Travis Charest

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Travis Charest

Born	February 2, 1969 (1969-02-02) (age 39) Leduc, Alberta
Nationality	Canadian
Area(s)	Penciller, Painter

A Danger Girl cover by Travis Charest

Travis Charest (February 2, 1969, Leduc, Alberta) is a Canadian comic book artist, penciller and painter, best known as the person who in 1994 took over from Jim Lee during his self-described sabbatical from drawing his hit series WildC.A.T.s. Up to that point, Charest was known primarily for his work on various DC Comics and Wildstorm Comics assignments like Darkstars and a WildC.A.T.s Special, and as a cover artist for DC Comics on such titles as The Outsiders, Batman, and Detective Comics.

He received the WildC.A.T.s assignment shortly after he joined Lee's Homage Studios, a facility in La Jolla, California where many of the artists working for Lee's Wildstorm studio work side by side.

Charest's run on WildC.A.T.s, initially with writer James Dale Robinson, and later with Alan Moore, saw his art evolve from being heavily influenced by the work of Lee, characterized by emphasized anatomy and cross-hatching, to a more sophisticated and distinct style emphasizing contours and solid areas of white and shadow. Currently, his style is more influenced by poster art from the 1920s and the work of painterly and realistic artists such as Moebius and Frank Frazetta, than by modern comic book action storytelling. With such a distinctive style, Charest easily became one of the most sought after artists.

Charest then went on take the assignment as regular penciller on the second WildC.A.T.s ongoing series, over scripts by his WildC.A.T.s/X-Men collaborator Scott Lobdell. However, it quickly became evident that Charest could not keep up with the pace of producing a regular comic, due to his attention to detail and consequently slow pace. He was replaced on the title by Sean Phillips and later left Wildstorm and Homage for French bande dessinee publisher Humanoïdes Associés.

In April 2000, Charest moved to Paris to begin work on a Metabarons graphic novel. With plans to paint the entire graphic novel, the progress on the book went much more slowly than Charest had anticipated. In 2007, Charest was released from the Metabarons: Dreamshifters book after producing only 30 pages in the 7 years.^{[citation needed]} Humanoid Publishing has named Serbian artist Zoran Janjetov, who previously worked in the same Alejandro Jodorowsky "Incal" universe on "John Defaul" and "Technopriests", to complete the art chores for the project.

Charest is now a resident of the United States and working for Marvel Comics, initially providing only cover art for David Morell's Captain America: The Chosen mini-series. He has also been running the strip Spacegirl on his MSN group, ^[1] which he is looking into eventually being collected into a printed volume. * ^[2]

[edit] Bibliography

(In all titles providing interior pencils, except where noted)

WildC.A.T.s (vol.1) 8-9, 15-18, 20-21, 25-26, 28-31 (Image Comics)
WildC.A.T.s Special 1 (Image Comics)
Wildcats (vol.2) 1-4, 6 (Wildstorm)
Wildcats: Gang War TPB (Wildstorm) (cover artist) (Collects WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, # 28-34)
Wildcats: Homecoming TPB (Wildstorm) (cover artist) (Collects WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, # 21-27)
Wildcats: Street Smart TPB (Wildstorm) (cover artist) (Collects Wildcats Vol. 2, # 1-6)
Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.S TPB (Wildstorm) (cover artist) (Collects WildC.A.T.s Vol. 1, #21-34)
WildC.A.T.s/X-Men: Golden Age 1 (Image/Marvel)
Gen¹³ Interactive Plus! TPB (Image Comics, July 1998) (cover artist only)
Grifter/Shi 1 (Image Comics)
Batman 488, 490 (cover artist only)
Flash Annual 5 (DC Comics)
Darkstars 4-7 (pencils); 2-11 (cover artist only) (DC Comics)
Green Lantern Corps Quarterly 6 (DC Comics) (pencils for 18 page lead story starring Green Lantern Laira)
Detective Comics 652-653 (cover artist only)
Trinity 1 (DC Comics) (pencils pages 14-25, segment featuring Darkstars)
Outsiders (vol. 2) 1 (cover art only, split as two: Alpha & Omega editions forming one large image when put together)
Metabarons: Dreamshifters (Upcoming in the near future)
Captain America: The Chosen (Marvel Comics) (cover artist for variant editions only)