Molenaar Romano

omano Molenaar is a Dutch comic artist, best known as the second artist of the popular sci-fi series ‘Storm’. He has also worked extensively for US comic books and gaming projects. Born in The Hague, Molenaar has drawn covers and interior art for US comic books since the mid 1990s, starting with the Liar Comics miniseries ‘More than Mortal’ and ‘Witchfinder’. He then joined Chaos Comics, where his credits include ‘Lady Death’ and ‘The Tenth’. He also worked for Top Cow, doing fill-ins on ‘Witchblade’ and ‘The Darkness’, as well as the miniseries ‘Cursed’.

For Marvelcomics he was asked to work on an X-men unlimited issue #44 called: ‘Can they suffer?’ The best part came a year later when X-Men Unlimited #44 became the first comic book to win a Genesis Award in the program’s then 18-year history. The Genesis Awards are held annually by The Humane Society of the United States to honor media outlets that bring public attention to animal protection issues. It sold over 75000 copies.

Molenaar was asked by publisher Rob van Bavel to take over the popular Dutch comic series ‘Storm’, following the death of the original artist Don Lawrence in 2003. Molenaar gave up his dayjob at the reproduction department of a technical office and has done the artwork for new stories in cooperation with colorist Jorg Vos since 2006. The stories, written by Martin Lodewijk and later by De Vos, are first published in Eppo magazine and then in albums by Van Bavel’s Don Lawrence Collection. In 2013, Molenaar also started a spin-off series starring the female character ‘Roodhaar’, for which the scripts are provided by none other than ‘Conan the Barbarian’ writer Roy Thomas.

Romano Molenaar has also worked in game design since the 1990s, and shares his own Artking Studio with Niel Vredeveldt. He has done stage designs for rock band Within Temptation, and also drew a comic book series based on the band’s 2011 albums ‘The Unforgiving’. The artist, resident of Pijnacker, The Netherlands, was asked by DC Comics to draw Batman Detective Comics #1 and later the ‘Batman’ spin-off ‘Birds of Prey’ in June 2012. In 2014, his talents were also recognized by Standaard in Belgium, who hired him to draw ‘J. Rom – Force of Gold’, the second more adult spin-off of their ‘Suske en Wiske’ franchise.