Bryan Hitch has been a leading creative force in American comic books for over 30 years. Having worked on characters such as G.I. Joe, Transformers, Superman and The X-Men for 12 years, he co-created The Authority with RED’s Warren Ellis.
Widely regarded as a game-changing series, Comicbookresources.com said, “The Authority is the DNA of 98 percent of the superhero comics published today!” For his work, Hitch was labelled as the first ‘Widescreen’ comic book creator.
After working on DC Comics’ then best-selling Justice League comics, he and Mark Millar together created the ground-breaking Marvel series, The Ultimates. In that book, Hitch and Millar created a tonal template for modernizing the classic Marvel characters known collectively as The Avengers for a general audience, and it’s a direction that all the Marvel movies have since followed.
In July 2004, Joss Whedon, who would later go on to write and direct “The Avengers,” wrote of The Ultimates, “[Bryan] Hitch is one of the greatest artists of our day. You get the right mix of writer, artist and characters, set ‘em loose and you get a book that’s not only diverting, it’s necessary. That’s how good the Ultimates is.”
Prominently, Hitch took Nick Fury, a traditionally white character form Marvel history, and based him specifically on Samuel L Jackson. This “casting” was later picked up by the Marvel movies, when Jackson portrayed Nick Fury in a post-credits sequence at the end of “Iron Man” and continued to portray the character throughout the series of films.
James Chinlund, Production Designer on “The Avengers” said, “I was especially blown away by the work of Bryan Hitch in the Ultimates series. His work had a profound impact on our designs and approach on the Marvel movies.”
In 2010 The LA Times named The Ultimates as The Series of the Decade. Since his work on The Ultimates, Hitch continued to work on a variety of key Marvel projects until 2011, when he created America’s Got Powers with the British TV broadcaster Jonathan Ross.
Real Heroes, his first fully solo creation, was published through Image Comics in February 2014.
Outside of comics, Bryan Hitch has worked on a number of film and television projects. In 2005, Russell T. Davies revived “Doctor Who” for the BBC and invited Hitch to join him on the project. Instrumental in creating the visual direction for the show, Hitch designed the TARDIS set and numerous creatures, aliens and space ships
Davies explained how they approached Hitch: “I showed producers Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson the comics, they went mental, we summoned The Hitch, and here we are… Now Bryan can give us concepts and wild ideas to spark us off in new directions”
Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams invited Bryan to work on the relaunch of “Star Trek.” Although unable to join the production full time, he was uncredited, but consulted directly with Abrams over key visual elements and contributed the design for Spock’s space ship as seen in the finished movie.
Looking to repeat the influence his work has had on the Marvel Studios movies, 20th Century fox hired Hitch to work as a consultant, specifically for their Marvel Universe movies.
Hitch worked with DC Comics as writer and artist on Justice League notably on their Rebirth initiative before drawing a major Batman series, Batman’s Grave and helping reinvent DC’s classic Hawkman character.
Since then, Hitch relaunched Venom for Marvel comics, drawing 16 consecutive issues before helping create a new Ultimate Universe with the recent event series, Ultimate Invasion. A Superman Black Label series, The Last Days Of Lex Luthor for DC comics, has just published its premiere issue.
Bryan co-created REDCOAT with Geoff Johns, which is just the tip of a new creative explosion with GHOST MACHINE.
He resides with his family just south of London.
