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Christopher Michael Taylor is an American comic book artist who provided interior art for the comic adaptation of Alien3 for Dark Horse Comics.

Biography[]

Based in Philadelphia, PA, Taylor has pursued a freelance illustration career for over fifteen years, drawing comic books, illustrating book covers, designing for apparel, and developing animation treatments.

Taylor began working n the mainstream American comics field from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s. Most of his contributions in that period being for industry giant DC Comics.

Taylor is perhaps best known as the artist on the short-lived series Blood Pack for DC Comics with fellow A/P/AVP contributor writer Charles Moore in the 1990s. (Moore wrote the story Predator: The Hunted City.) The series incorporated a number of "New Blood" DC superheroes created during the companies summer-long Bloodlines Annuals cross-over event into a new team. He also drew Darkstars #17, and worked on two issues of DC's long-running Legion of Superheroes in the same time period. One of them, Legion of Superheroes Annual #4, written by fellow Aliens-comics contributors husband-and-wife writing team Tom and Mary Bierbaum. The Bierbaum's later wrote Aliens: Xenogenesis for Dark Horse.

Earlier, Taylor drew Neo (Sanction 7) for Excalibur Comics, and Shuriken, Cold Steel #2 for Eternity Comics both in 1989.

When Taylor was just getting started in comics, established African-American comics artist Paris Cullins--a mainstay at DC for many years--invited him and artists Derrick Richardson, Martin King, Sky Owens along with some others to form a studio called Maximum Overtime. There, Taylor worked laying out issues of Superboy, New Gods, and an issue of Animal Man for DC comics, issues of Speed Racer for Now Comics, Dreadstar for First comics and a stillborn project for Comico. He would eventually go on to pencil issues of Alien3 for Dark Horse and Legion of Super-heroes and Blood Pack for DC. He also contributed pencils for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for Marvel Comics.

Alien3 was among these earlier formative works for Taylor, which is reflected in the relative quality level of the book's artwork. Taylor has continued to work in the years since, though, honing and developing his craft and style and growing to become a well-respected artist in the comics field.

More recently, in 2006 Cullins came back to some of the Maximum Overtime alumni with a new model for reaching the urban demographic: an urban, hip hop flavored magazine with comics geared to the SMOOTH, XXL, VIBE, KING and DUB Magazine crowd entitled Gritz n Gravy. A sort of "Black Heavy Metal meets Vibe Magazine." Taylor was invited to join and began developing concepts for the magazine.

The first of these was his proposed Space Station Orbiter: Cloud 99, an anime-themed strip, which Cullins turned down, but which Taylor still works on and uses samples of artwork from in his online portfolio (he has also named his artists blog after the title). This was followed by an adult themed concept, Mark Nemesis: The Avatar, which was accepted for Gritz N Gravy, though was not fully realized in the magazine. (The name also had to be changed, eventually, due to similarity with James Cameron's film Avatar.)

The magazine was launched as a 200-page quarterly publication in 2007 and has continued in some form since.

While Gritz N Gravy started off as a magazine, though, its initial print run was extremely limited and sold out quickly. The on-going project soon morphed into that of an irregularly released coffee table-style art book.

Taylor says that the art team also started to drag their feet somewhat in terms of getting the project back to print as most started to move on to other projects. But as of 2009, the book was back in print in its new form with a first edition again quickly selling out.

Taylor has meanwhile returned to his freelance and design work, and continues to develop Space Station Orbiter: Cloud 99 and Mark Nemesis into a combined self-published comics project.

Taylor says he tries to infuse a progressive Anime/Urban illustrative style for my clients, whether it’s the field of comics, print illustration, or fashion. His areas of expertise now include pen and ink, watercolor, marker comps, digital inks, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.

Credits[]

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