Ben Marra (born 1977, Halifax, Nova Scotia) is an American illustrator and comic-book artist. His work has been mostly self-published in his own imprint: Traditional Comics. His drawing style is reminiscent of that of artists Paul Gulacy, Spain Rodriguez and pinball machine graphic illustrators.
Darick Robertson's Space Beaver, the first comic-book to leave an impression on him, was a science-fiction story featuring an anthropomorphic beaver who displayed massive violence on the strips. Reading this comic was an inspiration for Marra’s later work.
His artistic training starts at the School of Visual Arts under David Mazzucchelli's tutelage and with alternative comic artist Dash Shaw as classmate, and then continues in Florence (Italy) where he studied painting in 1998. His style in his own words is "I kind of see what I’m doing as like what the Stooges and the Ramones were doing as a reaction to that big, self-indulgent arena rock aesthetic. Making it really raw, really punk rock, really earthy, DIY, really gut-level, very basic in its ecution. Not a lot of technical efficiency. Just, like, three-chord power pop songs. Really short. It’s supposed to hit you really fast, and it’s got a really emotional basis instead of a technical basis. It’s really based on people’s emotional response."
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