Chris Samnee

Chris Samnee
Chris Samnee in 2013
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Artist
Notable works	Capote in Kansas Thor: The Mighty Avenger Daredevil The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom The Shadow
Awards	2011 Harvey Award for Most Promising Newcomer 2013 Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker

Chris Samnee is an American comic book artist. He received the 2011 Harvey Award for Most Promising Newcomer for his work on the Thor: The Mighty Avenger, and won a 2013 Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker for his work on the The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom and his Daredevil. He was also nominated for the 2006 Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award.

Chris Samnee grew up in or near St. Louis. His earliest experiences superheroes came through the Super Friends cartoon. He was not aware of the print source material for those cartoons until his grandmother began buying him three-packs of comics from a grocery store. His first comic book was a Batman book that he read when he was five or six years old, and that became his favorite character. He began copying the work of 80s artists whose work he was exposed to, like Tom Mandrake, Jim Aparo and Alan Davis. He would also research those who influenced these artists, such as comic strip artist Milton Caniff, whom Samnee read in an interview in Comics Journal was an influence on Aparo, and Frank Robbins. Samnee's grandmother further encouraged Samnee to expand his reading to the Dick Tracy comic strips found in a collection at a local library. By his mid-teens he was also heavily interested in Japanese manga and anime.

Samnee was about 10 years old when he realized he wanted to produce comics for a living. He convinced his parents to drive him an hour and a half to the airport Holiday Inn, where local comics conventions were held, and where he would bombard writers and artists with questions on how to produce comics and break into the industry. One particularly helpful creator was Conan artist Mike Doherty, who advised him on what to draw, and gave him some 11 x 14 Marvel Comics illustration board to draw on. Samnee was so in awe of holding professional board with the Marvel logo printed on it that he could not bring himself to draw on it, and in a 2013 interview, indicated that he still had it.