I'm Brad Rader, best known as storyboard artist on BATMAN in collaboration with Kevin Altieri and Bruce Timm, and director of SPAWN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, for which I won an Emmy. I keep my Emmy on my mantelpiece but I am actually a rather modest gentleman and forget that people actually know and enjoy my work. Stan Lee said my storyboards for STRIPERELLA were the best he'd ever seen; still, my first love is comics illustration.

I fell into animation until I could break into comics, not realizing it would occupy the majority of my career. Comics work is difficult to acquire and maintain, so I do a bit of self-publishing, especially of my homoerotic comics work under the porn name of Flaming Artist. Currently, I have Vertigo original graphic novel in production in collaboration with Andersen Gabrych (writer) and Bob Schreck (editor).

As a mainstream comics artist, I aim to produce well-drawn graphic story telling in the tradition of Adams, Toth, Kirby, Caniff, Kriegstein and Steranko. Like Toth, I move back and forth between animation and comics, filmmaking and print, both disciplines influencing the other. In an interview in Anvil Anthology, Alex Toth said he was "very impressed with [Brad Rader's] work...he's one to watch". You may have seen my mainstream illustration on CATWOMAN and THE BATMAN ADVENTURES.

As erotic illustrator, I like to draw to naked hairy older men having sex with each other. Dale Lazarov, writer/editor of STICKY, said "Flaming Artist's middle-aged daddy gay erotic comics totally turn my crank even when the guy doesn't have one". I've had my homoerotic illustrations published in TRUE ADULT FANTASY 1 and 2, First Hand Magazine, Drummer Magazine and In Touch For Men and exhibited in The One Way, Mister B's and Flazh! Alley Gallery. HARRY AND DICKLESS TOM came out in print earlier this year and it's available through http://www.flamingartist.com. Gary Panter, author of JIMBO and designer of Pee Wee's Playhouse, said HARRY AND DICKLESS TOM is ”an essential tonic for the shriveled imagination of our pathetic, conformist, consumerist, sheepbrained, puritanical society.” Chip Kidd, author of CHEESE MONKEYS and CHIP KIDD, BOOK ONE, said “oh, what I would have given to have a book like this in eighth grade!”

I am a member of The Cartoon Artists Professional Society, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Sierra Club of California, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and the Tom of Finland Foundation.

If you want to hear me discussing my work, listen to Lene Taylor interviewing me in her I Read Comics podcast.

If you want to meet me in person, I will have booth space in the small press areas of WonderCon in San Francisco and San Diego Comic-Con International in '07. I will be tabling at APECon as well. I will probably be tabling at the West Hollywood Erotic Art Fair in October 2007.

I also have interests in the Caballa, Buddhism, Tai Chi, quantum physics and meditation. I live in Los Angeles with my spouse John Callahan.