Colleen Doran is the illustrator of the new graphic novel Gone to Amerikay, which received rave reviews and profiles from such diverse sources as The Wall Street Journal, Boing Boing, and Irish Echo. The editors of Irish Echo asked Colleen to do a Gone to Amerikay-themed cover for their 2012 St Patrick’s Day issue, which was then presented to President Obama by Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Northern Ireland.
“Ghost story or detective fiction? History or
mythology? Drawing on the freewheeling spirit
of Irish and Irish-American popular culture,
Gone To aMerIKaY is all of these. A tale that
takes place simultaneously in 1870, 1960 and 2010,
it recognizes that though enormous changes have
taken place over time in the relationship between
the New World and the Old Country, some things,
like love, justice and respect, are timeless and
imperative. With thrilling illustrations, rich with
the color and mood of these passions, you will find
yourself unable to avoid lingering at length on them
before picking up the story again.”
— Philip Chevron
The Pogues
Mangaman, written by Barry Lyga, was just chosen as one of the Best Graphic Novels for Teens 2012, by the Young Adult Library Services Association. It also received second place at The New York Book Show and The New England Book Builders of Boston, as well as chosen a top five graphic novel for teens. It is now available in over 500 libraries.
Her upcoming works include an as yet to be disclosed graphic novel for Dark Horse. She is also illustrating Stealth Tribes for Vertigo. Written by best-selling author Warren Ellis, known for his breakthrough works Transmetropolitan and Global Frequency, Stealth Tribes is a cutting edge, cyberpunk, science fiction tale.
Colleen Doran’s published works number in the hundreds with clients such as The Walt Disney Company, Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, Image Comics, Lucasfilm, Dark Horse Comics, Harper Collins, Houghton Mifflin, Sony, and Scholastic. Her credits include Amazing Spiderman, Sandman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, The Legion of Superheroes, The Teen Titans, Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Anne Rice’s The Master of Rampling Gate, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, A Distant Soil, The Silver Surfer, Lucifer, and many others.
A cartoonist, illustrator and film conceptual artist, she has illustrated the works of Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Warren Ellis, Anne Rice and J Michael Straczynski. \
A Distant Soil, Colleen’s epic science fiction/fantasy tale from Image Comics, is a complex space opera, among the first of its kind in the USA, and is ongoing as a webcomic and graphic novel series.
Colleen was one of the first American artists to discover the lure of Japanese comics, and later went on to work for various Japanese publishers as a consultant, teaching the American market to manga industry executives.
She won a grant from the Delphi Institute to study American popular culture, and was chosen to represent the United States at the Japan/America manga/comics seminar in Tokyo, Japan along with Eisner award-winning cartoonist Jeff Smith, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar award-winning creator Jules Ffeiffer, Denys Cowan, and Nicole Hollander. She also lectured at the Singapore Writers Festival in 2005. , and was Artist in Residence at the Smithsonian. She has exhibited her work at shows and galleries in Milan, Vienna, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo.
She appears in the film Ringers, a documentary about the Lord of the Rings fan phenomenon, and has done officially licensed card illustrations, as well as art for Mallorn, the literary journal of the Tolkien Society and The Silver Leaves Journal.
Colleen has also been profiled in the films Sex, Lies and Superheroes by Constantine Valhouli, and Mainstream Raw: Scenes From the Small Press by Rich Henn. Henn followed up with a solo film of Colleen and her work called Scenes From The Small Press: Colleen Doran. She also appeared in The Cartoonist, a documentary about Bone creator Jeff Smith, which has aired on PBS.
As a core member of the comic book industry’s self publishing movement, she and other creators changed the face of the industry by bypassing the publishing and distribution system to create and publish their works in new ways.
Colleen lives quietly on a family farm in rural Appalachia. She works on her art every single day, and enjoys gardening and hiking.
