Steve Rude

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Nexus
Nightmare in Blue - Issue #4 (October 1997).

Steve Rude is an American Comic book artist.

1 Biography
2 Style
3 Audio Interviews
4 External links

[edit] Biography

In 1982, Rude became widely known in the comics world when he and writer Mike Baron created, Nexus, an independent science fiction comic book with a large, diverse, supporting cast. For the Nexus series, Rude designed a dozen or so distinctive alien races, including: the Thunes, the Amphibs, the Quattros, the Giz, the Demons, and a myriad of unnamed others. The stories were also complex and thought provoking because of their treatment of difficult themes related to justice, guilt and addiction.

Baron and Rude's Nexus stories garnered a large fan following and ran for eighty issues (although Rude did not pencil them all) and seven short almost-yearly mini-series after the initial series ended.

Rude has won four Eisner Awards and one Kirby Award, as well as a Russ Manning Award.

Rude more recently penciled and wrote The Moth in 2004, while continuing to teach art classes and do commissioned work.

Announced on November 15, 2006 is Rude's own "Rude Dude Productions" - a new publishing entity that will release new issues of Nexus and The Moth in 2007 as well as an anthology series. The new Nexus series will mark Rude's first work with Baron since the last Dark Horse Comics published issue. The new issue will be counted as #99 and is scheduled for a July 2007 release.

[edit] Style

Rude's style is a mixture of 1960s smooth lines and square jaws (reminiscent of Jack Kirby) and more modern work with thick lines and complex compositions. He is also a master of page design, many of his comicbook panels changing and merging with each other into new shapes allowing for panel progression that often has a strong sense of the passage of time.

Rude is a devotee of the illustrator Andrew Loomis, an influence that is evident in his style and particularly in his sketchbooks.