BIOGRAPHY:

"At his best Pope's drawings, loosely and densely rendered with long, sinuous brushstrokes, have the grace and fluidity of Asian calligraphy."
The Comics Journal

Art house pin-up boy or visionary comic creator? Probably both. USA born Paul Pope (1970- ) self-published his first comics work Sin Titulo and The Ballad Of Dr Richardson in 1993, both titles tackling the thorny subjects of love and romance. From the outset he has displayed a uniquely individual art style - a mix of comic influences from America (Kirby, Toth, Ditko) and Europe (Manara, Torres, Pratt), blended with his formal fine art training.

He initially came to prominence for his THB series, which The Comics Journal described as "an eclectic mix of science fiction, high adventure and zany Warner Brothers style violence." THB is an ongoing story set on Mars and revolves around a teenage heroine called HR Watson and her 7ft inflatable rubber bodyguard called THB. As Paul Pope explained, "From the original series, there developed a cluster of THB projects which were really graphic art laboratories, where under the rubric of THB, I set out to explore and develop my own personal comics style, a kind of three way hybrid of American comics, European BD and Japanese manga. There were excesses in these early projects. There were mistakes. But even a mistake is an idea, and ideas are both seed and fruit."

Paul Pope considers that the best comics are as much about the individual style of the drawings as they are about what is being drawn. "Handwriting is the closet thing to cartooning… The best cartooning is like a very elaborate highly personal calligraphy. The best comics are like love letters, emotional personal notes written to an intimate other. That's what I want. For my comics to be like love letters."

His ambitions for the future? "In the near future it's going to be more attempts at self contained, large comic book novels. But in the long run, hopefully, like a lot of people who're serious about comics, I'd like to create something definitive that is a hundred percent mine, something that is going to outlast my life time."

Interviews:
The Pulse (2005)
The Comics Interpreter Vol 2 #1 (2003)
Comic Book Resources (2002)
Pulp Magazine (2001)
The Comics Journal #191-192 (1996)

Resources:
Paul Pope.com
Ninth Art: Thumbnail - Paul Pope

Reviews:
Paul Gravett: 100% & Heavy Liquid
Time.com: Heavy Liquid
Popimage: Heavy Liquid
Fourth Rail: Solo #3
iComics: THB #6
iComics: Giant THB 1.v.2

100%
DC/Vertigo, 2005
"I don't want to die. But if I gotta die, first I'm gonna live. I gonna peel life like fruit, and use it up. I'm gonna light up an' burn. I'll burn and burn until I'm snuffed out. Then I'll just fade away. But until then, I'm gonna live. I'm ready. I'm gonna do it. Come what may, one hundred percent," says John, dishwasher at the Catshack Club. 100% is a romance story. The lives of six people, struggling to survive in a near-future Manhattan, intersect at a popular downtown club, the Catshack, in the aftermath of the killing of a young girl found dead behind the club. Elroy, a struggling performance artist fighting the art establishment, meets Kim, a Club bartender, and they tentatively enter into a relationship. Haitous, a fighter/boxer at the end of his career, is distracted before his last fight by his failing relationship with Strel, the Club's dance manager. John, a dishwasher at the Club, falls for Daisy, the enigmatic new dancer with a disturbing history of domestic ultra-violence. Paul Pope seamlessly weaves the lives of his characters against the atmospheric back drop of New York city in what is without doubt his strongest work to date.

Heavy Liquid
DC/Vertigo, 2000
New York, Paris, Rome. S is on the run and in possession of a large quantity of stolen Heavy Liquid - a bizarre metallic substance that's like lava at room temperature, heavy as a bar bell and corrosive to the core. He is hired by The Collector to find the artist Rodan - the best young artist in a generation - who can turn the Heavy Liquid into an art object. The only problem is, Rodan disappeared five years ago.

The One Trick Rip-Off
Dark Horse, 1997
A Tarantinoesque, hi-octane, crime drama in the style of True Romance. Tubby and Vim are in love. For some, that would be enough, but not in the cultural wasteland of Los Angeles . So to get out, Tubby conspires to steal money from his own criminal gang, The One Tricks. But before he can betray his friends, he discovers that they are plotting a treachery against him. What was going to be a smooth and simple heist becomes a high pitched battle for survival.

Graphic Novels:
100% (2005)
Heavy Liquid (2000)
Escapo (2000)
The One Trick Rip-Off (1997)
The Ballad Of Dr Richardson (1993)
Sin Titulo (1993)

THB Projects:
Giant THB vol 2 #1 (2003)
THB vol 1 #6 a-d: Mek Power (2001-2002)
THB M3: Mars' Mightiest Mek (2000)
THB Circus (1998)
P-City Parade (1997)
Giant THB Parade (1996)
THB vol 1 #1-5 (1994-95)

Other Titles:
Buzz Buzz Comics Magazine #1 (1996)