Bryan Hitch, the influential artist who, alongside Mark Millar, defined the Ultimates series that inspired the MCU, has announced he’ll no longer be working with DC and Marvel Comics. However, Hitch isn’t retiring from comics. He’s stepping away from the Big Two publishers to work on projects where he and other creators own the rights to their content.
Hitch is currently working on Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor, a three-part miniseries with author Mark Waid for DC Comics. Bryan Hitch wrote on X that this will be his last Work-for-Hire (WFH) job, which seemed appropriate as Superman was the character who first inspired him to get into comics.
Active since the late 1980s, Hitch’s work has been on many of the most popular comics in the last 30 years. He’s teamed up with writer Warren Ellis multiple times, on Stormwatch and The Authority, and most recently on 2019’s The Batman’s Grave. His realistic style on Marvel’s first Ultimates series inspired the cinematic tone of the MCU. Josh Trank, director of Fantastic Four, said Hitch’s images of young Reed Richards experimenting in his basement inspired the focus on a younger team in the movie.
Bryan Hitch Has Been Influential Beyond the Page
Bryan Hitch’s work hasn’t just been in comic books. He also helped design the Tardis interior for the 2005 Doctor Who reboot. He worked with director J.J. Abrams on the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie, designing Spock’s ship. Given his work on the Ultimates comics, he was tapped as character designer for the Ultimate Avengers animated films. He has also done character design on various Marvel video games, like Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Hitch has been an invaluable artist whom many in the industry turn to because of his detailed illustrations in genre-defining stories.
As stated above, the Ultimates series is responsible for the characters and stories of the MCU. Writer Mark Millar and Hitch were the pair who decided to remodel Nick Fury from a James Bond-esque spy into someone straight out of a Samuel L. Jackson movie. Arguably, one of the most exciting moments of the very first MCU movie, Iron Man, was seeing Jackson himself appear on-screen as the character in the post-credits scene. As the DC movie universe is undergoing an overhaul courtesy of James Gunn, it remains to be seen if Hitch’s work will have an effect on those stories as well.
Bryan Hitch Isn’t Leaving Comics, He’s Just Focusing On His Own Creations
In a post to Instagram about his new creator-owned series with Geoff Johns, Bryan Hitch said, “I am more creatively alive right now than maybe anytime in the last 20 years!” He’s part of a collective called Ghost Machine, featuring writers and artists working on their own stories and ideas. Johns and Hitch’s new series, Redcoat, is slated to arrive in 2024, and centers on an American Revolutionary soldier who accidentally becomes immortal. Bryan Hitch may be leaving Marvel and DC behind, but his art and his ideas aren’t going anywhere.
Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #2 is slated to release March 12, 2024 from DC Comics.
