Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland (born 26 March 1951) is a British comics artist.

When American comics began to be imported into England, c. 1959, Bolland hadn't read any comics before the age of ten, but by 1960 he was intrigued by Dell Comics' Dinosaurus!, which developed into a childhood interest in dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes.

Comics including Turok, Son of Stone and DC Comics' Tomahawk soon followed, and it was this burgeoning comics collection that would help inspire Bolland to draw his own comics around the age of ten with ideas such as "Insect League."

He recalls that "[s]uperheroes crept into my life by stealth," as he actively sought out covers featuring "any big creature that looked vaguely dinosaur-like, trampling puny humans."

These adolescent criteria led from Dinosaurus! and Turok via House of Mystery to "Batman and Robin [who] were [often] being harassed by big weird things, as were Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman [etc]," Bolland recalled.

Soon, family outings to Skegness became an excuse for the future artist to "trawl... round some of the more remote backstreet newsagents" for comics to store on an overflowing wooden bookcase he'd built in school.

Growing up as an only child with parents that had no interest in art, literature, or music, he embraced the late 1960s pop culture explosion of pirate radio stations, experimental music, recreational drugs, psychedelia, Oz Magazine, "dropping out" and other aspects of hippy culture epitomised by underground comix such as Robert Crumb's Zap Comix.

As early as 1962, aged 11, Bolland remembers thinking that "Carmine Infantino's work on the Flash and Gil Kane's on Green Lantern and the Atom had a sophistication about it that I hadn't [previously] seen."

He would later cite Kane and Alex Toth as "pinnacle[s] of excellence," alongside Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Sid Greene, Joe Kubert, Ross Andru, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, and Bruno Premiani, whose influences showed in his "early crude stabs at drawing comics."

The young Bolland did not rate Marvel Comics as highly as DC, feeling the covers cluttered and the paper quality crude.

His appreciation of the artwork of Jack Kirby, he says, only materialised much later.

He did however enjoy UK comics, including newspaper strips such as Jeff Hawke by Syd Jordan and Carol Day by David Wright, and Valiant which featured Mytek the Mighty by Eric Bradbury and Steel Claw by Jesus Blasco.

Despite such a variety of inspirations, Bolland credits his eventual pursuance of art as a hobby and then vocation to a primary school art teacher.

Having taken both O-Level and A-Level examinations in art, Bolland spent five years at art school beginning in 1969, learning graphic design and art history.

In 1971, his friend Dave Harwood entered printed mass production with his RDH Comix, for which Bolland provided a cover (featuring Norwich Cathedral).

Also in 1971, Time Out – an underground magazine rapidly reinventing itself into "the biggest weekly listings magazine in London" – gave Bolland his first compensated work producing an illustration of blues guitarist Buddy Guy.

In 1972, Bolland attended the British Comic Art Convention at the Waverley Hotel in London, and met several influential figures in the current British comics scene, including Dez Skinn, Nick Landau, Richard Burton, Angus McKie and – crucially – Dave Gibbons.

Bolland and Gibbons became firm friends.

After finishing his college course, Bolland was hit with "the stark reality of unemployment" and on the advice of Gibbons joined art agency Bardon Press Features.

He soon found work doing a number of two-page strips for D.C. Thomson resulted, but Bolland would refer to this period as his "lowest time."

Bardon did however produce a client called Pikin which was "planning a bi-weekly comic about an African superhero," Powerman, which was to be sold in Nigeria.

Gibbons and Bolland were to draw alternate issues, with Bolland first drawing Powerman No. 2. Bolland recalls that "soon Dave had drawn his entire story and I had produced just a few pages."

Learning to draw comics, however, was an art he self-taught, with Bolland eventually writing a 15,000-word dissertation in 1973 on Neal Adams – an "artist [his teachers] had never heard of."

He would later recall:

Bolland studied graphic design at Norwich University of the Arts.

While at art school, Bolland drew and self-published a couple of fanzines and his work was published in British underground magazines Frendz, International Times and OZ.

While in Norwich, Bolland produced the first episodes of an adult Little Nemo in Slumberland parody entitled Little Nympho in Slumberland, and when he moved to the Central School of Art and Design in London in 1973, he continued to produce (mostly full-page) Little Nympho strips for a 50-copy fanzine entitled Suddenly at 2-o-clock in the Morning. He also contributed a smaller, strip entitled "The Mixed-Up Kid" to the Central School of Art's Galloping Maggot, the college newspaper.

Bolland illustrated the critically acclaimed 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, an origin story for Batman supervillain the Joker, with writer Alan Moore.

He gradually shifted to working primarily as a cover artist, producing the majority of his work for DC Comics.

Bolland created cover artwork for the Animal Man, Wonder Woman, and Batman: Gotham Knights superhero comic book series.

In 1996, he drew and self-penned a Batman: Black and White story, "An Innocent Guy".

For DC's Vertigo imprint, Bolland has done covers for The Invisibles, Jack of Fables, and a number of one-shots and miniseries.

In addition to interior and cover art, Bolland has also produced several comic strips and pin-ups as both writer and artist.

His most notable are the semi-autobiographical humour strip Mr. Mamoulian and the whimsical rhyming strip The Actress and the Bishop.

Best known in the United Kingdom as one of the Judge Dredd artists for British comics anthology 2000 AD, he spearheaded the 'British Invasion' of the American comics industry, and in 1982 produced the artwork alongside author Mike W. Barr on Camelot 3000, which was DC Comics' first 12-issue comicbook maxiseries created for the direct market.

All strips of both projects were included in the Bolland Strips! collection book, published in 2005.

In 2006, he compiled the art book The Art of Brian Bolland, showcasing all of Bolland's work to date and also his work as a photographer.

Brian Bolland was born in Butterwick, Lincolnshire, England, to Albert "A.J."

John, a fenland farmer, and Lillie Bolland.

He grew up in a small village near Boston, Lincolnshire until he was 18 years old.