Daniel Acuña (born 1974) is a Spanish comic book artist.

Early life

In college, Daniel Acuña studied painting and graduated with a degree in Fine Arts. He cites his early influences as Jack Kirby, the Romitas (Senior and Junior), Will Eisner, Simon Bisley, Kevin Nowlan, Hal Foster, and his favorite, Richard Corben, along with fine artists such as Edward Hopper, and Alfons Mucha, as well as illustrator Drew Struzan.

Career

His first published work was a 22-page black and white project, Claus & Simon in Hollywood, with fellow artist Santi Arcas, which was bought by Spanish publisher La Cupula when Acuña was 22. This work was followed by Claus & Simon: Freakshow, and Claus & Simon: Disaster Box. The "Claus & Simon" series is about the adventures of a clown and an anthropomorphic dinosaur. The last story was done for the French market and later reprinted in the popular American magazine Heavy Metal (under the title Claus & Simon: Kings of Escape). Claus & Simon increased Acuña's profile in Europe, and he received work painting the covers for European paperback reprints of Alan Moore's Supreme (#2-6), which led to Acuña's decision to try to break into the American market while still remaining active in the European comics industry. Acuña's first work in the American comics industry was for Marvel Comics, on a miniseries for Axel Alonso that was never completed or published. DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza later hired him to paint pictures of Ravager and Blackfire for Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files. This work got Acuña noticed by Mark Chiarello, who suggested him to editors Mike Carlin and Joan Hilty as a cover artist for the Justice League of America and Outsiders series. Although only doing American-market covers up until this point, Acuña made the move to interior art with Uncle Sam & the Freedom Fighters, on which he did the covers, pencils, inks, graytones and even character design, working with European colorist Javi Montes. In late 2005, it was announced that Acuña had signed a two-year exclusive contract with DC Comics. However, in 2007 it was announced that Acuña had signed an exclusive contract with Marvel Comics, to start in 2008, and would be leaving DC Comics. Acuña had previously only done covers for Marvel; his first interior work for the publisher was The Eternals, which debuted June 2008. In 2010 Acuña drew the Black Widow ongoing series with writer Marjorie Liu. In October 2015 he and writer Nick Spencer started the series Captain America: Sam Wilson.

Personal life

Acuña is currently based in Águilas, Spain.

Covers only