FRANK CHO

At Image, Frank Cho is doing Guns and Dinos, a series that Cho describes as “what ‘Jurassic Park’ should have been.” The series will regale us with stories about scientists trapped in the era of dinosaurs, trying to survive until they can find a way to get home. Cho is also working with Joe Keatinge on Brutal, the story of a female assassin who is, er, very very brutal.

I stopped by Cho’s table in an illustrators “pavilion”at the Sandy Eggo Comic-Con last summer, and he told me he’s hoping to direct a movie before too long. He also gave me a copy of last summer’s Washington Post Magazine that pictured him on the cover, riding behind a toothsome Brandy-like wench on a motorcycle. You can still watch a prize-winning video of the process by which the cover art was conjured up here.

“Cho,” writes the Post’s Annys Shin, “has built a career drawing voluptuous women and catering to other men who share his stubbornly adolescent sense of humor.” Shin continues, describing Cho’s first book signing in Paris, where he is “doing something he excels at: drawing women’s breasts. This particular set is spilling out of a bikini top as the young man who requested the sketch looks on. But as the 20 or so other men behind him in line well know, Cho is capable of drawing almost any permutation: breasts in profile, breasts under t-shirts, breasts amplifying superhero logos, and so on. And they all have one thing in common: their disproportionate size. For Cho, 38, who grew up in Beltsville, the son of Korean immigrants, the alphabet starts with two letters, both of them D.

“His clean fluid line and precisely rendered figures, both human and animal, also show off his considerable skills, which have earned him numerous awards, a nationally syndicated comic strip at age 23, and, for the past seven years, a steady gig as one of Marvel Comics’ best-selling illustrators. Now he can add to that lit a following on the other side of the Atlantic.”

The article is an unusually complete and thorough biography for a magazine article: Shin visits Cho at the home of the artist’s parents, discusses his career and his failed marriage and his relationship with his two daughters, ages 6 and 8. “As divorces go, Cho’s has been amicable. She kept the house; he kept his artwork. And they have worked hard to make the transition as smooth as possible for their daughters. Cho still picks them up from school every day and drops them off at his old home. And twice a week, they come for dinner.”

Cho’s rapid rise as a cartoonist and illustrator still amazes him. “I’ve just been stumbling up,” he said. But he wonders how long it will last—“how long before his style is no longer popular. ‘I’m at my peak,’ he says. ‘Maybe my star will fall.’”

But I doubt it. Not as long as there are women and men.