Born in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Northeast United States, J.K. Woodward wasted little time in becoming the kid your mother warned you about. This was due to a strong rebellious streak combined with an intense work ethic which meant that he gave 110% to being his own person AND a pain in the ass! This personality mix made a rote life as a drone in a cubicle an impossible career choice and left him with one of two choices:
Become a rock star.
Become an artist.
Since the only talent he had for music was a decent taste in it, he decieded to become an artist that dressed like a rock star and moved to Los Angeles. These were dark yet fruitful years where he experimented with style and developed techniques that he uses to this day. Eventually the City of Angels lost its appeal and , seeking a change in life, climate and creative energy he followed the examples set by one of his heroes (David Bowie) and moved to Germany. Despite the presence of (or more likely becuase of) strong German beer, J.K. veered into self-publishing with a comic comprised of his expressionistic paitings titled Flesh Angels and followed with a comedy comic series titled These Things Happen – comprised of random funny stories, a talk show host who doesn’t talk off the clock, and emus.
For some reason after that he moved to Desert Hot Springs, California, which has the dubious honor of most abandoned washing machines in the western hemisphere. He collaborated with A. David Lewis on the indie comic Mortal Coils and Michael Colbert on the Digital Webbing Presents series Crazy Mary where he still does covers and promises to do another full story. IDW noticed his work on Crazy Mary and offered him a gig doing a CSI:NY limited series and he followed in short order with a standout story in BOOM! Studios’ Zombie Tales series. When Peter David was re-launching his owner created series Fallen Angel at IDW, James was a natural choice for Peter’s dark world of macic, violence and redemption.
His painted work eventually caught the attention of Marvel editor, Mike Marts who chose him to illustrate X-men Origins:The Beast which was released September 2008.
From Desert Hot Springs, he moved back to Los Angeles and eventually found a home in Long Beach. He recently moved from Long Beach, CA to his new home in Long Island City, NY. After finishing a 33 issue run on Peter David’s Fallen Angel, he completed various Star Trek projects for IDW, several covers for IDW, BOOM! Studios, and Devil’s Due Publishing, before returning to Fallen Angel for a relaunch called “Fallen Angel:Reborn” which guest stars Josh Whedon’s Illyria character from the Angel television series.
