John Smith

John Smith is a British comics writer whose work for 2000 AD and Judge Dredd: The Megazine developed some of the publications’ strangest, most psychologically charged corners. His long list of series includes Indigo Prime, Tyranny Rex, Revere, Firekind, Cradlegrave and Devlin Waugh, alongside Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and numerous shorter stories. Smith’s fiction often pushes science fiction and horror toward the surreal, occult and bodily grotesque, with dense ideas and fractured realities replacing the cleaner adventure structures of more conventional genre comics.

In 1992 he and artist Sean Phillips created Devlin Waugh, a flamboyant Vatican exorcist and vampire who first appeared in the Megazine story Swimming in Blood and became one of the title’s most distinctive characters. Smith also wrote beyond 2000 AD for publications including Crisis, Hellblazer, Scarab and Vampirella.