ESAD RIBIC was born in Zagreb,Croatia(then part of Yugoslavia) 1972.
I didn’t really start thinking about doing art for a living till it was time to decide on high school I wanted to attend. My primary school art teacher said:’go to art school’;so that’s what I did. I didn’t really have any idea what to expect and what I want, but it soon become clear to me;animation! I started working in ZAGREB FILM animation company as animator assistant! I delved into that with a passion and for a few years it was heaven, soon i become animator and background artist, and did some comics, as a hobby. Soon war came, and one of first victims of it was animation! Suddenly nobody cared about it and studio went bankrupt.
That left me with my hobby as my only activity, by then I was semi pro in comics so it made sense to try to pursue it. Only problem was that you can’t really be professional comic artist in Croatia because the market is too small for that, you have to do everything to make a living:book
covers, magazine illustrations, ads, portraits of neighbors kids, logos for local bars, bad horror comics etc… By mid 90s I got tired of it and decided to try to pursue comic career abroad. After a couple of unsuccessful portfolios I finally got a gig in ANTARCTIC PRESS, small, manga oriented company from Texas. Why they offered me a job is beyond me; I don’t think that anything I ever did was even remotely manga like. I did: CODE NAME:SCORPIO, SHOTGUN MARY-SON OF A BEAST
andWARRIOR NUN-FRENZY for them, and some covers for other books of theirs. That helped land a gig with DC/Vertigo where I did some short stories, some more covers and mini series FOUR
HORSEMEN, written by Robert Rodi.
After that I moved to MARVEL COMICS. My first book there was(as is for most of new artists in house
of ideas)finishing CHILDREN OF THE ATOM. What a hack job that was! But it needed to be finished fast and first thing i did when I saw the deadline was: ok,I’ll put away my eraser, won’t need it on this one!
It got a bit better after that, I did CABLE, UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL and ULTIMATE X-MEN, all fill ins. I started a maxi series BROTHERHOOD but that project turned into nightmare so i got off it after 2 issues. After all, I always wanted to paint comics and deadlines in x-universe don’t really allow that, so next book LOKI(written again by incomparable Rob Rodi) was decidedly out of continuity and painted!
But it was,with all its shortcomings, something I was proud of! It sold enough so i could continue doing that kind of projects. Next one was SILVER SURFER-REQUIEM with J.M.Straszinsky which
allowed me to reconnect with my old love; science fiction. I love character drama too, so after surfer I jumped into SUBMARINER-DEPTHS with Peter Milligan and it proved to be a real test of endurance. Believe me, it’s not easy painting hundred pages of couple of guys irritating each other in two rooms and a corridor!
Currently working on Thor:God of Thunder ongoing series.
