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Let’s talk about Dave Gibbons.
You may have heard of him.
Mr. Gibbons was born in 1949 in London, England. He first entered the comics field in 1976 working on underground and smaller press comics. But looming around the corner was 2000AD launching in 1977, that, from the very beginning he was a key contributor to. Prog 01 (February 1977), and went on to draw the first 24 instalments of Harlem Heroes, one of the founding (and pre-Judge Dredd) strips.
Midway through the comic’s first year he began illustrating Dan Dare, a cherished project for Gibbons who had been a fan of the original series and artist Frank Hampson who, alongside Frank Bellamy, Don Lawrence and Ron Turner are well-liked and inspirational artists to Gibbons, whose “style evolved out of his love for the MAD magazine artists like Wally Wood and Will Elder”.
Working on early feature Ro-Busters (after Starlord merged with 2000 AD), Gibbons became one of the most prolific of 2000 AD’s earliest creators, contributing artwork to 108 of the first 131 Progs/issues. He returned to the pages of “the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic” in the early 1980s to create Rogue Trooper with writer Gerry Finley-Day and produce an early run on that feature, before handing it over to a succession of other artists. He illustrated a handful of Tharg’s Future Shocks shorts, primarily with author Alan Moore. (We’ll get to that guy soon)
Gibbons departed from 2000 AD briefly in the late 1970s/early 1980s to become the lead artist on Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly, for which he drew the main comic strip from issue No. 1 until No. 69, missing only four issues during that time.
The 2023 Doctor Who special “The Star Beast” was based on his 1980 comic of the same name, written by Pat Mills.
In 1982 lein Wein scooped up Dave Gibbons along with a murders row of British comic book creators to start working for American comic publishers. Dave worked on Green Lantern, The Flash, and The Brave and the Bold, but the defining comic was a Superman Annual #11 with (you guessed it) Alan Moore titled “For the Man Who Has Everything”.Â
It was not long after this, that Dave would work on what we all know him best from with Alan Moore, natch, Watchmen. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen “called into question the basic assumptions on which the super hero genre is formulated”. DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that “As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of super heroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim…and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced.”
Watchmen, as with The Dark Knight Returns, when they came out, was powerful. As someone that was there as they hit the stands, you could feel it in the air, the change that they brought with them. It was really an amazing time to watch as everyone you knew who was reading comics, all came to the same conclusion, that comics were growing up and we were watching it happen. No longer were they regarded as stupid funny books for boys, nope, these were serious dramas being played out. It meant something. And I firmly believe it was because of these books and the tone that they took, that Hollywood finally greenlit a Batman movie and a massive franchise was born.
It was while Watchmen came out that I became hyper-aware of who Dave was and how good he was. Not only was his anatomy pitch-perfect but it was his storytelling that caught my eye. Even at the age I was, that didn’t happen often. As a teeneageer I was after the sexy, flashy stuff. But in this, I found a new way of telling the story. Which was what blew my mind the most. Dave’s layouts for Watchmen are already much lauded and easy to find out how and why most of his decisions are made. You can find all of that in this book and it’s pretty fascinating.
From then on I picked up everything Dave did. My second favorite comic from him was Give Me Liberty, with The Dark Knight Returns maestro, Frank Miller. I loved this book and all the subsequent series that followed it.
Fast-forward a lot to 2019. I finally got to meet Dave Gibbons at the Thought Bubble Convention in England. Over the years of getting into comics I’ve met many pros. That’s not bragging, that’s just how it goes, but Dave was different. He was literally a Bucket List pro for me, because his work meant so much to me. I got to meet him and we were able to have a couple of really good conversations over the course of the weekend. It will be a convention I will never forget.
You can find Dave over at Twitter under @davegibbons90
