Eagle River’s Tadd Galusha finds success in big-time comic arts industry

Senshi Con wrapped up last weekend, and beforehand I had the opportunity to sit down with one of its special guests to talk about his craft. Tadd Galusha and his wife had always wanted to come to Alaska, and when a career opportunity opened up for her, they decided to go for it and move to Eagle River, her childhood home. Fortunately, Galusha can do his work as a comic artist just about anywhere. He’s worked with big name comic publishers such as Dark Horse, Dynamite, and IDW, as well as indie publishers like Oni Press, and self-published work through Amazon.

Galusha is currently working on a Kickstarter for his indie graphic novel Star Trucker #2, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ghost Busters, an IDW crossover comic that’s dropping November 1st. “When you’re a kid,” said Galusha, “if someone would’ve told me ‘you’re going to work on Ghostbusters and Ninja Turtles’, which I watched both of those cartoons, I would’ve been like, ‘yeah, right.’”

He’s been working on this for the past couple months with four other artists, which can present unique challenges as they need to ensure stylistic and content consistency across panels and issues, all while working remotely. In his line of work, most correspondence is done by email, and he only met the editor in charge of the Ninja Turtles/Ghost Busters project a couple weeks ago.

He’s also working on another indie piece for Oni Press that hasn’t been announced yet, but hopes will be out by Christmas time. Initially in moving to Alaska from Portland, Oregon, which Galusha referred to as the ‘Mecca of comic books’, he was worried whether he’d be able to find enough work. That concern turned out to be unfounded.

“I could work every day from now until Christmas and still have work to get done,” he laughed.

Eagle River feels comfortable for Galusha, as most of his childhood was spent in the town of Burlington, Washington. “Eagle River reminds me of where I grew up,” he said. After graduating high school, Galusha began his college education at Washington State University thinking he would like to be a veterinarian. He said he lasted about a semester studying the animal sciences before he realized he needed to readjust. He’d always had an interest in the arts and changed his major over to fine art. It was during this time that he re-discovered a love for comic books.

“If you’re a working comic artist, you’re not just an illustrator, but you can do anything,” he said. “You can draw realism, surreal, landscapes, animals, all that type of stuff.” He also happened to run into his high school art teacher, who encouraged him to enroll in a three year art school program at The Kubert School for cartooning and graphic design.

“When they interviewed me they were like… ‘We want to give you the experience of what it’s like working as a professional.’” He said until you get into the field, you can’t grasp the workload. “If you want to work in comics, prepare to have no social life and work seven days a week, and grueling hours. The payoff is you get to work drawing comics, which is awesome.” Galusha also had to play catchup with the other students at the school, as they’d all known they wanted to be comic artists from a younger age. So he approached it like he was trying to go out for a professional sports team, and put his head down and got to work. He was one in a graduating class of eighteen, which had started out three years earlier as a class of 120. He took the work ethic he learned in school and applied it to his professional life after graduating. Oftentimes, budding artists have to work a nine-to-five to pay the bills while they carve out a niche for themselves, but Galusha never had to do that. “If there’s a job to be done in the commercial art world, I’ve probably done it,” he said.

Galusha’s hard work has paid off as he’s now well-established in the industry, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to him. “Just treating people really well and being humble goes so far,” he said.