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Early life and career Larry Hama is a third-generation American, born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, and raised in Queens. He "played Kodokan Judo as a kid" and later studied Kyudo (Japanese archery) and Iaido (Japanese martial art swordsmanship) *. Planning to become a painter, Hama attended Manhattan's High School of Art and Design, where one instructor was former EC Comics artist Bernard Krigstein. Hama sold his first comics work to the fantasy film magazine Castle of Frankenstein when he was 16 years old. After high school, Hama took a job drawing shoes for catalogs, and then served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers from 1969 to 1971, during the Vietnam War, an experience that would inform his editing of the 1986-93 Marvel Comics series The 'Nam. Upon his discharge, Hama became active in the Asian community in New York City. High-school classmate Ralph Reese, who had become an assistant to famed EC and Marvel artist Wally Wood, helped Hama get a similar job at Wood's Manhattan studio. Hama assisted on Wood's comic strips Sally Forth and Cannon, which originally ran in Military News and Overseas Weekly and were later collected in a series of books. During this time, he also had illustrations published in such magazines as Esquire and Rolling Stone. Through contacts made while working for Wood, Hama began working at comic-book and commercial artist Neal Adams' Continuity Associates studio. This in turn led Hama to freelance comics penciling work for the seminal independent comic book Big Apple Comix G.I. Joe
Other works From 1986-93, Hama edited the acclaimed comic book The 'Nam, a gritty Marvel series about the Vietnam War. Additionally, he wrote the 16-issue Marvel series (Aug. 1989 - Sept. 1990), concerning the adventures of John Doe, an American ninja and Special Forces commando in an alternate reality in which World War III is sparked after the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles are all destroyed. Hama also edited a relaunch of Marvel's black-and-white comics magazine Savage Tales, overseeing its change from sword-and-sorcery to men's adventure. Other comics Hama has written include Wolverine, the Wolverine / Fantastic Four spin-off The Fantastic Adventures of Logan and Ben Grimm, and the X-Men brand extension Generation X for Marvel; and Batman stories for DC Comics. He wrote filecards for Hasbro's line of sci-fi/police action figures, C.O.P.S. n' Crooks and contributed to the relaunch of the G.I. Joe toy line and comic book in 2000. While working at Neal Adams' Continuity Associates, Hama developed a series he first created in 1978, Bucky O'Hare, the story of a green anthropomorphic rabbit and his mutant mammal sidekicks in an intergalactic war against space amphibians, which went on to become a comic, cartoon, video game and toy line. In the mid-1990s, he wrote the graphic novel adaptation of Harold Coyle's novel Team Yankee, about the beginning of a third world war in Western Europe. In 2006, Osprey Publishing announced that Hama would write its "Osprey Graphic History" series of comic books about historical battles, including the titles The Bloodiest Day - Battle of Antietam and Surprise Attack - Battle of Shiloh (both with artist Scott Moore) and Island of Terror - Battle of Iwo Jima (with Anthony Williams). As of 2005, Hama is married and has a teenage daughter. | ||||||||||||
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