Chaykin, Howard

Howard Victor Chaykin (born 1950 in New Jersey, USA) is one of the most prolific and admired of American comic artists, a man who has had an impact on the medium of comics for thirty years - often with a highly personal and sometimes controversial approach. Chaykin's art style is delicate and refined - but not exactly popular. Chaykin's main inspirations are book illustrators like Robert Fawcett, Al Parker, and others, and he loves jazz music, which is also reflected in his work. Howard Chaykin began his career as an assistant to Gil Kane and Neal Adams, before going solo. His first major assignment (for DC) was the comic book adaptation of "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" in Sword and Sorcery. Chaykin followed this with art chores on "Iron Wolf" in the science fiction anthology Weird Worlds for DC. He then joined Marvel Comics, where he collaborated with Neal Adams on the first "Killraven" story, featured in Amazing Adventures #18 in 1973. Later on Chaykin got to test his own series at Marvel - "Dominic Fortune" among others. In addition to that he wrote and drew "Cody Starbuck" for the anthology Star Reach, one of the first independent comics of the '70s. Here he began to explore darker and more mature themes without breaching the Comics Code. In 1976 Chaykin got a dream of a job - to draw the comic book adaptation of "Star Wars" with a script by Roy Thomas. This became a huge success for Marvel and Chaykin. But after ten issues Chaykin left the title - and started to experiment again. For the next ten years Howard Chaykin would mostly concentrate on book illustrations and drawings for Heavy Metal magazine.