Collection: John Tyler Christopher Artist Biography and Art Gallery Collection

John Tyler Christopher is a Harvey Award nominated illustrator from Lafayette, Indiana. His work has appeared on the covers of Marvel Comics Avengers Solo, Hawkeye, Star Wars, Figment, New Mutants, Annihilators: Earthfall, Dark Avengers, Spider-Man, Venom; and the 50th Anniversary Spider-man Encyclopedia. Other covers appear on Top Cow Comics Witchblade and Artifacts as well as DC Comics Voodoo. His artwork can also be found in both table-top and video games, as well as film and television. John Tyler Christopher cites style as being his influenced by Jim Lee and then Ian Churchill, especially Churchill’s run on Marvel’s Cable comic book. In 8th Grade, his teacher commissioned him to draw a Psylocke Marvel Masters’ trading card. He was a huge influence on the young artist when others didn’t show faith in him. He studied Theoretical Math and Psychology in college, only to drop out with just one semester to go. He then switched his major to 3D animation, but that wasn’t a good fit either. He did graduate with a degree in illustration and was on his way to becoming the artist we know today. After a short tint in advertising, John Tyler Christopher became a cover artist for Marvel Comics began working on the Avengers and X-men franchises, among others.

John Tyler Christopher made a cottage industry for himself drawing and painting covers for Marvel’s Star Wars relaunch, drawing characters as if they were Star Wars toys still in their blister packs. The success and demand for those covers saw them spill out into other Marvel titles and for other artists at other publishers to follow suit. Christopher also licensed the rights to create his own trading card variant covers from his studio.  After a phone call from Marvel, he was hired by Marvel to do the the Star Wars covers. He’d always harbored a desire to paint something like this, and here it was offered to him. However, having only just been told by both his wife and mother that he was taking on too much work, he had to produce the first four covers under the cover of darkness and when his family was sleeping. “Star Wars is different… This was special to me”.

John Tyler Christopher was the first artist to realize he could do a variant exclusive for his own web store and not simply for someone else. His first exclusive, the Boba Fett cover, sold 3,000 comics in juts one night. He’s been doing it ever since. Each cover takes about 40 hours from start to finish. “I don’t do Star Wars action figures’ covers, I do homages to the Star Wars action figures and therefore we have the freedom to keep the classic packaging.” Meaning, he can consider doing homage covers for figures that don’t, or have never, existed. Who then? “I would love to do an Ahsoka Tano cover… and a Captain Phasma. Especially as Phasma has her own series out at the moment." The artwork of John Tyler Christopher is currently credited in 403 separate Comic Book issues.