Bill Morrison (comics)

Bill Morrison (born 1959) is an American comic book artist, writer, and editor. He co-founder of Bongo Comics (along with Matt Groening and Steve and Cindy Vance).

Bill Morrison
Bill Morrison at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con.
Born1959 (age 61–62)
Lincoln Park, Michigan
NationalityAmerican
Area(s)Writer, Artist, Editor
Notable works
Bongo Comics
MAD magazine

Early life

Morrison is a native of Lincoln Park, Michigan, a Downriver suburb of Detroit. He attended the College for Creative Studies.

Career

At the beginning of his career in the early 1980s, Morrison worked as a technical illustrator for Artech, Inc. (Livonia, Michigan) before going to work as an illustrator for Disney, where he created promotional art for:

Subsequently, he worked as an illustrator and occasional writer for The Simpsons and created his own comic Roswell. He also served as a director for Futurama.[2]

Morrison was the creative director of Bongo Comics from 1993 to 2012.

In 1998, Morrison illustrated (although it was signed by Matt Groening) the cover artwork of The Simpsons' The Yellow Album. His cover was a parody of the cover art for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, replaced with characters from The Simpsons.[3][4] In 2005, the artist and designer Kaws (commissioned by Nigo) created The Kaws Album, a "traced interpretation" of The Yellow Album. In 2019, Sotheby's auction house in Hong Kong sold The Kaws Album for 115.9 million Hong Kong dollars, or about $14.7 million U.S. dollars, a new auction record for the artist at the time.[5][6] Morrison felt "ripped off" by this,[7] re-igniting a conversation about the appropriation of commercial illustrations for fine art (see Roy Lichtenstein).

Morrison is an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA); he created the mural A Century of Values to celebrate the BSA centennial in 2010.[8]

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Yellow Submarine, The Beatles' 1968 animated feature film, Titan Comics published, on August 28, 2018, a hardcover comicbook illustrated by Morrisson.[9]

He was the executive editor of MAD magazine from early 2018 (beginning with the rebooted issue #1 dated June 2018) to March 2019.[10][11]

References
  1. Lien, Barb. "TV The Whole Family Can Read! Bill Morrison, Bongo Comics' Editor," Sequential Tart (Nov. 1999).
  2. "electrifyingtimes". Archived from the original on October 6, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
  3. Adair, Torsten. "KAWS made $14 million from Bill Morrison art, and Morrison isn’t happy: When copies of comics art appear in glass houses, should creators throw stones?", The Beat (11/19/2019).
  4. "KAWS Painting Sold for Record Breaking HK$116m at Sotheby's NIGO Sale," The Value, 1 April 2019. Accessed 15 June 2020.
  5. Kaws Auction Record $14.7 Million. Artnews, Annie Armstrong, 1 April 2019. Accessed 12 May 2019
  6. "Millennials in Hoodies Spend $28 Million on Simpsons Art". www.bloomberg.com. April 1, 2019. Retrieved March 1, 2020.
  7. "I have joined Russ Heath, John Romita, Mike Sekowsky, Tony Abruzzo, and many other comic artists who have been ripped off by "fine artists."". November 19, 2019.
  8. "The Mural". A Century of Values. Retrieved February 6, 2009.
  9. "EXCLUSIVE: BILL MORRISON DIVES INTO TITAN COMICS' NEW THE BEATLES: YELLOW SUBMARINE GRAPHIC NOVEL". SYFYWire. Retrieved September 8, 2018.
  10. Bill Morrison at LinkedIn.com. Retrieved on November 23, 2020. Archived from the original on November 23, 2020. "VP Executive Editor, MAD Magazine, Jun 2017 – 2019. Art Director, Seriously Digital Entertainment, Mar 2019 – Nov 2019."
  11. Pedersen, Erik (January 23, 2019). "DC Comics Lays Off Seven Staffers Including SVPs In Restructuring". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
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