Hilary Barta aka Surly Hack is a cartoonist best known for humor and parody comics such as What The--?!, Plastic Man and Stupid, and as the co-creator of Splash Brannigan with Alan Moore at America's Best Comics.
 

Barta began his career as an inker on many comics for publishers including Image, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse.

His art and writing have also appeared in SpongeBob Comics, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, Mars Attacks Garbage Pail Kids, Heavy Metal, Creepy, Fear Agent, A-1, The Goon, and the Alex Ross curated anthology Marvel. In recent years Barta has contributed to the German anthology U-Comix, the British anthology GOOF, The Illustrated Al, and Robot Monster Comics in 3-D.

Barta shares his creative process on his Patreon page. In detailed step-by-step posts, he shows how he moves from rough sketch to finished ink illustration.