If your Spidey senses are tingling, it may be because Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross is coming to the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The traveling exhibition, developed by the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, Illinois, will bring the gravity-defying world of Marvel Comic illustrations to Bismarck from March 16 through June 9, 2024.

Spider-Man, Marvelocity Cover, 2018

The exhibition includes more than 50 original illustrations, including cover art, storyboards, preliminary drawings, sculptures, and even a set of homemade action figures fashioned by Alex Ross when he was a child in Lubbock, Texas.

Ross is a prolific and award-winning illustrator, writer, and fine artist. He created his first cartoon at age three after seeing a live action Spider-Man sequence on “The Electric Company” television program. As a teenager he carefully studied the visual techniques of comic book and graphic novel artists before following in his mother’s footsteps and studying at the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

In 1990, Ross’ first published comic book illustrations appeared in Now Comics’ “Terminator: The Burning Earth.” His initial Marvel cover art was printed in 1993. Ross’ work in the 1990s was primarily for DC Comics. Beginning in 2000 he became more closely associated with the world of Marvel.

Dr. Strange, Marvelocity Cover, 2018 

His work is now synonymous with the images of the Avengers, Captain America, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and many, many other superheroes.

The fantastical world Ross creates lives outside human parameters, allowing him to push his visual representations of superheroes into a dramatic realm even beyond the limitations of computer-generated imagery (CGI). His characters are monumental and epic in scale, enhanced by exploding compositions that burst from the page. Ross works in the medium of gouache, an opaque watercolor. It allows for layering colors and is popular with commercial artists for its precise control and matte finish.

In 2018, Ross created a new series of cover images as part of a publication project documenting his career with Marvel. These illustrations form the Dunn Museum’s Marvelocity traveling exhibition and feature his signature hyperrealist style and dynamic poses.

Captain America, Marvelocity Cover, 2018

So if action is your reward, come get your fill at Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross, on exhibit in the James E. Sperry Gallery at the State Museum, March 16-June 9, 2024. Radioactive spiders not included.
 

Take the time to fill in the State Archives’ survey and help us serve you better.

The State Archives has launched a short demographic survey, the first in a series, and we invite you to participate! As stewards of the documentary history of North Dakota and its people, we want to know the people we serve, how we can improve our services, and how we can bring new interest to the wonderful world of archives and historical research.

The State Archives’ resources can help patrons solve genealogical mysteries.

Our overarching goals are to get better acquainted with those we serve and increase services and outreach to grow all audiences. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of reasons for why getting to know our clientele will help us reach these goals:

1. Communication: We can devise the best strategies to communicate who we are and what we do.

2. Engagement: Those who have fun together learn better together. We can share our love of history with our users in more effective ways.

3. Collection description and access: We can prioritize the identification, description, and digitization of items and collections of significant research interest. 

4. Technology: We can utilize technologies that are familiar to our audience to provide better access to our collections as well as identify and assist with less familiar technologies. 

5. Programming: We can design programming to engage our current patrons and draw in groups of people not previously reached. 

6. Collection acquisition: We can focus on acquiring collections that align with the research interests of our users and identify and fill topical gaps in our collections. 

7. Overall experience: We want visitors to have fun here (and on our website), to use our resources to solve mysteries, answer questions, and formulate new ideas. We want the journey of conducting research and finding information to be as streamlined as possible. As archivists, we are proud of the history we get to work with every day and want to share our love of history with everyone, whether they are virtual or on-site, a first-time visitor or a regular. We truly believe that history is created by everyone, and that history is for everyone.