ComicBuzz Chats With Russell Dauterman

With the Kickstarter for The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman live today, we are delighted to be joined by artist Russell Dauterman. Russell has been an artist at Marvel for over ten years; his work can be seen in comics such as Scarlet Witch, The Mighty Thor and X-Men.

Hi, Russell; it’s so wonderful to have you here with us.

Thanks for having me!

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Can you tell us about the origins of The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman?

I saw that Marvel was working with Clover Press on this series of art books for Marvel comic book artists and I jumped at the chance to do one! Having the best of my art in one collection is really exciting — especially since I’m celebrating 10 years working for Marvel. I’ve been working with Clover and Marvel on what pieces to include and working on the sequencing. I’m really thrilled at the chance to do it!

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Do you have a favourite Marvel character?

Jean Grey, Storm, and Scarlet Witch are my favorites! I’ve loved Jean and Storm since I saw them on X-Men: The Animated Series, and was introduced to Wanda soon after. Drawing them professionally was a huge goal of mine — and getting to design their superhero costumes was an absolute dream-come-true — bucket list stuff for me.

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Is there a particular project at Marvel Comics that you were involved with that you hold dear to your heart?

I’m very proud of THE MIGHTY THOR series that I worked on with Jason Aaron and Matt Wilson — with Jane Foster becoming Thor — that will always be special to me. Of course, my X-Men work is really special since I’ve loved those characters nearly my whole life — my X-MEN ’97 cover being a highlight for me. My favorite work I’ve done, though, might be my SCARLET WITCH covers — I love Wanda and witchy/supernatural stuff, so that series is a perfect fit for me.

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What are you currently working on?

I’m continuing to work on SCARLET WITCH! I’m doing the covers for the new volume, launching in June, written by Steve Orlando with interior art by Jacopo Camagni. I’m also doing some design work for that, and maybe a little more on a future issue.

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Can you tell us about the exclusive Kickstarter rewards available for The Marvel Art of Russell Dauterman?

Yeah! I was so excited for the book, and then found out that we’d be able to add all these extra things through Kickstarter, which made me even more excited — I’ve been wanting to get stuff like this made with my work for a long time.

We’ve got stickers of Marvel heroes, including some new X-Men corner box headshot art that I did for the book. We’ve got prints for some of my X-Men, Scarlet Witch, and Spider-Man work, plus posters of my X-MEN ’97 cover and HELLFIRE GALA designs. There’s also a puzzle of my costumes covers, a slipcase, dust jacket, original art sketches, and signed editions.

The most exciting thing to me is a set of 40 X-MEN trading cards! For the past few years, I’ve done X-MEN trading card variant covers, in the style of the classic Jim Lee cards from the 90s. We’re turning those covers into actual trading cards, and adding a few more. I have a binder with the Jim Lee cards and selfishly, I’m very excited to add these to it.

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