Rob Stull

One of our “Good Bostonians” runs the comic book game

By Colin Asher

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The work Rob Stull will display this Saturday at Technical Skate Shop probably won't scratch the surface of his career. His career has been too long, too prodigious.

Stull has been drawing comics professionally since the early '90s. He has worked for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Image Comics ... "I've worked for every one of them," Stull says. His pen has brought the comic world's biggest names to life including Spider-Man, Supergirl and The New Mutants. The list goes on and on.

At his day job, as an inker for a variety of comic companies, Stull is "a cog in the machine." But the work he'll exhibit this weekend will all be his, a small sample of the mainstream comic work he's done over the last decade and a half.

The show, the first of a series, has serendipitous origins.

As a student at MassArt, Stull used to frequent 230 Newbury Street before Technical moved in (it was a hat shop). Passing the store one day, he met the new occupants. He told the owner the space reminded him of an art show in New York's Chelsea district the year before. One thing led to another, and soon he and Technical's owner were plotting the series of events that starts this Saturday.

That Chelsea show was the genesis of Stull's concept. It was an event where "it was more important to be seen there than it was to properly show the work," Stull says. It pissed him off. This Saturday there will be no such problems, as Stull has a free hand to display as he pleases and 10 years' experience of curating art shows to draw from.

"I've always been a music head," he says, and his work is influenced by music, especially hip-hop, which usually plays while he works. It has been a career-long goal of his to "properly fuse comics and hip-hop," especially graffiti, hip-hop's main visual element.

To that end, he and two collaborators founded Armada Design Group in 2000. During that period, Stull worked on Iron Man, did visual work for DJ Green Lantern (then an up-and-comer), Tommy Boy Records, Fader Magazine and others. He is currently at the helm of Iron Man which, judging by the success of the film of the same name, must be the hottest book on the shelves.

He is also a partner in True Elements, a publishing LLC envisioned as a response to what Stull sees as a deficit in hip-hop culture. Nowadays, "kids are at a disadvantage with the misrepresentation of the culture through TV and the media. Our first project is a fusion of both cultures: comic book and graffiti," Stull says.

Stull thinks that the series of shows that's about to begin could "make a lot of noise in Boston." The only problem? "How to contain all that energy under the same roof!"

ROB STULL

SATURDAY 5.31.08

TECHNICAL SKATE SHOP

230 NEWBURY ST., BOSTON

617.262.0003

8PM-11PM/FREE

MYSPACE.COM/ROBSTULL