Jeffrey Scott Campbell (born April 12, 1973) is an American comic book artist. He has had several pen names, including "Jeff Scott", but is best known as J. Scott Campbell. He rose to fame as an artist for Wildstorm Comics, though he has since done work for Marvel Comics (most notably as a cover artist on Amazing Spider-Man), and the video game industry. He resides in California.
Campbell was born in East Tawas, Michigan. In the late 1980s, Campbell, then age fifteen, entered for and won an "Invent the Ultimate Video Game" contest featured in the pages of Nintendo's official magazine, Nintendo Power, whereby submitted contest entries were to consist of drawings and concepts for a video game. Color drawings from "Lockarm," the videogame idea he pitched, were published in the magazine as the winning entry.
Years later, the 200th issue of Nintendo Power included a poster featuring prominent Nintendo characters drawn by Campbell in his unique art style, along with an interview whereby Campbell recalled his memories of the "Invent the Ultimate Video Game" Contest.
Campbell is best known as the original artist and co-creator of Genął and Danger Girl. He got his big break at Jim Lee's Wildstorm Productions with his work on Genął, his first comic book series, which featured a group of teenage heroes. He soon gained a reputation in the American comics industry for his highly sexualized illustrations of women.
In 1998, Campbell, together with fellow comics artists Joe Madureira and Humberto Ramos, founded the Cliffhanger imprint as part of Wildstorm Productions. He then launched his comic series Danger Girl through this imprint. The story, which followed the adventures of a group of female secret agents, made the most of Campbell's talents drawing well-endowed women and dramatic action sequences.
The Danger Girl series has since generated a video game for the Sony PlayStation, as well as several comic spinoffs in the forms of limited series and one-shots that were drawn by different artists in the American comics industry. Most of these spin-offs featured story outlines from Campbell himself.
In August 2005, Campbell published Wildsiderz, which he co-created with his Danger Girl writing partner Andy Hartnell.
In 2006, Campbell provided a variant incentive cover for Justice League of America (vol. 2) #0, the first issue of Brad Meltzer's run on the title.
In 2007, Campbell illustrated the covers to the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash six-issue limited series.
At the WizardWorld 2006 Comic Convention held in Los Angeles, Marvel Comics announced that Campbell signed an exclusive contract with the company, and to work on a Spider-Man series with writer Jeph Loeb. Campbell has previously done covers for Amazing Spider-Man in 2003. Marvel scheduled Campbell and Loeb's new Spider-Man series for publication in 2008 as Campbell revealed in a video interview at the 2007 Wizard World Chicago Comic Con but the project was cancelled. However at C2E2 2010, when interviewed he stated the Spider-Man project is not officially cancelled.
Campbell does his pencil with a lead holder, and Sanford Turquoise H lead, which he uses for its softness and darkness, and for its ability to provide a "sketchy" feel, with a minimal amount of powdery lead smearing. He uses this lead because it strikes a balance between too hard, and therefore not dark enough on the page, and too soft, and therefore prone to smearing and crumbling. Campbell avoids its closest competitor because he finds it too waxy. Campbell has also used HB lead and F lead. He maintains sharpness of the lead with a Berold Turquoise sharpener, changing them every four to six months, which he finds is the duration of their grinding ability. Campbell uses a combination of Magic Rub erasers, eraser sticks, and since he began to ink his work digitally, a Sakura electric eraser. He often sharpens the eraser to a cornered edge in order to render fine detailed work.
