Clayton Crain is an American comic book artist known for his digital painted work on Marvel Comics books such as Ghost Rider, X-Force, and Carnage, and also on the Valiant Comics series Rai. Crain is also known for his work with Todd McFarlane, covers for DC, and his unique sketch cover acrylic paintings.

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Clayton Crain
Crain at a signing for Avengers (Vol 8) #1 at Midtown Comics in Manhattan
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Digital painting, Computer painting
Notable works	Ghost Rider: Trail of Tears Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation Venom vs. Carnage X-Force Carnage Carnage: U.S.A
Official website

In 2022 Crain and Black Flag Comics made a variant that was unauthorized by Marvel Comics. This variant which was a variant of the facsimile edition of the 1st appearance of Miles Morales, Ultimate Fallout 4. This controversy became know as “acetate gate” because Crain and Black Flag took an existing variant and stapled on top of the variant an acetate cover without permission from Marvel Comics. Essentially damaging the original book. To heighten this controversy CGC pre-graded these books before release and gave grades 10.0, 9.9 and 9.8. CGC has since backtracked their grading on these books and said no future books would get blue or yellow labels. What turned this into one of the biggest controversies in modern comics is how these comics were distributed and what happened after.

The art on the cover added to the controversy because Spider-Man’s mask was replaced with a folded flag, folded incorrectly to military standards showing red. And the back cover had a giant US flag on it with the misspelled word “Intrust” on the back. These factors caused many memes where individuals made memes mocking the cover changing the mask that was changed to a flag to other items.

The book was released at C2E2 and pumped up by comic book influencers. These influencers were able to buy the majority of the books that were to be released that day. While regular convention goers were supplied with 1/7th of the print run at a higher price than the influencers paid.

To heighten this drama a week after Crain ran away with the owner of Black Flag Comics’ wife. Leading to a very hard to watch YouTube video of the owner laying out these facts.

Early life

Clayton Crain grew up in Moxee, Washington with his parents and older sister. He was sketching on his schoolwork from a very early age and made the definitive choice to be a comic book illustrator at the age of 14 after seeing The Amazing Spider-Man #315.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Crain's career began with Acclaim Comics after he showed editor Fabian Nicieza a 5-page original story board of his artwork. His first book was Shadowman issues 16–20. Crain went on to work on various projects for Todd McFarlane, Top Cow Productions, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics.

Crain is working for Valiant Comics on the book Rai, with writer Matt Kindt.

Bibliography

Self-published

• Impure #1-?
• 342 #1-?

Acclaim

• Shadowman #16-20 (1998), his first professional work (as Klayton Krain)

Image

• Curse of the Spawn #24-29 (1998–99)
• Kiss Psycho Circus #18-31 (1999–2000)
• Darkness, vol. 1, #34-36
• Sam & Twitch #14
• No Honor #1-4
• Universe #1-8
• Tom Judge: End Of Days #1
• "Savior" 1-8 (2015)

Marvel

• Amazing Spider-Man #538 (variant cover, 2007)
• Ant-Man #1-4 (unpublished)
• Carnage #1-5 (2010–2011)
• Carnage: U.S.A. #1-5 (2012)
• Four #29 (cover, 2006)
• Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation miniseries, #1-6 (2005–06)
• Ghost Rider: Trail of Tears miniseries, #1-6 (2007)
• Wolverine/Punisher miniseries, #4 (Marvel Knights (cover, 2004)
• Sensational Spider-man vol. 2 (interiors): #26, 28, 39-40; (covers): #27, #30-33 (2006-07)
• Silver Surfer, vol. 3, #10 (cover, 2004)
• Spider-Geddon, Limited Series, #0 (interiors, cover) (2018)
• Toxin, miniseries, #2 (cover, 2005)
• Thunderbolts #114 (variant cover, 2007)
• Ultimate Comics Fallout #4 (2011)
• Venom #14 (cover, 2004)
• Venom/Carnage, miniseries, #1-4 (2004)
• X-Force vol. 3 #1-6, 11-16, 21-25 (2009–2010)

Collections

Trade paperback collections include:

• Ghost Rider:
  • Road to Damnation (Marvel, 6-issue mini-series, 2005, July 2006 ISBN 0-7851-1592-7)
  • Trail of Tears (Marvel, 6-issue mini-series, 2007, September 2007, ISBN 0-7851-2003-3)

References

• Clayton Crain at the Grand Comics Database

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Clayton Crain.

• Official website
• Clayton Crain at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)