John Wagner

John Alexander Wagner (born 1949) is an American-born British comics writer. Alongside Pat Mills, he helped revitalise British comics in the 1970s, and continues to be active in the British comics industry, occasionally also working in American comics. He is the co-creator, with artist Carlos Ezquerra, of the character Judge Dredd.

Wagner started his career in editorial with D. C. Thomson & Co. in the late 1960s before becoming a freelance writer and a staff editor at IPC in the 1970s. He has worked in children's humour and girls' adventure comics, but is most notable for his boys' adventure comics; he helped launch Battle Picture Weekly (1975), for which he wrote "Darkie's Mob", and 2000 AD (1977), for which he created numerous characters, including Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter and Button Man. In the 1980s, he and co-writer Alan Grant wrote prolifically for IPC's 2000 AD, Battle, Eagle, Scream! and Roy of the Rovers. They also wrote for DC Comics' Batman in the U.S., created a series of Batman and Judge Dredd team-up comics, and started the British independent comic The Bogie Man. Judge Dredd has twice been adapted for film, and David Cronenberg adapted Wagner's graphic novel A History of Violence into the 2005 film of the same name. Wagner continues to write for 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine.

Biography

Early life and career

thumb|left|250px|"Patridge's Patch", from Jet, co-written with [[Pat Mills, illustrated by Mike Western, 1971.]]

Wagner was born in Pennsylvania, U.S., in 1949, the product of a war marriage. When Wagner was twelve his parents separated and his mother returned to Greenock in Scotland with the children. Wagner describes himself as "a pretty badly adjusted youth" in America, fighting and getting into trouble, and says he "benefited a lot from the added discipline of life in Scotland." He got the job, starting in the Fiction department, He and Pat Mills, a fellow sub-editor, left to go freelance in 1971, and began submitting scripts to London's IPC, working from Mills' garden shed in Wormit, Fife. Starting with humour titles like Cor!! and Whizzer and Chips, "Partridge's Patch", about a friendly rural policeman and his dog, drawn by Mike Western, for Jet; "The Can-Do Kids" for Lion, and boarding school serial "School for Snobs" for Tammy. IPC managers John Purdie and John Sanders began to take notice.

Battle, Valiant and Action

thumb|275px|right|"Darkie's Mob", illustrated by [[Mike Western, from Battle Picture Weekly]]

In the autumn of 1974 Pat Mills had been tasked with developing Battle Picture Weekly, a new war-themed title for IPC to compete with D. C. Thomson's Warlord. He asked Wagner to join him and help develop characters. and was appointed editor of the ailing boys' weekly Valiant. Characters he created for this title included the tough New York City cop "One-Eyed Jack", and "Soldier Sharp", drawn by Joe Colquhoun, about a cunning coward in World War II. Both strips transferred to Battle when Valiant was merged into it in 1976, with One-Eyed Jack leaving the police and becoming a spy.

Wagner then quit editorial and returned to freelance writing. A collected edition was published by Titan Books in 2011. Other strips he wrote for Battle included "Joe Two Beans" (1977), about a mute Native American soldier in the Pacific Campaign, drawn by Eric Bradbury, and the naval series "HMS Nightshade" (1978–79), drawn by Western. During this time he shared a flat on Camberwell New Road in London with future 2000 AD editor Steve MacManus. leaving Mills to develop the character by commissioning stories from freelancers. but Wagner eventually dropped out, tired of the endless rewrites requested, an experience which turned him off TV writing. Wagner (as John Howard or T. B. Grover) was credited with "Judge Dredd", and Grant with the less frequent "Robo-Hunter", "Strontium Dog", and the Judge Dredd spin-off "Anderson, Psi Division", while some strips, like the CB-inspired space haulage comedy "Ace Trucking Co.", were credited to "Grant/Grover". "Judge Dredd" was credited to "Wagner/Grant" starting in 1986.

Other pseudonyms were created, at the insistence of publisher John Sanders, to disguise how prolific the two writers were. for Roy of the Rovers they wrote "Dan Harker's War", During this time Wagner wrote the documentary strip "Fight for the Falklands" for Battle, without Grant who had no interest in war stories,

Wagner and Grant became part of the so-called "British Invasion" of American comics during the 1980s. In 1987 their first title, a mini-series called Outcasts, was published by DC Comics with Cam Kennedy as artist. Outcasts was well received, though it never sold in great quantities, and this success led to the pair writing Batman in the pages of Detective Comics from issue 583, largely with Norm Breyfogle on art duties. Grant and Wagner introduced the Ventriloquist in their first Batman story and the Ratcatcher in their third. The pair also created the bleak nuclear dystopia The Last American for Epic Comics with longtime Dredd artist Mike McMahon.

In the mid-1990s Wagner worked on a number of licensed properties for Dark Horse Comics in the US, including Aliens, Star Wars – notably solo stories starring Boba Fett and the comics strand of the multimedia project Shadows of the Empire – and Xena: Warrior Princess. In 1997 he wrote his first original graphic novel, A History of Violence, a contemporary thriller about an unassuming small-town man whose background in gang crime comes back to haunt him, drawn by Vince Locke for the Paradox Press imprint of DC Comics. It was nominated for the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Scenario in 2006.

21st century

In 2000 Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra revived "Strontium Dog" (main character Johnny Alpha had been killed off in 1990 in a story written by Alan Grant),

Wagner has continued to be the main writer of "Judge Dredd" in 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine. In 2003 he co-wrote the Judge Dredd/Aliens crossover, "Incubus", with Andy Diggle, which was co-published by Dark Horse Comics and 2000 AD.

In 2016 Wagner teamed up with Grant to create a new comic for BHP Comics. Drawn by Dan Cornwell, Rok of the Reds tells the story of a dangerous intergalactic outlaw, Rok of Arkady, who, while on the run, hides on the planet Earth by taking over the body and life of troubled football star Kyle Dixon. There were two sequels, in 2020 and 2026.

In an interview in 2026, Wagner said that his third Rok story, and a Judge Dredd story published at the same time, would most likely be the last stories he would write. He is currently (as of January 2026) working on his autobiography.

A father of two, Wagner lives with his wife near Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Style and influence

Pat Mills describes Wagner's writing as "romantic but not emotional". He says he does not think visually, but rather "in terms of plot developments [and] dialogue", preferring to leave the visual decisions to the artist.

Described by Warren Ellis as "probably the single most influential writer in British comics", Wagner is named as an influence by writers such as Alan Grant, who says he "taught me almost all I know about comic writing", Garth Ennis, Andy Diggle and Rob Williams. Alan Moore was inspired by the work of Wagner and Pat Mills in 2000 AD to try and express his ideas in mainstream comics. Wagner's own influences include the comics of D. C. Thomson & Co. of the '60s and '70s. and Michael Connelly.

Awards

Awards won

1979 Eagle Award for Favourite Comicbook Writer — U.K. (as T.B. Grover)
1980 Eagle Award for Favourite Comicbook Writer — U.K. (as John Howard)
1981 Eagle Award for Favourite Comicbook Writer — U.K. (as T.B. Grover)
1992 UK Comic Art Award for Best Writer
1992 UK Comic Art Award for Best Original Graphic Novel (Judgment on Gotham)
1992 UK Comic Art Award for Best Graphic Novel Collection (Judge Dredd in America)
1992 Career Achievement Award (UK Comic Art Awards)
1994 UK Comic Art Award for Best Original Graphic Novel (Vendetta in Gotham)
1999 National Comics Award for Best Writer
2001 National Comics Award for Best Writer in Comics Today (for Button Man and Judge Dredd; both in 2000 AD)
2002 National Comics Award for Lifetime Achievement
2003 National Comics Award Roll of Honour

Nominations

1978 Eagle Award for Favourite British writer
1984 Eagle Award for Favourite Comicbook Writer — U.K.
1985 Eagle Award for Favourite Comicbook Writer — U.K.
2002 National Comics Award for Best Writer in Comics Today
2002 National Comics Award for Best Writer Ever
2002 National Comics Award Roll of Honour
2010 Eagle Award for Favourite Writer
2011 Eagle Award for Favourite Writer

Bibliography

Screen adaptations

A TV film of The Bogie Man was made in 1992 by BBC Scotland starring Robbie Coltrane, but was not well received and a series was never made. Wagner and Grant made very little money out of it. Wagner felt that the screenwriter did a poor job adapting it, and Coltrane did not understand the character. and has described it as "unlike the first film, a true representation of Judge Dredd".

In 2005 his graphic novel A History of Violence was adapted into a film, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. Wagner had backed the film once he saw the group of actors Cronenberg had gathered. The film was nominated for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2005, and the script, by Josh Olson, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2005.

It was reported in May 2012 that Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn was in talks with DreamWorks about a possible Button Man film.