[6] Adam Hughes was born on May 5, 1967[7][8] in Riverside Township, New Jersey[9][10] and grew up in Florence,[10] where he attended a private elementary school.

Maze Agency, published by Comico, and edited by Michael Eury, became Hughes' first regular series and his first color work.

[14] After two years of providing background art or interior pencils on independent books, writer/artist Willingham introduced Hughes to Andy Helfer, the editor on the DC Comics series Justice League America.

Hughes was then made the regular artist on Justice League America, with issue #31 being his first published DC Comics work.

[18] In February 1992,[19] at the age of 24, Hughes moved to Atlanta, Georgia to join Gaijin Studios, believing that working more closely alongside fellow artists would improve his own skills.

[15] From 1994 to 1995, Hughes drew the satirical storyline "Young Captain Adventure", which appeared in the first several issues of the adult comics anthology magazine Penthouse Comix.

Hughes explains:[20] I firmly believe that drawing a fully clothed, beautiful woman is more sensuous than a completely naked, laying on a table getting ready to go in for a CAT scan.

When he reused his portrait of the Jedi guardian, Sia-Lan Wezz (his favorite character), for the cover of the 2005 one-shot Star Wars: Purge as a gag, there was such editorial interest that she was written into the story as one of Darth Vader's early victims.

[22] In May 2007, Sideshow Collectibles debuted a miniature statuette of Mary Jane Watson, a perennial love interest of Spider-Man's, based on artwork by Hughes.

[23][24] Marvel addressed the matter by stating, "The Mary Jane statuette is the latest release in a limited edition collectibles line.

It is intended only for mature collectors and sold in specialty, trend, collectible and comic shops – not mass retail."

Sideshow Collectibles stated, "Our product is not produced to make a political or social statement but is fashioned after entertainment properties currently in the market place (sic).

The Toronto Star's Malene Arpe echoed this, pointing to female characters with even more revealing appearances, such as Black Cat and Witchblade.

[30] In 2008, Hughes created a poster of major DC Comics female characters as a giveaway for that year's San Diego Comic-Con to promote the publisher's upcoming projects.

The poster, called "Real Power of the DC Universe", features 11 female characters standing and/or sitting abreast of one another, similar to a Vanity Fair gatefold layout.

Hughes, wanting to avoid making the poster look like a bridal magazine layout, gave each outfit a different color temperature.

[1]For an article by Hal Niedzviecki on the impact of blogs, social networks and reality television in the February 2009 Playboy magazine, Hughes illustrated a double-page spread depicting a group of voyeurs observing a topless woman in front of a computer.

[31] Although Hughes was announced as the writer and artist on All Star Wonder Woman in 2006,[32][33] he explained at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con that that project was "in the freezer" for the time being, due to the difficulty involved in both writing and illustrating it himself.

[34] His website indicated that after the current Catwoman series ended with issue #82, he would cease his DC cover work, and would focus on producing the six-issue All Star Wonder Woman series,[35] though he stated in an October 2010 interview with NJ.com, after the Catwoman assignment had concluded earlier that year, that All Star Wonder Woman was still on hold.

[39][40] Hughes commented: "I love Alan Moore's canon of work, with special affection for Miracleman, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and most definitely Watchmen.

[44][45][46] In 2014 "She Lies at Midnite", an eight-page Batman/Catwoman story written and illustrated by Hughes using greytones, appeared in the sixth and final issue of the anthology miniseries Batman: Black and White.

[47][48] On July 20, 2016 Archie Comics published the first issue of Betty and Veronica, a three-issue miniseries written and illustrated by Hughes.

[55] In April 2019, Marvel Comics announced that Hughes would provide the covers to the five-issue miniseries Invisible Woman, the first series to feature Sue Storm as the main character.

[56] In May 2022, Hughes and his wife and manager, Allison Sohn stated during an online panel discussion that he was no longer producing comics art full time, as he was now doing character design and concept art for Marvel Studios Animation, for which Hughes was learning to use different graphics software.

Hughes had been approached for the project by filmmakers Kelvin Mao and Robert Windom, who had discovered during production of their documentary, Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection, which focused on the creator of that character's creator, Dave Stevens, that Bilson and the late De Meo, who wrote the screenplay to the 1991 feature film adaptation The Rocketeer, had written an unpublished Rocketeer comics story guest-starring real-life aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.

[71] Hughes sometimes uses colored markers to embellish parts of a convention sketch, as when he uses red for female characters' lips, or a silver pen to render scenes set in outer space.

[77] Hughes and his wife, Allison Sohn,[78] who designs his published sketchbooks and administrates his website,[79] live in Atlanta.