communita
CREDITS
1998
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (DC)

2000
Batman: Year One (issues #404-407, DC)

2002
Sin City: The Hard Goodbye (featured in Dark Horse Presents, Dark Horse)

2003
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (6 issues, Dark Horse)
Sin City: The Babe Wore Red (And Other Stories) (one-shot, Dark Horse)
Sin City: Silent Night (one-shot, Dark Horse)
Sin City: The Big Fat Kill (6 issues, Dark Horse)

2004
Sin City: Lost, Lonely, & Lethal (one-shot, Dark Horse)
Sin City: That Yellow Bastard (6 issues, Dark Horse)
Sin City: Daddy's Little Girl (one-shot, Dark Horse)

2005
Sin City - screenplay (movie adaptation)
300 (Dark Horse)

2006
Sin City: Sex & Violence (one-shot, Dark Horse)
Sin City: Just Another Saturday Night (one-shot, Dark Horse)
Sin City: Family Values (graphic novel, Dark Horse)

2007
Sin City: Booze, Broads, & Bullets (collects The Babe Wore Red, Silent Night, Lost, Lonely, & Lethal, Daddy's Little Girl, Sex & Violence, and Just Another Saturday Night; Dark Horse)

2008
Sin City: Hell and Back (9 issues, Dark Horse)
Hostel - assistant to the director
Grindhouse (fake trailer segment "Don't") - writer, director, Bearded Cannibal

2009
Batmam: The Dark Knight Strikes Back (DC)

AWARDS
2002
Best Writer/Artist (Eisner): Sin City
Best Artist/Penciller/Inker (Eisner): Sin City
Best Graphic Album (Reprint) (Eisner): Sin City

2003
Best Short Story (Eisner): "The Babe Wore Red", The Babe Wore Red (And Other Stories)
Best Finite Series (Eisner): A Dame To Kill For

2004
Best Finite Series (Eisner): The Big Fat Kill

2005
Best Graphic Album (Reprint) (Eisner): That Yellow Bastard

2006
Best Finite Series (Eisner): 300
Best Writer/Artist (Eisner): 300

2008
Most Underrated (Prix Spring Awards)
Best Platonic Duo, with lenora (Prix Spring Awards)


YEAR ONE
"What do you want, Joe, my life history? Here it is in four words: big ideas, small results."

Before he was the master of comic book noir, Rhys Jacob Lowe was a relatively normal, only child growing up in Green Tree, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. His father, who owned a local, independent movie theatre, provided the fuel to ignite Rhys's love for both detective stories and comics. While his friends raved about Spiderman and the adventures of the Hulk, Rhys had his nose tucked into Alan Moore's revival of Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman's dark fantasy, Sandman. These stories were more than just a superhero flying around, beating up bad guys; in these worlds, the lines between good and bad were blurred. British comics appealed to him as real literature, they were so much more than the "kid stuff" his friends read. Around the same time, Rhys was introduced to Orson Welles films. His obsession with film noir took off equally as fast as his love for comic books. Where he lacked common interest in his peers' reading material, however, he made up for in a shared love of private eye tales.

At ten. he organized a group of neighborhood kids to play detective games, based on the movies he had seen. The epic plays were made up a myriad of things: his own versions of Sunset Boulevard, an old Batman serial (after all, Batman, he still insists, is the only real superhero), but most of all, by his own imagination. By twelve, he had given up the constant emulation of English writers and 1940s directors, and wrote his very first story taking place in a universe which would, one day, make him nearly a household name: Sin City, a gritty, crime-filled town, where government officials were corrupt and evil, while criminals and whores ruled as heroes. The world was still underdeveloped, but by the time he graduated high school, most of the characters who still appear in his works today had been brought to life.

THE HARD GOODBYE
"What I like about you is you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower."

Though his talent in the medium was obvious, Rhys's father was the only person in his family who supported his ambitions of success through comics. He helped Rhys to squirrel away a small fund so that, immediately after graduation, the boy could devote all his attention to writing, rather than worry about supporting himself until his career took off. Unfortunately, near the end of Rhys's high school career, his father - a heavy smoker, not unlike his son - contracted lung cancer. Despite protests, Rhys used what little he had saved to help pay the family's medical bills and, at the urging of his mother, began attending classes at a nearby community college. With his dreams dashed against the rocks and his future - no matter what he studied - quickly veering towards taking over the family business, Rhys began drinking. In a fit of inebriated rage, one night, he burned all his portfolio and most of his drawing tools with it. For his first semester at school, he never once so much as glanced at a comic book. It wasn't until after a long winter break and a new year that he was ready to try again.

The Dark Knight Returns began as a joke. A night out with one of his childhood buddies, one who used to frequently play variations of Bruce Wayne in their noir games, lit the proverbial flame under his ass. The finished product was what is more or less seen, now, on the shelves of even the most discerning collectors. Impressed by the quality of his re-envisioning of Batman, his friends urged him to do whatever he could to get published. For a few months, panels of it would appear in the college's weekly newspaper. Eventually, Rhys managed to get access to the paper's printer and made his own copies of the finished product. The first draft copies of The Dark Knight Returns sold for five dollars each, out of the trunk of Rhys's car.

Inevitably, the buzz about the comic had grown enough to catch the attention of - who else but - DC Comics. At first, they issued a cease-and-desist order and threatened legal action if publication continued. Defeated, Rhys spitefully sold one last copy and shut down the operation, putting an end to his short-lived success.

THE BIG FAT KILL
"Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she’d ever meet. I was in complete accord with her."

The very next day, Rhys received a phone call from a representative of the comic book giants who had just put him, once again, out of business. Someone in the company had managed to get a hold of his work and wanted to know if it was possible to schedule Rhys for a meeting. It took a few cans of beer and a long chat with his father before Rhys decided to pack up and make the trip to DC headquarters in New York City. The meeting was not so much a social gathering as it was a proposal: if Rhys agreed to clean up some of the scenes, the company would put its official seal on his book and publish it, world-wide. This time, Rhys didn't need parental consultation. He accepted the offer, quit school, and was a published writer by the age of twenty.

It didn't take long for the book to find a vast audience. Thrilled by the fortune and profit from their gamble, DC urged Rhys to write more. Though he enthusiastically pitched them his idea for a series based on his Sin City stories, the company insisted that his next piece be another Batman comic. Reluctantly, he agreed, under the impression that Sin City could come later, if he only proved himself again. What followed was the creation of Rhys's version of the Dark Knight's origin, Batman: Year One. The story arc was only comprised of four issues, but Rhys struggled with it, leaving him frustrated and often choosing to drink himself to sleep rather than work on the script. Batman was not his forte, despite what his company believed. The year 2000 saw both the completion of the arc and Rhys's subsequent departure from DC comics. He was done, he claimed, with Batman. For good.

Following a series of communication through email, Rhys found himself migrating to Oregon in order to meet with the heads of Dark Horse comics. Unlike his former employers, everyone he spoke to was positive and excited about the opportunity to help him realize his vision of a Sin City series. It took another two years before the publication of his first arc, The Hard Goodbye, which was - almost to the letter - a replication of a story he had lost the night he destroyed most of his work. A slightly trimmed version of it appeared in Dark Horse Presents, but shortly thereafter was published as its own graphic novel, for which he one his first three Eisner awards, later that year.

A DAME (OR FELLOW) TO KILL FOR
"She was worth a stare. She was trouble."

Rhys's name was already well-known in the world of comics for his work on reviving interest in Batman, but a whole new storm of popularity hit after Sin City hit the shelves. He was invited, that year, to take an almost permanent place on a few panels at San Diego's ComicCon International. Not only did a whole new world open up to him there, it also marked the very first time he would meet fellow writer and author of Fables, Sofian McBride. They were to appear on the same panel the first day of the convention and, after it ended, they went out for drinks. They parted, reluctantly, a few hours later, and Rhys returned to his hotel room.

There was a very grave message on his cellphone, which he had left behind, when he got in, from his mother. Earlier that morning, his father - who, until recently as far as Rhys knew, had been in remission - passed away. The funeral was to take place on the same day as the close of the convention. Rhys knew that if he went back now, he would be suckered (and not entirely by his mother, but by his own guilt, too) into staying and never leaving again. Instead of returning the call, he wrote out a blank check for the funeral expenses and stuck it in an envelope to send home, in the morning. Moments later, he was knocking on Sofian's hotel door with a six pack of beer in tow. What happened between them that night is comic book urban legend and has, as speculation, appeared in cartoon form on bulletin boards in both Dark Horse's and Vertigo's offices.

A few days later, the convention might have come to a close, but Rhys and Sofian's friendship would not. Rhys suggested they stay in California "a while longer", which turned into a few months of hotel hopping. It was obvious that neither of them had plans to be elsewhere, anytime soon, so they gave up nomadic life for an apartment in Hollywood. Something about being near the other man made Rhys's energy flourish and within the next year, he produced four more Sin City books, including two more arcs that earned him Eisners.

Since the completion of Sin City, Rhys took a short break from comics to venture back into the world of movies. He made his directorial debut in 2008's Grindhouse, with his very own fake trailer segment, "Don't". In only a few months, The Dark Knight Strikes Back - Rhys's long-awaited and anticipated return to the world of Batman - will be hitting shelves. Currently, Rhys resides, alone, in an apartment on the top floor of the Hollywood Tower, in Hollywood, California.