Katsuhiro Otomo

Photo: Selbymay, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Katsuhiro OtomoLegend

Creators whose work defined the medium and still shapes how comics look today. See all legends

Comic ArtistManga ArtistWriter

📍 Japan

Otomo draws cities with an architect's precision and then destroys them. Akira's scale, its crowds and its catastrophic set pieces reshaped what manga and animation were willing to attempt.

Where can I meet Katsuhiro Otomo?

No upcoming appearances are listed yet. Check back soon, or let us know if you know of one.

Work and credits

Notable works

  • Akira
  • Domu
  • The Legend of Mother Sarah

Related artists

Artists who share conventions, publishers or titles with Katsuhiro Otomo.

Frank Miller

Frank MillerLegend

Comic Artist, Penciller, Writer

Miller writes and draws in hard shadow and clipped rhythm. His Daredevil brought crime-fiction structure into superhero comics, The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One recast Batman for a generation, and Sin City stripped the whole approach down to black-and-white noir.

Gabriel Ba

Gabriel BaMajor

Cartoonist, Comic Artist, Cover Artist

Ba draws in bold graphic shapes with a strong sense of design, moving easily from The Umbrella Academy's oddness to the quiet of Daytripper.

Mike Mignola

Mike MignolaLegend

Comic Artist, Cover Artist, Writer

Mignola composes in flat black shapes, letting shadow do the work a dozen lines would elsewhere. That language, drawing on folklore and pulp, produced Hellboy and the whole B.P.R.D. universe built around it.

Fabio Moon

Fabio MoonMajor

Cartoonist, Comic Artist, Graphic Novelist

Moon's drawing is loose and emotionally direct, built for stories about ordinary life. Daytripper and Two Brothers, both made with his twin brother Gabriel Ba, are his best-known work.

Arthur Adams

Arthur AdamsLegend

Comic Artist, Cover Artist, Penciller

Adams packs more detail into a panel than seems reasonable, every scale and rivet accounted for, with a monster-movie enthusiasm running underneath. Longshot and his X-Men work made him a favourite, and his covers are recognisable across a room.

Dave Gibbons

Dave GibbonsLegend

Comic Artist, Letterer, Writer

Gibbons builds pages like clockwork. Watchmen's nine-panel grid, its repeating symbols and its buried visual rhymes are his architecture as much as anyone's, and the same control shows up in Give Me Liberty and his Green Lantern work.

Is this you?

Artists will soon be able to claim their profile to manage their bio, links, commissions and appearances. Until then, send corrections through the contact page.

Suggest a correction