Creator / Bryan Hitch

Bryan Hitch is a British comic book artist born in England in 1970. Growing up with a love for comics, he sent in a submission to Marvel UK and would receive his first assignment at only 17 years old. Throughout the 90's Hitch would flop around on various titles until the late 90's, when he teamed up with acclaimed writer Warren Ellis to create a book called The Authority, which tackled the subject of what would happen if superheroes actually existed in the real world. Notable for its cinematic style and impeccable attention to detail, the book would get Hitch noticed in a big way, getting an assignment a few years later from Marvel Comics to help then up and coming writer Mark Millar re-imagine The Avengers for a new imprint known as Ultimate Marvel, leading to the creation of 2002's The Ultimates and its 2005 sequel series The Ultimates 2. Both received great acclaim from critics and comic book fans alike.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe owes a good deal to Hitch's designs on certain characters notably the likes of Nick Fury, Captain America, and Hawkeye all of whom have a more military-like design compared to the colorful outfits they otherwise wore in the 616 universe. Bryan Hitch is also notorious for most any book he draws running into delays the worst of it being both volumes of The Ultimates and the issues of Age of Ultron he illustrated.

Works

• Mys-Tech Wars (1993)
• JLA (1997)
• The Authority (1999-2000)
• The Ultimates
  • The Ultimates (2002) (2002-2004)
  • The Ultimates 2 (2004-2007)
• Captain America: Reborn (2009-2010)
• Age of Ultron (2013)
• Hawkman (2018) (2018-2020)
• Venom (2021) (2021)
• Ultimate Invasion (2023)

Tropes

• Art Evolution: Compare his early work to his later work and you'll notice when he started incorporating his signature elements of his craft that would get him hugely noticed. In particular, Hitch noticeably had more cartoonish faces on his characters earlier in his career, before his later years showed a marked shift that gave characters more realistically proportioned faces.
• Dear Negative Reader: He... didn't react well when a bunch of readers made fun of his rendition of the Calvin Ellis Superman for a cover.
  Bryan Hitch: You lot can fuck off.
• Dutch Angle: A very noticeable amount of his panels feature "camera" work that's at an extreme angle.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Along with Scenery Porn, Hitch's artwork is known to include large crowds of individual people, almost rivalling that of crowd shots by the legendary George Pérez.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: His redesigns for the Ultimate versions of the Avengers managed to recursively bring this to comic books, resulting in the replacement of spandex with more pragmatic leather and/or body armor that bordered on Civvie Spandex. The MCU didn't have too much of a tough time translating his designs for Ultimate Captain America and Ultimate Hawkeye to live action.
• Scenery Porn: His widescreen panels especially incorporate a lot of this trope.
• Schedule Slip: Many of his works had delays, either because of its detailed arts or because of real-life events. The Ultimates had delays because of the birth of his son, two house moves and one office move. Hitch stresses that Marvel was more supportive of him during his tardiness than DC.
• Self-Adaptation: He was a character designer for the animated films Ultimate Avengers 1 and 2, based on the Ultimates.
• Signature Style: Wide-screen action scenes and highly detailed outfits are what he's best known for.

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