Geofrey "Geof" Darrow (born October 21, 1955) is an American comic book artist, best known for his work on comic series Shaolin Cowboy, Hard Boiled and The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, which was adapted into an animated television series of the same name, as well as his contributions to The Matrix series of films. Darrow's approach to comics and art has been cited as an influence by a multitude of artists including Peter Chung, Frank Quitely, Seth Fisher, Eric Powell, Frank Cho, Juan José Ryp, James Stokoe, Chris Burnham, Aaron Kuder, Nick Pitarra, and others. Early life Geofrey Darrow was born on October 21, 1955, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended a Catholic school for thirteen years. Darrow read comics, mostly DC, from an early age, but he only decided to pursue a career in illustration after first seeing Jack Kirby's work in Fantastic Four Annual #3. As a teenager, he encountered Maurice Horn's The World Encyclopedia of Comics, which contained excerpts from Lieutenant Blueberry illustrated by Jean Giraud, whose art further affected his outlook on comics. Darrow sought out all available Blueberry volumes, gradually moving to other European works, such as Jean-Claude Mézières' Valérian and Greg and Hermann's Bernard Prince. Career After graduating from Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Darrow worked as a freelance illustrator for various advertising agencies. In the late 1970s, he moved to Los Angeles and joined Hanna-Barbera, where he worked as a character designer on a number of cartoon series, most notably Super Friends in its various incarnations. During his time in animation, Darrow became acquainted with such comic and animation industry figures as Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Tex Avery and Dave Stevens. In 1982, Darrow met French comic book creator and his artistic idol Mœbius, who was staying in Los Angeles while working on Tron for Disney. Upon learning that Darrow is an artist interested in creating comics, Mœbius arranged a meeting for him with Les Humanoïdes Associés, the publisher of French science fiction anthology Métal Hurlant, and offered to collaborate on some sort of project. Eventually, Darrow moved to France to be able to work with Giraud more closely as the two were planning to produce a comic strip written by Mœbius and drawn by Darrow, but Giraud had left France for Tahiti two weeks after Darrow's arrival. Despite that, they were able to produce an art portfolio titled La