Garth Ennis (b. January 16, 1970) is Northern Irish-American comic book writer known for his highly explicit and controversial series, including Vertigo titles such as Hellblazer, Preacher and The Demon.
Professional History
Garth Ennis is a Northern Irish-American comics writer responsible for many of the industry's most controversial works, with his explicit writing style often featuring heavy use of graphic violence and sexual content, often with a comedic lean. After getting his start writing for 2000 AD, he took over the horror series Hellblazer for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, which proved to be a fan-favorite run of stories on the book.
With frequent Hellblazer artist Steve Dillon, he went on to create his most celebrated work at Vertigo, the ongoing series Preacher, a religious satire that served as a fusion of the Western and horror-comedy genres. Preacher was lauded by many critics, although some criticized its explicit content. It later spawned a popular television adaptation, which ran on AMC from 2016 to 2019.
Ennis and artist John McCrea created the superpowered killer Tommy Monaghan in their Vertigo series The Demon and Hitman, both controversial in their own rights for their mockery of the superhero genre, which Ennis famously dislikes. He continued his anti-superhero work with artist Darick Robertson by creating The Boys, a Wildstorm series set in a world where superheroes abuse their powers and murder innocents, using their popularity to escape the consequences. The series was canceled after six issues and the rights were returned to Ennis and Robertson, who brought it to Dynamite Entertainment, where it received great commercial success and even more controversy. In 2019, it was the source for Amazon Prime Video's television adaptation, which proved a gigantic critical and commercial hit, being nominated for several awards.
At Marvel Comics, Ennis did extensive work on the Punisher books, writing the Marvel Knights Punisher series, and perhaps most famously, a series under their MAX Comics imprint often referred to as The Punisher MAX, in which he focused more on the character's veteran status and war experience.
Work History
Trivia
- Ennis' hatred of the superhero genre does not extend to Superman and Wonder Woman, and thus he writes them respectfully.
External Links
- Garth Ennis at IMDb
- Garth Ennis at Wikipedia.org
- Garth Ennis at Marvel Database