Adi Granov is a Bosnian-American comic book artist and conceptual designer. He is best known for his painted work with Marvel Comics, for whom most of his comics work is produced, in particular his work on Iron Man. He is especially known for illustrating the story arc Iron Man: Extremis, and for doing concept and keyframe artwork for the 2008 film Iron Man, a job for which director Jon Favreau personally selected him. Adi Granov has also done concept work for the films The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, has designed packaging for the DVDs and toys based on those properties, and has also done design work for video games. The artwork of Adi Granov currently appears in 472 comic book issues.
Adi Granov spent his last three years in the U.S. in Chicago doing design work for Nintendo Software Technology, working on Bionic Commando and Wave Race: Blue Storm, among other titles. He provided illustrations for Wizards of the Coast on their Star Wars and Wheel of Time games, and illustrated "Masters of Destiny", a short story for Metal Hurlant #10, an anthology magazine by Humanoids Publishing. While in Chicago he obtained his first illustration work for a Dreamwave Productions, a comics publisher based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Though his work on their book, NecroWar (2003), was well-received, the publisher filed for bankruptcy, at which point Granov had not been paid for several months, impinging upon his ability to pay his rent.
In a 2014 interview, Adi Granov was working as an illustrator and a concept artist for many years prior when he showed a portfolio of comics artwork to a company at San Diego Comic-Con. As he put it, "one thing led to another," until he received an unsolicited email from an editor at Marvel Comics, expressing a positive view of his artwork, and inviting to work for Marvel. Granov accepted, and his first job for them was interior and the cover artwork for the 2004 Iron Man Poster Book. His work was a success, and as a result, Granov was teamed with writer/novelist Warren Ellis for the 2005–06, six-issue miniseries' Iron Man: Extremis. Though the character at that point was considered an unpopular, third tier character, Extremis is considered one of the best Iron Man comics ever produced, revitalizing interest in the character, and gaining the attention of film director Jon Favreau, who hired Granov one of the three key design and concept artists on the 2008 film Iron Man. The "Extremis" storyline would subsequently be adapted into the 2013 film Iron Man 3.
In 2004 Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada named Adi Granov as one of the Young Guns, a group of artists who have the qualities to make "a future superstar penciler". Granov's subsequent cover work for Marvel includes books such as She-Hulk, Inhumans, Thor, X-Men, The Amazing Spider-Man, Black Widow, Hulk, Captain America, Fantastic Four. He has illustrated short stories for Astonishing X-Men and "Dark Reign" titles. In May 2008, the Iron Man feature film was released, for which Granov helped design the Iron Man and Iron Monger suits, and did key-frame illustrations that indicated how the designs would behave while in motion. Granov also directed the building of 3D models at Stan Winston Studios, working alongside the production's two other key designers, Phil Saunders and Ryan Meinerding. That same month, Marvel debuted Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas, a two-issue miniseries written by director Jon Favreau, and illustrated by Granov, which pit the armored Avenger against Fin Fang Foom.
Adi Granov would later do concept work on the 2012 film The Avengers, and on the 2014 film The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He has also provided artwork for the packaging of action figures and other toys based on those characters. Granov provided the illustrations for the packaging of the band Tool's 21st anniversary re-release of their debut album, Opiate. He has worked on packaging illustration, design and consulting for high-end toy company Play Imaginative for their line of collectible Iron Man figures. In July 2018, Insomniac Games revealed the PlayStation 4 video game Spider-Man, which features a Granov-designed suit worn by Spider-Man called the Velocity Suit.