Like the heroes that he draws, Marvel comics illustrator David Nakayama has wrestled with his inner demons: East against West, Japanese anime vs. Spider-Man and the Hulk.

But whenever it was time to put pencil to paper, the hapa artist from Nu'uanu typically had to shelve his Asian influences in favor of American comic standards.

Not any more. In true comic book fashion, he's been unleashed, and that's not bad for a guy who's living his dream job.

The 29-year-old Nakayama is drawing a new Marvel comic about Japanese superheros called Big Hero 6. If you look closely, you'll even notice a few Hawai'i touches.

"I'll be drawing it in an East-meets-West style combining elements of American comics and Japanese anime," said Nakayama, who is half Japanese and half haole. "No one is going to confuse this with anime, but it is a neat hybrid."

For the comic book illiterate, anime is that uniquely Japanese style of drawing that features huge round eyes, expressive faces and big, spikey hair. Widely popular in Japan, it isn't a Western staple.

Nakayama wouldn't mind changing that with Big Hero 6, a five-part miniseries that debuts in September.

"Mixing in the Japanese influences with the American style gives this comic book a completely new flavor that will stand out," he said. "Sometimes you have to make that bold statement. That is the risk we take."

EARLY CALLING

Drawing comic books has been what Nakayama wanted to do ever since he was 13.

"I just knew that was what I wanted to do," he said. "In high school, I took as many art classes as I could."

He and a friend would spend their summers creating their own comic books, but they always had more ideas than time and never finished one.

And while he drew with a Westernized approach, he liked the Japanese anime science-fiction of Robotech and Starblazers just as much as Marvel's Spider-Man and X-Men.

After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 2001, where the art curriculum emphasized comic strips over comic books, Nakayama spent two years at a technical college that specialized in cartooning.

That led to an internship at Top Cow, an edgy comic book company in Los Angeles where he drew City of Heroes. Marvel hired him in 2006 as a "penciler," a comic book industry term for the person who creates the uncolored action drawings.

Each month, Nakayama must draw 22-page comic books, plus a cover, based on written directions that closely resemble a screenplay. The task makes him a combination director, photographer, costume designer and lighting engineer. Not surprisingly, he describes the job like a filmmaker.

"What I do is try to figure out how to take that information and make it as visually compelling as possible," he said. "You want to pick camera angles that are different. You don't want to show the characters from the same distance every time."

FACING CHALLENGES

Although he works out of his home in Alhambra, Calif., where he lives with his wife, the challenges are out of this world.

"It is incredibly challenging," Nakayama said. "You are not always called upon to draw everything you have ever seen on Earth. You are also called upon to draw things that have never existed and have to come out of your brain."

Nakayama's vision of Big Hero 6 was influenced by his boyhood experiences in the Islands.

That's why the comic's main character, a 13-year-old genius named Hiro, has Boy's Day carp hanging on his bedroom wall, just like the ones that hung in Nakayama's own bedroom.

The hero's alarm clock is shaped like a good luck daruma you'd find in any Honolulu business — well, before it turns into a robot.

"Right there on the first two pages are two shout-outs to Hawai'i," Nakayama said. "I didn't feel like I could sneak in too many Hawai'i things because it wouldn't make sense, but I definitely wanted to bring in Japanese things that I knew about from Hawai'i."

So far, the covers of the three issues he has drawn reflect a montage of Japanese art and culture, from ink and wash painting, or sumie-e, to geishas and samurai. It's a toolbox that is rich with styles that Nakayama is happy to use.

"It's a culture obsessed with art," he said. "The culture in general is all about design and packaging and presentation and artistic things. Tea ceremonies. Hello Kitty. I am hard pressed to think of other countries that have this artistic range."