they didn’t want him to do covers, which is hilarious because he was Jim Lee in 1992) and would eventually make good on that, selling Wildstorm Studios and the characters created there to the company in 1998. He started working at DC, which was announced with a Batman cover to Wizard Magazine, bringing the whole thing full circle.

Lee would do covers through the next few years, but would return to interior work with the legendary story “Hush” in Batman. Lee showed that he hadn’t lost a step and he’d have runs on Superman, All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Justice League, and Suicide Squad in the years to come. He mostly did covers, while behind the scenes he was helping run the place with Dan DiDio. DiDio left and Lee stayed, helping pick Marie Javins as editor in chief and helping set the direction for the publisher in the years to come. He’s done an amazing job – DC is more popular than ever – and he still finds time to draw, experimenting with his style and creating amazing images. All of that is why he’s number one.

What modern DC artists do you think helped define the company? Any I should have included over the people on this list? Sound off in the comment section below.

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