Steve Leialoha
Steve Leialoha (born January 27, 1952) is an American comics artist whose work first came to prominence in the 1970s. He has worked primarily as an inker, though occasionally as a penciller, for several publishers, including Marvel Comics and later DC Comics. Early life. Steve Leialoha was born in San Francisco, California, the son of a Native Hawaiian father. He began reading comics as a child, explaining, "My dad would always give me comics. I mean, he would like to read all sorts of stuff, and he would pass everything along to me. Harvey comics and that kind  of thing, when I was six or seven. As I got older, the Marvel Age, which I think of starting like in 1962, I was ten, which is certainly a good age for reading that stuff." Career. Steve Leialoha's career began in 1975 with the early independent comic book "Star*Reach", drawing the five-page story "Wooden Ships on the Water", adapted by writer Mike Friedrich from the song by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Paul Kantner, in issue #3 (Sept. 1975). He continued to contribute to "Star*Reach" and the same publisher's "Quack" for four years. Leialoha freelanced as  a regular contributor to Marvel from 1976 to 1988, working on such series as "Warlock", "Star Wars", "Spider-Woman", the Spider-Man title "Marvel Team-Up", the "Firestar" limited series, "New Mutants" and "Howard the Duck". He and writer J. M. DeMatteis co-created "Greenberg the Vampire" in "Bizarre Adventures" #29 (Dec. 1981). Leialoha was one of the artists on "Batman" #400 (Oct. 1986) and in the 1990s, he began working at DC Comics on Batman and other characters; at Harris Comics on Vampirella; and at Claypool Comics on "Soulsearchers and Company". He inked part of the "" story arc in  Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" series. The following decade, he became the regular inker on most of the issues of the DC/Vertigo series "Fables", penciled by Mark Buckingham, for which they won the Eisner Award for "Best Penciller/Inker Team" in 2007. Personal life and tributes. Leialoha lives in San Francisco with his partner, comics artist Trina Robbins. Writer Larry Hama named the character Edward Leialoha (code name Torpedo) after Steve Leialoha.