Salvador Larroca

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Salvador Larocca
)
Salvador Larroca
NationalitySpanish
Area(s)Penciller, Inker
Notable works
Iron Man
Ultimate Elektra
X-Treme X-Men
Ghost Rider

Salvador Larroca (/ləˈrkə/) is a Spanish comic book artist, primarily known for his American work on various X-Men titles for Marvel Comics.

After starting his career as a

Heroes Return, Fantastic Four, The Invincible Iron Man, and various titles related to the X-Men franchise and Ultimate Marvel
imprint.

Larocca has also provided artwork for Marvel's spinoffs and licensed books, such as Star Wars in the 2010s and Alien in 2021. His work on the former attracted criticism for his heavy reliance on tracing stills from Star Wars films, resulting in an "awkward hyperrealism" that was likened to the uncanny valley effect.[1][2]

Career

After several years of working as a

Flash. Afterwards, Larroca did a three-year run on Marvel Comics' Ghost Rider, during the mid-1990s. It was not until after his run on Ghost Rider, that Larroca would gain the exposure needed to become known as one of the most prominent comic book artists in the United States
.

Following Marvel's experiment with the various "Heroes Reborn" titles, editor Bobbie Chase gave Larroca the task of penciling the return of Captain America, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and several other superheroes, in the Heroes Return miniseries.[4] After the departure of Alan Davis on Fantastic Four, Larroca was given the reins along with writer Chris Claremont. Larroca and Claremont had a three-year-long run on the title.[5]

Larroca left the title penciling chores in the hands of new writer/penciler,

Namor. Meanwhile, Larroca worked on various miniseries projects, including Ultimate Daredevil & Elektra and Ultimate Elektra.[6]

Larroca was asked to draw fill-in issues of

X-Men. These issues led up to the "X-Men Reload" event, as the titles gained new writers, artists, and story direction. Larroca joined with writer Chuck Austen on X-Men. During his run of X-Men, Larroca took a side job drawing Spider-Man: House of M miniseries. Larroca was drawing X-Men, but with a new writer on the title, Peter Milligan. He left X-Men in June and was announced to be joining Warren Ellis on newuniversal, a remake of Marvel's New Universe
.

From 2008 to 2012, Larroca illustrated writer Matt Fraction's run on The Invincible Iron Man.

In December 2020, Marvel announced that Larroca would be teaming up with writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson on an Alien comic book series, with the first issue released in March 2021.[7][8]

Criticism

James Whitbrook, reviewing the "Ashes of Jedha" storyline in Marvel Comics' Star Wars series for Kotaku, took issue with what he felt was Larroca's heavy reliance on tracing stills from Star Wars films when rendering the characters, which imbued the characters' faces with an "awkward hyperrealism" that he felt evoked the effect of the uncanny valley. While Whitbrook did not observe this problem in his work on other Star Wars arcs, and praised Larroca's work in rendering large-scale elements such as starships or planets, he felt that in many closeups of the three main characters in "Jedha," the illustrations too closely mirrored the images from the films, often from scenes in which the actors' facial expressions did not match the tone or dialogue of the characters in the comic.[1] Charlie Hall, reviewing the same storyline for Polygon, expressed the same viewpoint, and like Whitbrook, compared these renditions to the work of Angel Unzueta and Arif Prianto on the Poe Dameron series, which they felt rendered the characters to sufficiently resemble or recognizably evoke the actors who played them, without exhibiting the sense that they were "pasted" from reference materials.[2]

Bibliography

Cover to X-Men #169. Art by Salvador Larroca.

Marvel

Other publishers

References

  1. ^ a b Whitbrook, James (January 25, 2018). "There's Something Off About Marvel's Star Wars Comic". Kotaku. Archived from the original on March 30, 2018. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
  2. ^ a b Hall, Charlie (January 22, 2018). "The new Star Wars comics make Luke, Leia and Han look ... bad". Polygon. Archived from the original on January 23, 2018. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
  3. ^ Salvador Larroca Archived 2010-03-01 at the Wayback Machine on Marvel.com
  4. ^ Marvel Comics Vampire Outbreak
  5. ^ Salvador Larroca at Lambiek's Comiclopedia
  6. ^ Salvador Larroca at the Grand Comics Database
  7. ^ Marvel (December 7, 2020). "All-New 'Alien' Stories Coming to Marvel Comics in March". Marvel Entertainment. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  8. ComicBook.com
    . Retrieved September 14, 2021.

External links