Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra[3] (/əsˈkɛərə/;[4] 12 November 1947 – 1 October 2018[5][6][7]) was a Spanish comics artist who worked mainly in
British comics. He is best known as the co-creator of Judge Dredd.
Biography
Early work
Born in
Ibdes,
province of Zaragoza,
Aragon, Ezquerra started his career drawing westerns and war stories for Spanish publishers. In 1973, he got work in the UK market through agent Barry Coker, drawing for girls' romance titles such as Valentine and Mirabelle, as well as westerns for
Thorpe & Porter's Pocket Western Library, and a variety of adventure strips for
D. C. Thomson & Co.'s The Wizard. The UK was a popular market for Spanish artists as the exchange rate meant the work paid well, but Ezquerra moved to London to be near the work,[8] settling in
Croydon with his wife.[9]
Battle and 2000 AD
In 1974, on the strength of his uncredited work for The Wizard,
Pat Mills and
John Wagner headhunted him, through Coker, to work for the new
IPC title Battle Picture Weekly. He drew "Rat Pack":[10] inspired by the film The Dirty Dozen, the strip, written by
Gerry Finley-Day, featured a gang of criminals recruited to carry out suicide missions. But his commitments elsewhere meant he couldn't draw it full-time, and other artists were also used.[8] In 1976 Battle editor Dave Hunt convinced him to commit himself to the title, offering him the laid-back anti-hero "Major Eazy", written by
Alan Hebden. Ezquerra drew nearly 100 episodes in the next two and a half years,[10] basing the character's appearance on the actor
James Coburn.[8]
He was asked to visualise a new character, future lawman
Judge Dredd, for the science fiction weekly 2000 AD, prior to its launch in 1977. His elaborate designs displeased the strip's writer,
John Wagner, but impressed editor
Pat Mills, and his cityscapes persuaded Mills to set the strip further into the future than initially intended.[9] But Wagner (temporarily) quit over ownership issues,[11]: pp. 12–13 and Ezquerra followed him when the first published appearance of the character was drawn by another artist,
Mike McMahon.[9] He returned to Battle, where he once again teamed up with Alan Hebden to create "El Mestizo", a black gun-for-hire who played both sides against the middle during the American Civil War.
In 1978 he and Wagner created "
Strontium Dog", a sci-fi western about a bounty hunter in a future where mutants are an oppressed minority forced into doing such dirty work, for Starlord,[12] a short-lived sister title to 2000 AD with higher production values.[11]: pp.39–41 Starlord was later merged into 2000 AD, bringing "Strontium Dog" with it.[12] Ezquerra was almost the only artist to draw the character, until 1988, when writer
Alan Grant decided to kill him off in a storyline called "The Final Solution". Ezquerra disagreed with the decision, and refused to draw the story, which was instead illustrated by
Simon Harrison and
Colin MacNeil.[13] In 2000 Wagner and Ezquerra revived "Strontium Dog" based on a treatment Wagner had written for an abortive TV pilot.[11]: p. 211 Initially, stories were set before the character's death in a revised continuity, but 2010's "The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha" brought Johnny back from the dead.[14]
Other 2000 AD strips he drew included Fiends of the Eastern Front (1980), a vampire story set in
World War II, written by
Gerry Finley-Day, and adaptations of
Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat novels, with the title character once again resembling James Coburn. In 1982 he returned to "Judge Dredd" to draw "
The Apocalypse War", a seven-month epic which he drew in its entirety. He continued to draw the character semi-regularly, handling the whole of "
Necropolis" in 1990, "
Origins" in 2006–07, and many others.
His son Hector inked and coloured in his pencil work for Strontium Dog between 2008 and 2012.[15]
The character of Stogie from the long-running 2000 AD strip Robo-Hunter was given the full name Carlos Sanchez Robo-Stogie in tribute to Ezquerra.
Ezquerra occasionally used the
pen name"L. John Silver" for work such as 2000 AD's "The Riddle of the Astral Assassin!" prog 118, and ABC Warriors, progs 134–136.
In later life Ezquerra moved to
Andorra. He died of lung cancer on 1 October 2018, at the age of 70.[17][18] He never retired, and his uncompleted final work, "Spector," was published posthumously in June 2019 by 2000 AD.[a]
In May 2023 the government of
Zaragoza voted to name a street after him.[19]
Bibliography
Comics
This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (October 2018)
Preacher (with Garth Ennis, Vertigo, included in Preacher, Volume 4: Proud Americans, tpb, March 1998,
ISBN978-1-56389-405-3):
Preacher Special:
Saint of Killers #3 (4-issue mini-series, October 1996, included in Preacher, Book 3, hardcover, December 2010,
ISBN978-1-4012-3016-6)
Preacher Special: The Good Old Boys (
one-shot, August 1997, included in Preacher, Book 4, hardcover, June 2011,
ISBN978-1-4012-3093-7)
Tankies (3-issue mini-series, April–July 2009, tpb, 88 pages, September 2009,
ISBN1-60690-057-9, included in The Complete Battlefields, Volume 1, hardcover, 268 pages, December 2009,
ISBN1-60690-079-X)
The Firefly and His Majesty (3-issue mini-series, March–May 2010, tpb, 80 pages, August 2010,
ISBN1-60690-145-1, included in The Complete Battlefields, Volume 2, hardcover, 200 pages, July 2011,
ISBN1-60690-222-9)
Spector (with John Wagner, in 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special, June 2019)
Collected editions
Some of Ezquerra's more recent Judge Dredd and Cursed Earth Koburn work has been collected into one volume:[22]
Judge Dredd: The Carlos Ezquerra Collection (224 pages, Rebellion,
ISBN1-905437-35-8)
He drew the artwork on the header cards for
Corgi model's range of X-Ploratron
die-cast models. (Diecast Collector Magazine, September 2006 issue, page 38)[23]
The four X-Ploratron models were;
Corgi Model Number 2022; "X4 Scanotron"
Corgi Model Number 2023; "X1 Rocketron"
Corgi Model Number 2024; "X2 Lasertron"
Corgi Model Number 2026; "X3 Magnetron"
Notes
^The story was later completed by another artist and published in 2023–24.