John McCrea - Career

Career

In 1989, after a few years of drawing television and toy tie-ins, he illustrated Ennis's debut, the political series Troubled Souls, in Crisis, as well as its sequel, the farce For a Few Troubles More. He later illustrated the series Carla Allison in Deadline.

He broke into American comics in 1993, drawing Ennis's run on DC Comics's The Demon, followed by its spin-off, Hitman, from 1996 to 2001, on which McCrea developed a versatile drawing style equally at home with goofy humour, action, and subtle characterisation. Hitman issue 34 won the Eisner Award for best single issue in 1999. His wilder, more exaggerated cartooning found an outlet with Dicks, a mini-series spinning off from For a Few Troubles More into more outrageous dialect, sexual and toilet humour, published by Caliber in 1997, with a sequel, Dicks II, from Avatar in 2002.

Since Hitman finished he has drawn a variety of characters for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse Comics, 2000 AD and others. Recent work includes Herogasm a limited series spun off from Garth Ennis' The Boys.

On April 9, 2011 McCrea 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 McCrea and the other artists appearing on stage throughout the day to work on the pencils, inks, and lettering, including Dave Gibbons, Frank Quitely, John Romita Jr., Jock, Doug Braithwaite, Ian Churchill, Olivier Coipel, Duncan Fegredo, Simon Furman, David Lafuente, 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.