THE ART OF DUSTIN NGUYEN

Dominic Carter talks to the Batman artist about illustrating his favourite heroes and co-creating sci-fi series Descender

- Dominic Carter

Dustin Nguyen is living many artists' dreams. Having grown up enthralled by characters like Batman and Superman, he turned this passion into a career that's seen him illustrate his favourite superheroes for DC Comics.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, he also co-created the groundbreaking sci-fi comic Descender with graphic novel royalty Jeff Lemire. We caught up with Dustin to learn more about his work and hear how he balances his many amazing achievements.

Tell us a little about your background as an artist. How did you get started and what has your career been like? 

I liked drawing as a kid, just like every other artist I think. I was never that into actual art classes or art schools themselves, but I put a lot of time and energy into my art. I was even voted 'most artistic' in elementary school.

I worked as a 3D designer for HVAC systems, and for the aerospace and commercial architecture industries because high school also led to my love for mechanics and figuring out how things work.

I left those industries to pursue a more illustrative job at Stan Lee Media in 2000, and ended up working on my first comic book with WildStorm Productions. I've been lucky enough to work for the main comic book companies, but now I've found a home between the mainstream and creator-owned titles at DC and Image Comics.

In 2012 Derek Fridolfs and I created Lil Gotham, which I'm very proud of because it was an opportunity for me to create and own a little piece of Batman. After finishing an amazing 13-year exclusive contract with DC, I took the leap over to being fully independent, and headed over to Image Comics.