Guest of Honour - John Higgins Back to Guests of Honour List

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JOHN HIGGINS is a comic book penciller, inker, colourist, and writer whose career goes back over 40 years as a professional freelance artist. In 1981 he started getting regular work at 2000AD, the prestigious British sci-fi comic magazine, and has worked for the company regularly, including over 20 years working on the iconic Judge Dredd character, and frequent collaborations with writer Alan Moore. He is still a regular contributor to 2000AD currently collaborating with writer Michael Carroll and colourist Sally Jane Hurst on the Judges prequel Dreadnoughts.

He was part of the British invasion of American comics in the mid 1980s, and holds the distinction of having worked as the colour artist on two of the most notable graphic novels of all time, Watchmen and Batman The Killing Joke. Higgins has worked with DC Comics for over 25 years, mainly for the Vertigo imprint, and returned to the Watchmen universe in 2012, providing the artwork, and eventually writing, the Curse of the Crimson Corsair back-up feature that ran through the Before Watchmen titles.

Higgins created, wrote, drew, and self-published the acclaimed Razorjack series, which was eventually collected and published by Titan Books. He spent 2016 writing and designing an autobiographical art book, Beyond Watchmen & Judge Dredd : The Art of John Higgins, published by Liverpool University Press to coincide with a major retrospective exhibition of his work at the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool, which ran from March 2017, and extended due to popular demand, until February 2018.

Higgins has also provided artwork for animation, film and book covers, as well as an award-winning series of Royal Mail stamps commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London.

Higgins received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Liverpool University in July 2018. 

Books: Beyond Watchmen & Judge Dredd, Razorjack, World without End, Pride & Joy, Before Watchmen – Curse of the Crimson Corsair and Watchmen, Killing Joke of course.