Philippines-based John U. Toledo has always showed artistic promise as a child. The youngest in a brood of nine would join a number of competitions, which he often lost, but they didn't discourage him from pursuing the arts. For someone who grew up in a household where the television is an old black-and-white model, John was color-sensitive and adept at painting, his love for different forms of expression becoming more apparent as he reached his teens.

By high school, he was part of the school choir (even if he would later disassociate himself with organized religion), directed and wrote his own class plays (he recalls how funny some of them were without meaning to be), and immersed himself in imported comic books (which he gladly bought with his allowance).

His knack for illustrating in his own unique, meticulous, and quirky style became more evident during college, where he met like-minded individuals and future comic book creators, both in and outside school. John, a comics reader of all genres, is also film buff. He hopes to be a filmmaker eventually, but opts to concentrate on 2-dimensional, sequential storytelling for now.

His influences are diverse and numerous: Classical and commercial artists/painters, film directors, cinematographers, actors and actresses, writers, film conceptual designers and artdirectors, prosthetic make-up artists and sculptors, costume and fashion designers, insanely funny talk show hosts and fellow comic book creators are among the people that inspire him. His innately competitive nature and bizarre sense of humor have served him well, as he has survived many long years working on small, local freelance jobs and sending submission after submission of intricately penciled pages to American comic book companies-hoping against hope that somebody would notice and hire him.

John landed his first international professional comic book job as penciler of the one-shot "Chastity Re-Imagined" for Chaos Comics, shortly before the company went bankrupt. He continued drawing and sending samples after that debut project, and finds himself immensely fortunate and to be chosen as penciler of issues 4 to 7 of "Candyappleblack".

John and Marc also just scored the gig to resurrect the classic Image character “Blacklight.” Click here to see what they're up to these days.