Brendan McCarthy is a
British artist and designer who has worked for comic books, film and television.[1][2] He co-wrote the film Mad Max: Fury Road. He is the brother of
Jim McCarthy.[3]
Life and career
Early life and work
Brendan McCarthy was born in London. As a boy McCarthy soon began drawing his own home-made comics.[citation needed] After leaving
Chelsea Art College in London, where he studied film and Fine Art Painting, McCarthy decided to become a full-time artist. He created the
independent comic bookSometime Stories with art college pal
Brett Ewins.[4][5] His first paid commercial work was a one-page strip Electrick Hoax in the British weekly music paper Sounds with another art-school escapee, writer
Peter Milligan, in 1978. McCarthy held a solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and collages at the Car Breaker Gallery[6] in London, a squat in
Ladbroke Grove's Republic of
Frestonia.[7]
Comics
McCarthy started working for 2000 AD, including runs on Judge Dredd, as well as creating Sooner or Later and
post-apocalypticsurfing story Freakwave with
Peter Milligan. In 1983 McCarthy collaborated with Milligan and
Brett Ewins on Strange Days, an
anthology title published by
Eclipse Comics. He also drew a two-issue series featuring his alternative "media-brat
superhero" Paradax from the anthology.
Over the next few years he worked for the 2000 AD spin off titles Crisis and Revolver. For Revolver, McCarthy drew Rogan Gosh (later compiled into a single edition by the
Vertigo imprint of
DC Comics). For Crisis, he drew Skin. Both books were created with and written by Peter Milligan. Skin proved to be highly controversial, with Crisis refusing to release the story and their printers refusing to print it due to claims of it being "morbidly obscene".[citation needed] The story was eventually being released by
Kevin Eastman's
Tundra Publishing in 1992.
He designed the characters for
Grant Morrison's Zenith strip which started in 1987,[8] Doom Patrol (creating Danny The Street) and on Morrison and
Mark Millar's Marvel series Skrull Kill Krew.[9] He also produced covers and character designs for Pete Milligan's revamp of Shade, the Changing Man. In 2006, his work was featured in the final issue of DC Comics' Solo.[10] His comic had new takes on characters such as
The Flash,
Batman, and
Johnny Sorrow and he considers the single issue to be one of his best works.[citation needed]
In 2009, Brendan was commissioned by Marvel Comics to create a new take on
Doctor Strange. The mini-series was ultimately published as Spider-Man: Fever in April 2010.[11][12] Brendan returned to 2000 AD in 2010 on a Judge Dredd story with
Al Ewing, spoofing Dr Who, and with whom he created a popular new story, The Zaucer of Zilk,[13][14] which he has described as a cross between Harry Potter and Aladdin Sane: "A glammatronic phantasmagoria."[15] The series debuted in March 2012. It was reprinted by IDW in a new format with both issues quickly selling out. Zaucer of Zilk appeared in many "best of the year" lists.
In 2013 he published The Best of Milligan & McCarthy, a brand new collection of his most famous comic works co-created with Peter Milligan, through
Dark Horse Comics.[16] McCarthy wrote and drew a graphic novel titled Dream Gang for the publisher that was released in July 2016.[citation needed] A collection of his classic Judge Dredd stories from over 35 years of work was collected by IDW in hardcover and released in January 2017.[citation needed] Brendan completed artwork on a new Chopper strip for Rebellion Publishing in 2018 and a sequel to The Zaucer of Zilk, published in 2020 in 2000AD. His final strip for the magazine, Nakka of the S.T.A.R.S., was published in 2021.
McCarthy spent much of the remainder of the 1990s working in film and television, most notably as the production designer of the international hit
CGI animated science fiction TV series ReBoot and as the character creator for War Planets. He was then asked to co-write and design Mad Max: Fury Road with director
George Miller after meeting in Hollywood. The film was shot in 2012, with McCarthy visiting the set in
Namibia.[17] It was released in 2015, with the final film receiving many "best of the year" awards including six Oscars.[18] It was McCarthy's first Hollywood screenplay, and he was the original Production Designer on the movie. His comic Freakwave was, in part, inspired by Miller's Mad Max 2. The pair also created and co-wrote the forthcoming new CGI animated feature called Fur Brigade.
Bibliography
Interior comic work includes:
Sometime Stories #1 (of 2 produced) (script and art, with
Brett Ewins, Broglia Press, 1977)
Sounds: "The Electrick Hoax" (script and art, with
Peter Milligan, Spotlight Publications, 1977–1978)
^Windsor, John (8 April 2001).
"Justice for Dredd". The Observer. Retrieved 7 March 2011. Bad Company was launched as a comic in 1988 by Ewins, Milligan and Jim McCarthy, brother of Brendan, a Dredd artist