Brendan McCarthy is a British artist and designer who has worked for comic books, film and television. He co-wrote the film Mad Max: Fury Road. He is the brother of Jim McCarthy.

Life and career

Early life and work

Brendan McCarthy was born in London. After leaving Chelsea Art College in London, where he studied film and Fine Art Painting, McCarthy decided to become a full-time artist. He created the independent comic book Sometime Stories with art college friend 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. McCarthy held a solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and collages at the Car Breaker Gallery in London, a squat in Ladbroke Grove's Republic of Frestonia.

Comics

McCarthy started working for 2000 AD, including runs on Judge Dredd, as well as creating Sooner or Later and post-apocalyptic surfing story Freakwave with Peter Milligan. In 1983 McCarthy collaborated with Milligan and Brett Ewins on punk indie series Strange Days, published by Eclipse Comics. He created and drew a two-issue series featuring his alternative "media-brat superhero" Paradax from the anthology. Over the next few years he worked for the 2000 AD 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). For Crisis, he originated the story and art for Skin which proved to be highly controversial, with Crisis refusing to release the story and their printers refusing to print it due to claims of it being "morbidly obscene". The story was eventually being released by Kevin Eastman's Tundra Publishing in 1992. He designed the characters for Grant Morrison's Zenith strip in 1987, Doom Patrol (creating Danny The Street) and on Morrison and Mark Millar's Marvel series Skrull Kill Krew. He also produced covers and character designs for Pete Milligan's revamp of Shade, the Changing Man. In 2005 he released a limited edition book of his art Swimini Purpose , which is now a rare collector's item. In 2006, his work was featured in the final issue of DC Comics' Solo. His comic had new takes on characters such as The Flash, Batman, and Johnny Sorrow and he considers the single issue to be one of his best works. In 2009, McCarthy was commissioned by Marvel Comics to create a new take on Doctor Strange. The mini-series was ultimately published as Spider-Man: Fever in April 2010. Brendan returned to 2000 AD in 2010 on a Judge Dredd story with Al Ewing, spoofing Dr Who, and with whom he created a popular new story, The Zaucer of Zilk, which he has described as a cross between Harry Potter and Aladdin Sane: "A glammatronic phantasmagoria." The series debuted in March 2012. It was reprinted by IDW in a new format with both issues quickly selling out. The Zaucer of Zilk appeared in many "best of the year" lists. In 2013 he published The Best of Milligan & McCarthy, a brand new collection of comic works co-created with Peter Milligan, through Dark Horse Comics. McCarthy wrote and drew a graphic novel titled Dream Gang for the publisher that was released in July 2016. A collection of his classic Judge Dredd stories from over 35 years of work was collected by IDW in hardcover and released in January 2017. McCarthy completed artwork on a new Chopper strip for Rebellion Publishing in 2018 and a sequel to The Zaucer of Zilk, published in 2020 in 2000AD. His final strip for the magazine, Nakka of the S.T.A.R.S., was published in 2021.

Film and television

Beginning in the 1980s McCarthy has worked extensively in TV, producing designs for an ultimately unmade Dan Dare live-action television series, as well as storyboards for the Arabian animated TV series New Babylon and Jim Henson'sThe Storyteller. He was concept designer/board artist on the films Highlander, the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, Lost in Space and The Borrowers. He was also hired by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to write and design for the film Coneheads. McCarthy spent much of the remainder of the 1990s working in film and television, most notably as the production designer of the animated science fiction TV series ReBoot and as the character creator for War Planets. In 1997 he was then asked to co-write and design Mad Max: Fury Road with director George Miller after meeting in Hollywood. The film was shot in 2012, with McCarthy visiting the set in Namibia. It was released in 2015, with the final film receiving many "best of the year" awards including six Oscars. It was McCarthy's first Hollywood screenplay, and he was the original Production Designer on the movie. The pair also created and co-wrote a new animated feature called Fur Brigade.

Covers only

Awards