David Baillie is a writer and artist best known for creating the Vertigo comic series Red Thorn, and for writing stories for 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine - for which he also once wrote a monthly column describing his life as a comics creator.

Biography

David Baillie was born in East Whitburn, West Lothian in 1977. At university he studied electrical engineering, moved to London in 1999 and worked there for two years as a computer programmer in an investment bank before quitting that job to become an artist. In 2010 Baillie was engaged as artist-in-residence for visual arts centre Firstsite in Colchester. In 2011 he took part in the successful group effort to break the Guinness World Records for the fastest comic-book ever produced and the largest number of creators working on a single comic, with proceeds going to Yorkhill Hospital. In 2013 he was one of a number of professional writers commissioned to write a novel for Amazon Publishing's Kindle Worlds line featuring the Valiant Comics character Bloodshot In 2014 he was interviewed in Judge Dredd Megazine issue 344 by Matthew Badham about his comics career to date. It was announced at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con that Baillie would write a new series for Vertigo called Red Thorn, set in modern day Glasgow exploring Scottish mythology, featuring art by Meghan Hetrick, colours by Steve Oliff, (latterly Nick Filardi) and letters by Todd Klein. In 2017 Baillie appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with Rob Davis to discuss Comics of a Deadly Kind and the inspiration and publication history of his series Red Thorn. At the beginning of 2018 it was announced that Baillie would write the return of classic Judge Dredd character Chopper with Mad Max's Brendan McCarthy on art. In 2018 Baillie was interviewed for the Scotland's Futures Forum film Our Future Scotland, along with Scottish writers, artists, politicians and actors, including Brian Cox, Nicola Sturgeon and Christopher Brookmyre. In 2019 Baillie's Chopper stories were collected by Rebellion and he wrote a graphic novel celebrating the thrash metal band Megadeth's greatest hits international tour. In 2020 Baillie revisited the history of classic 2000AD character The Gronk, produced several Judge Dredd tales with new Scottish artist Anna Morozova and contributed a number of short stories to Rebellion's Judge Dredd Prose collection, Judge Fear’s Big Day Out and Other Stories. In May he and Conor Boyle created a story called “Revenge of the Cicatrix” for Heavy Metal Magazine. He also wrote and drew a short web series of unconnected comic stories for Webtoon called Paraverse.

Selected bibliography

Vertigo / DC Comics

2000 AD

Judge Dredd Megazine