Brendan McCarthy
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Brendan McCarthy is a British artist and designer best known for his work in comic books, film and television.
[edit] Biography
Brendan McCarthy was born in London and spent the early part of his life as a member of The Hanwell Dream Gang, a gathering of like-minded teenagers who had decided to become artists and writers, rather than milkmen or plumbers... Influenced by the fey ways of Vivian Stanshall, Brian Eno and Aladdin Sane, Brendan began painting and drawing his own home-made comics, under the name Glammapuss.
After leaving Chelsea art college in London, where he studied film and painting, Brendan decided to become a full time artist. He created the indy comic book Sometime Stories with art college pal Brett Ewins. 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. After this he started working for 2000 AD including Judge Dredd.
At the same time he was working on designs for his first television show - the unmade Dan Dare live action television series for Lew Grade's ATV in the 1970s. It was a stylish retro 50's take on the classic Eagle hero.
In 1980, inspired by the book The Razor's Edge, McCarthy decided to travel the globe on a metaphysical pilgrimage, ending up, via Egypt, India and the Himalayas, in Sydney, Australia. It was here, after being inspired by George Miller's punk masterwork, Mad Max 2, McCarthy invented what he described as a "Mad Max goes surfing" movie called Freakwave and later written with Peter Milligan. The film was never made but it was adapted into comics form by Milligan and McCarthy (The Hollywood movie Waterworld bore a very close resemblance to their story, which was picked up on by US media - and lawyers - at the time).
In 1983 McCarthy returned to drawing comics, working on the ahead-of-its-time Strange Days, an anthology title published by Eclipse Comics, once again collaborating with his friends Peter Milligan and Brett Ewins. He also drew a two issue series featuring his alternative superhero Paradax from Strange Days. Around this time, his best-loved character was created with Pete Milligan: Mirkin The Mystic, a kind of psychedelic Ditko-esque Oscar Wilde dimensional traveller. Returning to the pages of 2000AD, he again drew Judge Dredd, redefining the look of the character in the process and creating the classic storylines featuring The Judda and Britcit Judges.
1986 saw Milligan and McCarthy produce Sooner or Later for 2000AD, a surreal, psychedelic strip which split fan opinion but was critically well received. This was when the phrase McCarthyism was coined to describe his distictive style of art. This was followed by Neo- McCarthyism, post-indolent McCarthyism and Anti-McCarthyism.
Around this time, Brendan designed the TV series, New Babylon and also The Storyteller for Jim Henson's company.
Brendan was asked to create the characters in Grant Morrison's Zenith strip which started in 1987, including Zenith himself. He also produced character designs for Pete Milligan's revamp of Shade, the Changing Man. To this day (today) McCarthy remains a huge Steve Ditko fan.
By now McCarthy was an influential figure in British comics with his "punkadelic" musically-inspired approach to comic books. Over the next few years he contributed to 2000AD 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), 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.
Brendan worked as designer on the films Highlander, the first live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, Lost In Space and The Borrowers. He also designed and contributed many visual gags to the very funny cult 'stoner' flick Coneheads, working alongside comedians Dan Ackroyd, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and David Spade.
McCarthy spent much of the remainder of the 1990s working in film and television. Most notably as production designer on the groundbreaking TV series ReBoot and War Planets. ReBoot was a big worldwide success, and was the world's first long-form computer animated piece, predating both Pixar and Dreamworks later movies. The highly inventive and quirky series really hit its stride in the second and third seasons, and is considered a classic example of early computer animation. Episodes have been shown and stored at The Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.
In 2003 he was asked to co-write and design (the as yet unmade) Mad Max 4 FURY ROAD, with director George Miller. Brendan also created, co-wrote and designed his surreal animated cgi feature Fur Brigade, scheduled to be produced by Kennedy-Miller in Sydney after their cgi movie "Happy Feet" is completed.
Brendan McCarthy remains a highly regarded in the field of comics and film, influencing Jamie Hewlett and Grant Morrison in particular, both of whom went on to great fame as creators in their own right. Swimini Purpose, an illustrated visual autobiography of his highly original art and design was released in 2005 to extremely positive reviews, selling out within days. The rare UK edition has become a collectors' holy grail.
The final issue of DC Comics' Solo features McCarthy. It is his first work in comics for over thirteen years and contains new takes on classic DC characters like The Flash, Batman, and Johnny Sorrow..
He remains active as an artist and writer, working around the world in film, TV and animation, and in the development his own projects - such as Hatman, Horrorville, Nano-Nano and Karmanaut.
"It used to go like that. Now it goes like this."
