Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Treasure Planet. Mulan. The Omega Men. The Rook. Heavy Metal. God the Dyslexic Dog. If you’re a longtime fan of animated features and non-superhero comics, you may know the name Alex Nino, the popular, acclaimed Filipino artist who’s worked for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and pretty much everyone in between, and was a concept artist for Disney on some of their blockbuster movies.
I had the absolute pleasure of working with Alex, back in my editing days during the early 2000s at indie publishing house ibooks, inc. The first was Sunn, a superhero graphic novel I wound up scripting when the original writer (I forget who) walked off the project. I told the story behind it in a pair of blog posts back in 2015 (click the links to give them a read).
The second was The Orc’s Treasure, a fantasy graphic novel created and written by sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson that Alex sumptuously illustrated in black and white. I was its editor, and let me tell you, everytime a new FedEx package arrived containing new pages from Alex, I went absolutely nuts for them. In fact, I wound up receiving even more pages from Alex than the script called for, because Alex would send replacements for pages and two-page spreads he wasn’t entirely happy with—what a perfectionist!
In the end, though, I found a way to include everything he sent me—so what if that two-page banquet scene was now six pages long? When you had art as beautiful as Alex’s, you found ways to keep it all in play! If you’re a Nino fan and you can track down a copy, do yourself a favor and check it out—I’m certain you’ll love what you see.
The one time I actually got to meet Alex was at the 2004 San Diego Con (as seen in the picture up top), which I attended with ibooks, inc. owner/publisher Byron Preiss, senior editor Howard Zimmerman, and editor Dwight Jon Zimmerman (no relation). I was involved in setting up ibooks author and artist appearances in Artists’ Alley. On (I believe) the Saturday of the con, we’d already had a major turnout that morning for Stan Lee, who was promoting Stan Lee’s Alexa, a superhero comic “cowritten” by The Man (but actually scripted by me), and early that afternoon I was keeping company for Marvel and DC writer Steven Grant, who was doing a signing for his 1990s superhero miniseries The Last Heroes (illustrated by the legendary Gil Kane), which had just been reprinted as a hardcover collection by ibooks.
As we whiled away the time—only one person showed up for the signing, and only to tell Grant how much they’d enjoyed his work writing Marvel’s The Punisher—I happened to glance over to the autograph table where the Stan Lee signing had been held. I knew that in the next hour Alex would be doing his own, to promote Sunn and the upcoming Orc’s Treasure, and that Alex had something of a following among old-school comic fans…but why were there so many women lined up at it already? Was somebody doing a signing before Alex?
Excusing myself, I wandered over from Grant’s table to the growing line, which had about 30 or 40 young women (and some girls), and approached the woman at the front.
“Excuse me, but who’s the line for?” I asked.
“Alex Nino,” the woman answered.
My eyes bugged out. “Everybody is here for Alex?” She nodded. “Wow. Okay, but why?”
“Because he worked on Mulan!” she said happily.
Didn’t I say he was popular?
Happy birthday, Alex!
