Professional History
Crafton "Tony" Kelly began working at a young age at the print shop founded by his father Crafton Kelly in 1983, Kell-O-Graphics, then Kell-O-Graphics, Inc. Tony transformed the family business into a comic book art studio using then-pioneering digital techniques for color separation, lettering, digitizing, pre-press and film output. The first publisher to employ Tony and his company was Image Comics on Savage Dragon #6 and Wildstar: Sky Zero #4 (1993) for film outputs.[1]
In 1995, Kelly began working on digital colorization for Image on Angela Special, Spawn Fan Edition, Stormwatch, Team 7 - Objective: Hell and Wildstorm!, and also for Big Entertainment on the titles Gene Roddenberry's Lost Universe, Leonard Nimoy's Primortals, Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero - The Newmatic Man, Neil Gaiman's Lady Justice and Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger.[2]
In 1996, he starts working for Harris Comics, on the titles Vampirella Strikes and Vampirella: 25th Anniversary Special; and for Kevlar in Horseman.[3]
In 1997, he starts working as a letterer for Image on Mars Attacks, The Maxx, and Friends of Maxx; and for Toyman Inc. in A.D.A.M. Ashkan; in addition to continuing as a colorist for Image's The Mask of Zorro.[4]
At the end of 1998, he was hired by the publisher Marvel Comics to colour, along with Steve Oliff, the covers of Avengers Forever, this being his only work for Marvel, and his latest work credited under his name (as he died in 2000, at 28 years of age). Other works were co-signed as Kell-O-Graphics, in collaboration with Benjamin C., Sean Carlo Concepcion, Mike Conley, Sheldon Mitchell and Dan Saraceni.[5]