COMICS FOR MATURE READERS

Banner art by Trevor Denham and Ryan Winn for John Carpenter’s Night Terrors: The Coffin Road

Judge Dredd

"Mega-City One, 2134 AD. This urban hell on the east coast of post-apocalyptic North America is home to 50 million citizens. Overcrowding and unemployment are endemic, and crime is rampant. Only the Judges can stop utter anarchy. Empowered to dispense summary justice, these lawmen are judge, jury and executioner. Toughest of all is Judge Dredd - he is the Law!"

'Uncivil Partnership'. Art by Eric Powell for 2000 AD's Free Comic Book Day edition 2016

'The End of the Road'. Art by Leigh Gallagher, colours by Chris Blythe and letters by Annie Parkhouse, in 2000 AD #1911, December 2014.

'Perps, Crimes and Videotape'. Art by Carl Critchlow and letters by Annie Parkhouse, in 2000 AD #1923, March 2015.

'Nans of Anarchy'. Art by Karl Richardson and letters by Annie Parkhouse, in 2000 AD #2079-80, May 2018.

Judge Anderson

The brutal adventures of Judge Dredd from the cult movie of 2012 continued in a successful comics series scripted by Arthur Wyatt, with art by Henry Flint, Paul Davidson and Ben Willsher.
Eager to take a crack at writing Mega-City One’s premier psychic Judge Anderson (played by Olivia Thirlby in the movie), I pitched editor Matt Smith the idea of spinning off the movie-version of Anderson into her own series.
Having already adapted the comic-strip version of Anderson in a trilogy of popular Anderson: Year One novellas, I wanted to see how the movie version of the character would fare on the streets now that she had earned her stripes as a Judge. The aim was to let her stand on her own rather than as a sidekick.

I’ve also scripted Judge Anderson stories set within the regular continuity of the Dreddverse.

'The Deep End' with art by Paul Davidson, colours by Len O'Grady and letters by Ellie De Ville, in Judge Dredd Megazine #377-8, Oct-Nov 2016.

Variant cover by Jock for the US trade edition of 'The Deep End'

'Judgement Call' with art by Paul Davidson, colours by Len O'Grady and letters by Ellie De Ville, in Judge Dredd Megazine #379, December 2016

'The Wolf and the Dragon' with art by Patrick Goddard, colours by Jim Boswell and letters by Jim Campbell, in the Judge Dredd Magazine #460, September 2023

'Spellcraft' with art by P.J. Holden, colours by Gary Caldwell and letters by Ellie De Ville, in 2000 AD #2130, May 2019 - all ages special

John Carpenter’s Tales for a Halloween Night

Listed here are several original short-story comics that I’m honoured to have had included in the award-winning annual horror anthology headlined by John Carpenter, the legendary director of Halloween, The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13.
Tales for a Halloween Night is published by Storm King Comics and edited by veteran writer and TV/film producer Sandy King.
I've also written an original graphic novel for John Carpenter's Night Terrors series, entitled The Coffin Road (see below).

'The Mime' with art by Ben Willsher, in John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night, Volume 7, October 2021

'Cold' with art by Ben Willsher and letters by Janice Chiang, in John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night, Volume 6, Oct 2020

'The Caretaker' with art by Tom Foster, letters by Janice Chiang, in John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night, Volume 8, October 2022

'These Walls' with art by David Hitchcock, colours by Jack Mandrake, letters by Janice Chiang, in John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night, Volume 9, October 2023

John Carpenter’s Night Terrors

"Don't let dawn find you dead on the Coffin Road..."

The locals call it ‘the Coffin Road’, a lonely highway winding through the backwoods of Maine, said to be the haunt of all who have died there. Not the best place for your car to break down!

ALEX is the dazed survivor of an auto-wreck, assisted by OWEN, a recovery driver with his own reasons to fear these eerie backroads. But a storm is approaching and floodwaters have blocked the road back into town, forcing Alex and Owen to take the long, treacherous route back through the Coffin Road pursued by a malevolent crook-necked spectre.

Who is he? And why does he want to own Alex body and soul? What other secrets lay hidden in these woods? Alex and Owen must journey through this shadow world and unravel its mysteries before the Coffin Road buries them forever!

Presented by horror movie legend JOHN CARPENTER with art by Trevor Denham, colouring by Ryan Winn and letters by Janice Chiang. Edited by Sandy King and published by Storm King Comics.

Buy or download from...

Previews World
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Forbidden Planet
Waterstones
Barnes & Noble
Storm King webstore (unsigned or signed by John Carpenter and Sandy King)
Digital version (GlobalComix)
ISBN-10: 1734389176, ISBN-13: 978-1734389173

Durham Red

“Earth’s Atomic Wars left survivors hideously mutated by Strontium 90 fallout. Forced into ghettos, feared and hated by all, many such mutants turned to the most dangerous profession in the galaxy: bounty hunting. One such agent is the mutant vampire DURHAM RED. Feared not only by the criminals she hunts but also her fellow mutants, Red’s reputation for savagery forever precedes her.”

In 2017, Judge Dredd artist Ben Willsher and I pitched a revival of 2000 AD’s sultry vampire bounty hunter Durham Red. A popular supporting character from the comic’s galactic Western Strontium Dog by John Wagner and Carlos Esquerra, Red first appeared in 1987 and had last been seen in a far-future sequel by Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison in 2001. The adventures of our version of the character takes place between those two timelines.

Working in close collaboration, Ben and I set about the redesign, giving her a cool but practical look that retained the scuzzy half-gunslinger, half-femme fatale vibe of the original Strontium Dog.

In writing this series I wanted to explore what Red would do on her own. Having turned her back on the agency for which she once worked, she’s now a helplessly blood-hungry pariah striving to maintain a moral compass. Red’s a monster, and in this series I really wanted to ramp up the horror aspects and show exactly why everyone in the original strip is so terrified of her. Yet she’s equally cursed with a knowledge of right and wrong. Having her explore the moral choices she would make within that space has been one of the driving forces behind this strip.

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Hook Jaw

Debuting in the infamously ‘banned’ British anthology comic Action in 1977, the original Hook Jaw was a gore-soaked, Jaws-inspired monster strip created by Pat Mills and Geoff Kemp, in which a monster shark with a harpoon wedged in its jaws wreaks havoc around an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico (not dissimilar to the Adrian Grünberg’s 2023 sharksploitation movie The Black Demon).

Though a huge fan of the original strip - and sharkspolitation in general – my take on the story was that of smaller-scale folk horror, set on the Cornish coast and influenced by ghostly short stories of Lucy Wood.

With expressive, off-kilter art by Leigh Gallagher, this wasn’t the all-out monster mash readers were expecting, though was very well-received nonetheless.

Art by Leigh Gallagher, letters by Simon Bowland throughout

Age of the Wolf

Created by myself and artist Jon Davis-Hunt for 2000 AD, Age Of The Wolf is a paranormal saga in which an apocalyptic Nordic prophecy causes werewolves to overrun the world. Set primarily amid the ruins of London, the series follows a woman named Rowan Morrigan, who fights to defy her destiny and retain her humanity as civilisation crumbles throughout this three-part series.

Dandridge

A paranormal comedy-adventure series created by me and artist Warren Pleece for 2000 AD, this series stars the dandy, bon vivant, man of affairs and sometime ghosthunter Doctor Spartacus Dandridge, who first appeared – and died – in our single-episode Past Imperfect story Antiquus Phantasma in 2000 AD #1631 (April 2009).

The series takes place in an alternate Britain in the early 1980s. A century before, Victorian Spiritualists developed a method of turning ghosts into a viable fuel alternative. Bolstered by advances in ‘ecto-tech’, the British Empire has endured to the present day, although a ghost of its former ‘glories’. Killed in 1905, the spirit of Doctor Dandridge has recently assumed material form, having acquired a magical jacket. Reunited with his mute manservant Shelley, Dandridge has pledged his services to his mysterious tailor Angela Blake, a fallen angel with motives of her own...

Tales from the Black Museum

The Black Museum. Mega-City One’s museum of murder. Here in the grim rockcrete structure within the Grand Hall of Justice lurks a warehouse of homicide where everyday objects – a teddy bear, a greetings card, a wad of munce – all are touched by murder!

A series of one-off, self-contained stories that appear in the Judge Dredd Megazine, the monthly sister-publication of legendary British sci-fi anthology 2000 AD. The series is hosted in the style of the crypt keeper by Henry Dubble, the ghoulish curator of Mega-City One’s museum of crime. Each tale focuses on a specific object (a deck of cards, a pair of glasses, a judge’s badge, etc), each a central piece of evidence from a bizarre crime, which is gleefully narrated by Henry and often concludes with a horrific twist in the tail.

Inspired by the 1951 radio drama The Black Museum hosted by Orson Welles, Tales From The Black Museum launched in 2006 with issue 244 (The Wages Of Crime, written by John Wagner with art by Shaun Thomas and letters by Ellie De Ville). Since then the series has featured regular contributions from a host of talent, including writers Al Ewing, Arthur Wyatt and Michael Carroll, and artists Jon Davis-Hunt, Nick Dyer and Tiernan Travallion.

Cover art by Graeme Neil Reid for 'Slay It With Flowers'

Art by Graeme Neil Reid for 'Slay It With Flowers'

Art by Paul Davidson for 'Chester's Web'

Art by Joel Carpenter for 'Mom vs. Food'

Robo-Hunter

Created by 2000 AD legends John Wagner (Judge Dredd)
and Ian Gibson (Halo Jones), anarchic action-comedy Robo-Hunter first appeared in 2000 AD Prog #76 (August, 1978). The series’ pistol-packing hero is a cigar-chomping bounty hunter of robots, the only sane man in a world populated
by crazed machines. He was joined later in the series by two droid sidekicks: a clueless apprentice named Hoagy, and a pugnacious robo-cigar named Stogie (made in Havana, of course).

Sam’s misadventures were a hit with readers, and the strip went on to become a semi-regular feature with fellow writer Alan Grant joining Wagner in the early ‘80s. Having been rested since 1985, the strip was revived in the early ‘90s by a new generation of writers and artists including Mark Millar, Peter Hogan, Chris Weston and Rian Hughes, before the strip took another hiatus a few years later.

Editor Matt Smith invited me to contribute a one-shot story for the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special (May 2014), which he intended as a showcase for 2000 AD's new generation of creators to work on classic characters.

The story proved popular enough for me to be re-commissioned the following year.

Tharg’s Future Shocks, Terror Tales & More

While 2000 AD’s staple stories or ‘Thrills’ – like Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog – run into several episodes, Tharg’s Future Shocks are one-off, twist-in-the-tale sci-fi stories in the tradition of The Twilight Zone, and they were hosted in the early days by 2000 AD’s belligerent alien editor Tharg the Mighty.

A Future Shock is the sort of narrative mousetrap designed to lure you into the furthest reaches of an idea and bite you in the behind on the last page with a twist straight out of the Roald Dahl/O Henry playbook. Since they first appeared in issue (or ‘Prog’) 25 of 2000 AD, Tharg’s Future Shocks soon sub-divided into genre variants like Tharg’s Terror Tales (horror), Past Imperfect (alternative histories), and Time Twisters (time travel).

It’s via these routes that new writers traditionally come to work for 2000 AD and that was certainly the case with me. I spent months and months firing story after story into the slush pile, soaking up rejections like the Terminator soaked up bullets. Read more about this gruelling yet valuable experience in My Future Shock Hell!

So, here’s a detailed bibliography of my published Future Shocks, Terror Tales, et al, including my entry in the three-episode series Tharg’s 3rillers.