Brendan McCarthy
Brendan McCarthy is a British artist and designer best known for his work in comic books, film and television.
Biography
After leaving art college, McCarthy decided to become a artist, his first work was a one page strip in the British weekly music paper Sounds with writer Peter Milligan in 1978. After this he started working on various Future Shocks for 2000 AD, before long he worked on other stories within the title, including Judge Dredd. At the same time he was working on designs for the unmade Dan Dare television series for Lew Grade's ATV in the 1970s.
It was the failure of the Dan Dare series to be made that led McCarthy to take the redundancy money recieved from ATV to travel the world, ending up eventually in Sydney, Australia. It was here that he worked on designs for cartoons and commercials, as well as films. After being unable to work upon Mad Max 2, McCarthy and Peter Milligan came up with what the described as a "Mad Max goes surfing" film called Freakwave. The film was never optioned but it was later adapted into comics form by McCarthy and Milligan.
In 1983 McCarthy returned to drawing comics, working on Strange Days , an anthology title published by Eclipse Comics, with his friends Peter Milligan and Brett Ewins. He also drew a two issue series featuring his Paradax character from Strange Days. Returning also to the pages of 2000AD, he drew Bad Company with Ewins and written by Milligan, as well as more Future Shocks written mainly by Milligan. He became a semi-regular artist on Judge Dredd as well, redefining the look of the character in the process.
1986 saw Milligan and McCarthy produce Sooner or Later for 2000AD, A surreal, psychedelic strip which split fan opinion but was critically well recieved. This was when the phrase 'McCarthyism' was coined to describe his distictive style of art. McCarthy also designed many of the characters in Grant Morrison's Zenith strip which started in 1987, including Zenith himself.
By now McCarthy was a major figure not just in comics but in film, and over the next few years contributed to the 2000AD spin off titles Crisis and Revolver, as well as providng character designs for Pete Milligans revamp of Shade, the Changing Man. McCarthy was a huge Steve Ditko fan but could only provide covers as his other workload meant he did not have the time to draw anything apart from one issue as well as his covers.
For Revolver McCarthy drew Rogan Gosh (later compiled into a single edition by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics), and for Crisis he drew Skin, the tale of a thalidomide skinhead in 1970s London written by Peter Milligan. Skin proved to be highly controversial with Crisis refusing to print the story and their printers refusing to print it due to claims of it being 'obscene'. The story remained in limbo before eventually being released by Tundra in 1992. After this McCarthy spent much of the remainder of the 1990s working in film and televison. Most notably working on the tv series ReBoot, and the films Highlander 2 and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. He has provided some designs for comics still, notably Grant Morrison and Mark Millar's Skrull Kill Krew, but he remains mainly active working in films, advertising and music videos, plus developing his own projects. In 2004 he worked on the as yet unmade Mad Max 4 with creator George Miller.
McCarthy remains a highly influencial artist in comics, influencing Jamie Hewlett in particular. An illustrated biography, Swimini Purpose was released in 2005.