Frank Quitely - Career

Career

Quitely first worked upon the Scottish underground comics title Electric Soup in 1990. He wrote and drew The Greens, a parody of The Broons strip published by D.C. Thompson. It was in working on this book that he adopted the pseudonym of Frank Quitely (a spoonerism of "quite frankly"), as he did not want his family to know it was his work, worried that they may have found it upsetting.

Initially Electric Soup was only distributed locally in Glasgow, then it was picked up by John Brown Publishing for widespread national UK distribution. This brought Quitely's work to the attention of Judge Dredd Megazine editor David Bishop. He was given work on Shimura, written by Robbie Morrison, and Missionary Man, by Gordon Rennie, quickly rising to prominence and being voted among the fans' favourite five artists in an end-of-year survey. By 1994 he had started work in various stories in Paradox Press's series of The Big Book of graphic novels, as well as work for Dark Horse Presents for Dark Horse Comics.

His big break into American comics was Flex Mentallo, a Doom Patrol spin-off written by fellow Glaswegian Grant Morrison for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, in 1996. Quitely's work proved very popular, and this launched him onto more work for Vertigo. Initially he was put to work on strips for anthology titles such as Weird War Tales, and drew three issues of Jamie Delano's 2020 Visions, as well as various covers for DC. He later drew his first full length graphic novel, Batman: The Scottish Connection, with writer Alan Grant (in which The Greens make a cameo appearance). Quitely and Grant also worked on a one-shot titled Lobo: The Hand-to-Hand Job (later retitled as It's a Man's World). Althogh Quitely did all the pencils, the story was not released, supposedly due to reported nakedness of Lobo for at least half the issue, as well as a scene involving sexual self-gratification by a league of asteroid miners.

2000 saw Quitely and Morrison collaborate again, on JLA: Earth 2. Once again, the graphic novel was met with a hugely positive critical response, and later that year Quitely took over from Bryan Hitch as artist on The Authority, with Mark Millar as writer. This run proved to be highly controversial, and Quitely's art suffered censorship by DC due mainly to the violent content of Millar's stories. In addition, the title was hampered by delays, due in part to Quitely's slow drawing speed and the time he took off to draw the final issue of Morrison's The Invisibles.

Quitely left The Authority to draw New X-Men. Quitely also managed to find time to illustrate a Neil Gaiman-written story for the hardcover graphic novel, Sandman: Endless Nights.

Since leaving New X-Men, Quitely has drawn the mini-series We3 in 2004, again in collaboration with Morrison. More than any other series in his career to date, this book was almost unanimously acclaimed by critics for its art and storytelling, and further cemented Quitely's reputation. He shared the 2005 Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team Eisner Award in a tie with artist John Cassaday for his work on the book. That same year, he and Morrison were also nominated for Best Limited Series for that book, and Quitely additionally was nominated for the Best Cover Artist Eisner for both We3 and Bite Club.

He wrote and drew new installments of The Greens for the Scottish underground comic Northern Lightz, and in 2005 Morrison and Quitely designed a series of tarot cards for Intensive Care, an album by popstar Robbie Williams.

In December 2004, Quitely signed to a two-year exclusive contract with DC Comics, where he illustrated All-Star Superman. The twelve issue series, yet another collaboration with Morrison, began publication in November 2005, and once again attracted near-unanimous praise. Quitely and Morrison's work on the series won them the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2006, with Quitely collecting another nomination for Best Penciller/Inker. The series also won Best Continuing Series in 2007 and 2009.

In 2008 Quitely illustrated the cover for the debut issue of Scottish underground comic Wasted.

In early 2009, Frank Quitely collaborated with much acclaimed Scottish rock band The Phantom Band in designing artwork for a limited edition 7" single for their song "The Howling", which plays on Quitely's interest in occultism and esoterica. This was released as a limited run collector's pressing by Glasgow's Chemikal Underground Records. That same year, Quitely again teamed with Morrison, illustrated the first three issues of Batman and Robin title, which debuted in June 2009 after the "Battle for the Cowl" storyline. He provided covers through issue #16.

On April 9, 2011 Quitely was one of 62 comics creators who appeared at the IGN stage at the Kapow! convention in London to set two Guinness World Records, the Fastest Production of a Comic Book, and Most Contributors to a Comic Book. With Guinness officials on hand to monitor their progress, writer Mark Millar began work at 9am scripting a 20-page black and white Superior comic book, with Quitely and the other artists appearing on stage throughout the day to work on the pencils, inks, and lettering, including Dave Gibbons, John Romita Jr., Jock, Adi Granov, Doug Braithwaite, Ian Churchill, Olivier Coipel, Duncan Fegredo, Simon Furman, David Lafuente, John McCrea, Sean Phillips and Liam Sharp, who all drew a panel each, with regular Superior artist Leinil Yu creating the book's front cover. The book was completed in 11 hours, 19 minutes, and 38 seconds, and was published through Icon on November 23, 2011, with all royalties being donated to Yorkhill Children's Foundation.

In 2012, Quitely was one of several artists to illustrate a variant cover for Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead #100, which was released July 11 at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Quitely is the artist on Jupiter's Children, a 10 issue, creator-owned miniseries published by Image Comics beginning in September 2012. It is written by Mark Millar, who described the project as "his Star Wars", and a cross between Lord of the Rings and a large-scale superhero crossover, albeit one that will not require the in-depth knowledge normally required of such stories, as it will feature entirely new characters.