Tom Hodges

Born in Philadelphia, PA on April 5, 1972, Tom knew from an early age that he wanted to draw for a living. At the age of five, Tom saw Star Wars and it changed his life.

"I recall it being my very first VIVID memory. I remember seeing it several times after that and my parents were very supportive of my wanting to become an artist. I don't think at any point did they tell me I was wasting my time or that I should consider a "back-up plan". They always were great about it."

At the age of 8, Tom and his family relocated to Cherry Hill, NJ, a suburb just across the bridge from Philadelphia. From first grade all the way through High School, Tom knew he would likely become an artist. It wasn't until he saw Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns that his path became a bit clearer.

"I wanted to do comics. I started buying comics more for art then story, which now its about 50/50. I bought everything Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Frank Miller did. Then as the years went on. I started watching guys like J. Scott Campbell, Mark Texiera and Adam Hughes." When Star Wars was not as bright in the limelight, Tom's focus turned to Batman and Spider-Man. not Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader.

"For awhile there, I lost touch with why I wanted to be an artist. The old "Art of Star Wars" books and the McQuarrie book cover to "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" [pointed my way to] the things I really wanted to do [in the field of ] Conceptual Art for Film and Animation."

In his mid-twenties, Tom returned to school. He attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia majoring in Computer and Traditional Animation. Not wanting to be an "in-betweener" or a 3D modeler, he focused most of his attention on character design and storyboarding, where he excelled. His storyboarding enabled him to further his storytelling and brought him back to Comics.

In 2001, Tom created Devilknight. A lone vigilante ala Batman who protected the City of Philadelphia. It was at that time he met the woman who would be his wife, Terri Fontana. Together they took DevilKnight, played with it and created The D'VilKnights. The concept was that of a married Superhero duo who had a daughter named Rowan and an "Alfred-like" Nanny named Rizzo. The concept was optioned for an animated series in 2002, but didn't develop the property. During that time, another Superhero family, The Incredibles made it HUGE on the Big Screen. "Needless to say, we were not happy. Not with PIXAR/Disney - they would have had no idea about it our project." Their frustration was focused on the production company that optioned D'VilKnights and didn't do anything with it. Tom and Terri's concept has now moved to the Animation Development Company, who snatched it up when the previous option expired and is currently working on a promo trailer for network/studio consideration.

"Hopefully something will come of it. We changed the name to MidKnight, the heroes are basically the same, just a costume color change (as the original costume scheme was Red & Black) and the Title change. [It's] pretty much everything else is intact. We expect to see the promo trailer soon."

Meanwhile, Tom was brought into the Lucasfilm fold with small projects such as Sketch cards for their licensee Topps and then onto the Webstrip series for starwars.com's fan club website, Hyperspace. The series, Evasive Action had 4 story arcs and was well received. In the summer of 2008, Tom started working closely with Lucas Online on 2 web comics. The first was a Star Wars/Soul Caliber IV crossover explaining how the characters from the Star Wars Universe ended up in the SC4 Universe. "It's as INFINITIES a storyline as you can get", says Tom. "I enjoyed it, it was fun. [It's] always nice to play outside of what you normally do."

When Lucas decided to produce the Clone Wars animated series, Tom was approached to spearhead the new Clone Wars web comic. The weekly feature on starwars.com leads into each week's new episode on the Cartoon Network series. "I felt honored they came to me with it. They allowed me to pick a couple of great artists to work with on the project and the whole thing has just been a wonderful project to work on."

Season One of the series has just wrapped. As for upcoming and new projects from Mr. Hodges, stay tuned!