Alan Davis

This article is about the British comic artist. For the French comic artist, see Jean Pailler .

Alan Davis

Alan Davis (born June 16, 1956 ) is a British comic book artist and writer.

Life and work

Davis began working as a full-time comic book artist in the late 1970s, having previously worked as an amateur artist for various English fanzines. His first published work, the comic strip "The Crusader," eventually appeared in the comic book Frantic Magazine .

Davis finally experienced his artistic breakthrough with the series "Captain Britain", which appeared in the series The Mighty World Of Marvel (# 7-16). It was later reprinted as Captain britain Monthly # 1-14. To Alan Moore , the author of the job for Captain Britain took over, Davis tied not only many years of close professional relationship, but also close private ties of friendship. Together with Moore Davis developed the series "DR" and "Quinch" which were published in the British magazine 2000AD . There was also "Harry Twenty on the High Rock" (# 287-307).

In 1985 Davis began to take on orders for US publishers: His first "American work" was his engagement as a regular draftsman for the series Batman and the Outsiders (# 22-36) written by Mike W. Barr , which he succeeded to Jim Aparo noticed. The joint work with Barr on Batman proved to be so popular that both artists were entrusted in 1986 with the design of the Batman main series Detective Comics (# 569-575). Davis eventually left the series in 1987 due to artistic differences with the series editor and was replaced by the cartoonist Todd McFarlane in the middle of the four-part story "Batman: Year Two".

In the same year Davis began to work for DC's competitor Marvel Comics: In the following years he drew stories, mostly written by author Chris Claremont, for the series new Mutants (# 2-3) and Uncanny X-Men (# 213, 215; Annual # 11). In addition, Davis started the series Excalibur , also with Claremont . Davis drew issues # 1–24 and # 42, while his drawings on this project were revised by inkers Paul Neary and Mark Farmer.

In the 1990s Davis drew the miniseries JLA: The Nail (1998) and the one-shot Batman: Full Circle (1991) for DC, as well as various editions of the superhero classic The Avengers (# 38-43, 63), as well as the two X-Men series X-Men (# 85-99; Annual 1999) and Uncanny X-Men (# 360-380). With ClanDestine , Davis created a series for the first time as an author and illustrator in 1994 that was entirely his own work.

In 2002 Davis drew the comic adaptation of the movie Spider-Man for Marvel , and in 2002/2003 he drew a six-part miniseries about the character Killraven , which was followed by another run on Uncanny X-Men (# 444-447, 450-451, 455-459 , 462–463), as well as the six-part miniseries Fantastic Four: The End , published from 2006 to 2007, followed. For DC, he created the miniseries Superboy's Legion (2001; # 1–2) and JLA: Another Nail (2004; # 1–3) at this time . Davis has announced that he will resume his work on Clandestine in 2008 .