Biography
Kevin Nowlan was born in 1958 in Nebraska. He has four older brothers and sisters. His brother read comic books, particularly DC Comics titles, and Nowlan has had comics around him since he can remember.
Self-taught, Nowlan first came to the industry's attention in the early 1980s via illustrations in the fan press, most notably The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes.
He has worked for both Marvel (Doctor Strange, Moon Knight, and others) and DC (Superman vs Aliens and others), as well as the independent comic-book sector (Aliens Salvation with writer Dave Gibbons and penciller Mike Mignola for Dark Horse Comics, among others). He also contributed to the adult Penthouse Comix. In 1992, he inked the Batman: Sword of Azrael miniseries which introduced the character Azrael.
Perhaps his most prominent contribution to the comic book world is the creation of Jack B. Quick with writer Alan Moore. This character appeared several times in Alan Moore's Tomorrow Stories under Moore's America's Best Comics imprint.
Although the majority of his work is as an inker, he has provided both pencils and lettering for various comics. He is also a noted cover illustrator. Nowlan also contributed character designs to Batman: The Animated Series, most notably The Mad Hatter and the Man-Bat.
His style is strong and distinctive, but flexible enough to range from comedic caricature to more conventional super-heroics.
Although inkers are often regarded as the penciller's poor cousin, Nowlan's influence on the final artwork places him in a different category altogether. Nowlan has described himself as a "finisher" rather than an inker, although only in specific reference to work "where you see too much of me", and has expressed an ambivalence towards this role, saying "it's not the right way to ink someone else's pencils".
His style gives a strong emphasis towards both facial expression and posture, and in neither case is he constrained by the conventions of the comic-book hero, and his protagonists are often depicted with awkward expressions or body postures.
He has spent many years working on a graphic novel featuring Man-Thing from a script by Steve Gerber, which the latter did not live to see published.
In 2011, Nowlan received the Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award from the Inkwell Awards for "an inking career of outstanding accomplishment in comic books (lifetime achievement)".
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