Mark Ellis is an American novelist/graphic novelist, journalist, and comics creator who under the pen name James Axler has written scores of books for the Outlanders and Deathlands paperback novel series as well as numerous other books under his own name.

Career

In 1980, Ellis married Melissa Martin, a graphic designer, photographer and writer who served as his business partner. He began working as a full-time writer in 1986. A busy comics creator in the 1980s and 90s, Ellis created the popular Death Hawk character and also developed/created Star Rangers, Ninja Elite, The Justice Machine, as well as working on such popular properties as Doc Savage, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu, The Green Hornet, and The Wild Wild West.

Millennium Publications

In 1990, Ellis co-founded Millennium Publications, serving as editor, with his wife and co-founder Melissa Martin as vice-president and art director. Millennium gave early exposure to comics artists such as Mike Wieringo and Darryl Banks, and utilized industry veterans Jim Mooney and Don Heck. Projects included The Wild, Wild West, a four-part series based on the classic TV show, H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu: The Whisperer in Darkness and a twelve-issue adaptation of Anne Rice's The Mummy or Ramses the Damned among many others. For Millennium, Ellis conceived and scripted Nosferatu: Plague of Terror, a four-part series that provided a complete story of the title character's origin quite apart from the Dracula legend. Ellis also adapted the horror film It! The Terror from Beyond Space into comics. Working with artist Darryl Banks he adapted the pulp fiction hero Doc Savage into the four-part miniseries Doc Savage: The Monarch of Armageddon. The Comics Buyer's Guide Catalog of Books referred to the Ellis/Banks version of Doc Savage as having "come[s] closest to the original, capturing all the action, humanity, and humor of the original novels".

"Outlanders" and James Axler

In 1995, Ellis began writing action-adventure novels for Harlequin Enterprises Gold Eagle imprint, first for the long-running Mack Bolan franchise and the post-apocalyptic Deathlands series. In 1996 under the house pseudonym of "James Axler", he created the best-selling Outlanders series, the first entry of which was released in 1997. With the cancellation of the Gold Eagle imprint at the end of 2015, Outlanders concluded its 18.5 year run, making it the most successful mass-market paperback series of the last 35 years. Combined with the audio book editions, Outlanders comprises well over 100 novels. Although the Axler pseudonym was shared with other writers, primarily the multiple contributors to Gold Eagle's Deathlands series, Ellis authored more novels as "James Axler" than any other writer.

Graphic novels

In 2008, Ellis co-authored The Everything Guide to Writing Graphic Novels with Melissa Martin (published by Simon & Schuster). The book led to several of his earlier comic series being compiled as graphic novel editions by publishers such as Caliber Comics/Transfuzion, Markosia and Ying Ko Graphics.

As James Axler

Other books

Comics and graphic novels