Alex Ross has already taken on the stars of the comic book industry. He started with Marvel Comics' flagship heroes in "Marvels," went on to paint pretty much everyone in DC Comics and has done work here and there on nearly every other big name character.

So now Ross is turning his paintbrush on another icon: Oscar.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced earlier this week that Ross would be the artist for the commemorative poster for the 74th Academy Awards, to be presented on March 24.

"I'm excited about this year's poster," Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis said in a press release. "We're going in a very different direction than in the past, but I think it's a look for Oscar that people are going to enjoy. We wanted the poster to incorporate our move back into Hollywood, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be fun to ask a graphic novel illustrator to do it. It wasn't far from there to Alex Ross."

"Throughout my career, I've gotten to paint some larger-than-life iconic figures," Ross said in the release, "And you can't do much better than the Oscar statuette as far as icons are concerned. Oscar is a hero to a lot of people in Hollywood and I'm looking forward to bringing out that heroic quality in this poster."

Fifty thousand copies of the poster will be distributed to movie theaters, video retailers and Oscar telecast sponsors. The poster will also be available at the Academy's Web site.