Jim Valentino was born in the Bronx, New York on October 28, 1952. He started his career in the late 1970’s creating small press, self-published comics such as Christmas Comics, Kid Stuf’ and others. His work soon came to the attention of Dave Sim and Deni Loubert who published his first full color series, normalman, in 1984 under Aardvark-Vanaheim. In 1985, the title moved to Loubert’s Renegade Press, where his second series, the eponymous titled, Valentino, was launched.
Valentino worked as a storyboard artist for various animation features and upon returning to comics began working for Marvel where among other work, most notably the What If? Series, he re-created the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Leaving Marvel with several other artists, he co-founded Image Comics for which he created the ultra-violent HIV infected vigilante, ShadowHawk. Under the Image banner he published Vignettes, a collection of his earlier auto-biographical work and the critically acclaimed A Touch of Silver.
Valentino served as Image publisher from 1999-2004 changing the face of the company into one of the most stylistically diverse in the industry. He brought in such renowned authors as Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, James Robinson, John Romita, Jr, Joesph Michael Linsner and many more.
Valentino has done work, either as writer, artist or both for virtually every publisher in the comics field, he has served on the Board of Directors of the Cartoon Art Museum, ACTOR and Image Comics, Inc. as well as on the steering committee of Free Comic Book Day and in an advisory capacity with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
He currently lives in Southern California with his sons Aaron and Joel.