Love of Spiderman carries him far
Eric Hector lives in a fantasy world. In his everyday work life, he rubs shoulders with some of the most famous celebrities around: Superman, Batman, and even the Powerpuff girls. Comic buff? Well, yes, but this ’92 grad has made a living out of the business he loves the most: the business of comics. Hector owns a business in Mt. Zion, Ill., called Heroic Age Studios. He makes his living as a comic-coloring artist, working with giants in the comic industry to color the images of some of the most iconic characters in comics today.
Looking around Hector’s studio, it’s easy to see that comics are not only what he does for a living; they’re also his passion. Superheroes and villains are everywhere. Darth Vader’s head sits on a shelf adjacent to an impressively large Spiderman collection. “Spiderman was the reason I got into comics,” Hector admits.
Hector became serious about comics in high school when someone talked to one of his classes about graphic design and he then realized he might actually be able to make a living off his love for comics. “I thought that if I couldn’t be Spiderman, then I could at least draw him,” he says.
Hector first attended Richland Community College and then transferred to Millikin for a few reasons: it was close to his Mt. Zion home, he knew Millikin had a strong art department and because he says the Millikin name “carries a lot of weight.”
While he was at Millikin, Hector had the chance to intern for Marvel Comics in New York City under the instruction of Fabian Nicieza, one of the premier writers of comic story lines for Marvel. He applied for an internship at Marvel after seeing an advertisement for the opportunity in the back of a comic book. Hector believes he got the job because of his previous experience while still in high school of owning and running a comic book store with his father and grandfather. After his internship, Hector headed home to start his own comic coloring business.
Hector started his comic coloring business, Heroic Age Studios, in his hometown of Mt. Zion. Since then, Hector has managed to build up his clientele. As one of the first in the business to use computer coloring, he got a leg up on the competition and has had the opportunity to work with Disney, Archie Comics, Marvel Comics and DC Comics. He now serves local, national and international customers, working with computer graphics and technology to create logos for businesses in Decatur and to color comics all over the world for some of the biggest names in the business.
Hector credits his success in part to Millikin and the internship opportunity he had with Marvel. How did he get such a diverse range of customers? “A lot of them came from the people I met at my internship. It was good networking.”
Hector has taken on a few more projects, too. In order to get away from “middle-management,” he has begun to teach at Richland. He teaches ‘Intro to the Mac,’ ‘Computer graphics 1 and 2,’ and will be teaching a new illustration class soon. He also has seven projects in the works — one of which involves writing and producing his own comics incorporating some of the 80 characters he’s copyrighted and marketing them to an industry that is always looking for new stories: the film industry. Hector has also written “Johnny Violence,” a screenplay that has attracted the interest of at least one Hollywood director. He hopes to raise funds for production in the near future.
In the meantime, Hector would like to start doing more design work for Decatur-area businesses. He is also a regular speaker at local schools talking to children and comic lovers about his experiences. It was something that he promised himself he would do after the day that a graphic designer opened up the world of comics for him. Hector says, “They know so much more about technology than I could have ever dreamed of knowing at their age. I tell them, ‘You can do anything you want to do.’”
Read the complete profile in the Summer 2005 issue of Millikin Quarterly magazine.
