Adrian Alphona

Some artists draw superheroes. Adrian Alphona draws teenagers — and that small, vital difference changed Marvel Comics. His gift for body language, lived-in clutter, and faces that telegraph a whole emotional history gave Runaways, the series he co-created with Brian K. Vaughan in 2003, its soul. Nico’s goth armor, Chase’s slouch, Molly’s wide-eyed fury — Alphona didn’t just design a team, he built a family you could spot from across a page.

Trained in graphic design at Toronto’s George Brown College, Alphona broke in at Marvel’s Tsunami imprint and immediately made Runaways a cult phenomenon, earning the Harvey Award and an Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2005. His work on Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and Uncanny X-Force kept him in the spotlight before he stepped away from monthly comics in the late 2000s.

Then came the call that changed everything. For the 2014 launch of Ms. Marvel, writer G. Willow Wilson and editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker needed an artist who could make a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager from Jersey City feel as universal as Spider-Man. Alphona’s designs — the embiggening elasticity of Kamala’s powers, the shalwar kameez-inspired costume — helped make the book a cultural phenomenon. The first volume, No Normal, won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story, a rare honor for a monthly superhero comic.

Alphona remains famously off the grid — no website, no social feeds — which makes his pages feel all the more precious when they appear. His definitive work is collected in the four volumes of Runaways: The Complete Collection from Marvel and Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal. Watch a master draw adolescence one awkward, heroic, unforgettable panel at a time.