Brian Wood

"After I hit 21, I got a little bit of money from an inheritance, which paid for my first year of school and a grimy $325/month bedroom on East 3rd Street for a few months," he recounts.

He also worked as a bike messenger, which instilled in him a love and a knowledge for New York City that would inform many of his future projects.

Brian Wood (born January 29, 1972) is an American writer, illustrator, and graphic designer, known for his work in comic books, television and video games.

Brian Wood was born January 29, 1972, and grew up in the village of Essex Junction, Vermont, where he attended Hiawatha Elementary School and Essex High School.

He has described his upbringing as "outdoorsy and active, with regular incidents involving neighborhood bullies and trauma at home."

He describes a period of heavy drinking before moving to New York City to attend college, stating, "I was ejected into the adult world too early, orphaned and lacking a plan, support, or sound judgement."

He is a lifelong stutterer, has spoken publicly about seeking therapy to deal with childhood trauma and the loss of his mother to cancer.

His noted comic book work includes the series DMZ, Demo, Northlanders, The Massive, Marvel Comics' The X-Men, and Star Wars. His web series work includes adaptations of his own short stories from the comics series The Massive and Conan the Barbarian for Geek & Sundry and YouTube, and his video game work includes three years on staff at Rockstar Games, co-writing 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and story contributions to Aliens: Fireteam Elite. His television work includes pilot scripts for AMC, Amazon Studios, and Sonar Entertainment.

He is a contributing writer on HBO Max's DMZ adaptation of his own work.

Wood's work is well known for sociopolitical commentary, particularly on the topics of media and conflicts, climate change, and identity.

Much of his work is about or takes place in New York City.

He's contributed the character of Zula Hendricks to the Aliens franchise, created the character of Shogo Lee, Jubilee's adopted son, to the X-Men/Marvel Universe, and created Nomi Blume for the Ultimate Marvel universe.

He moved to New York City in 1991, describing it as "something of a big leap of faith on my part... it was one of those situations where I had hardly any money, and a single backpack full of clothes. I bought a one-way bus ticket from Burlington, Vermont and kind of burned bridges as I left. I was all-in. Stupid, but committed."

He describes working below minimum wage at a skate shop while applying to colleges.

After graduating in 1997 from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in illustration, Wood worked a series of design jobs at internet startups, including iVillage, Bigfoot, and Nerve.

Wood's first professional work in comics was the five-issue limited series Channel Zero, published by Image Comics in 1998, which began as part of his graduation project for Parsons School of Design.

Channel Zero is set in a dystopian near-future New York City where the tenets of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani have grown into a freedom-restricting government initiative called "The Clean Act".

The protagonist is Jennie 2.5, a DIY media personality who sets out to stir the complacent population into revolution.

Channel Zero was orphaned shortly after Image Comics sold out of the first print run of the collected edition, opting not to return to press, and AiT/Planet Lar acquired it soon afterwards.

In early 2000, comic book writer Warren Ellis offered Wood a co-writing job on Marvel Comics' Generation X, as part of Ellis' Counter-X run.

Wood co-wrote issues #63–70 with Ellis and 71–75 on his own, before the series was canceled as part of incoming Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada's attempts to simplify the X-Men franchise.

In 2003, Wood partnered with artist Becky Cloonan to create Demo, an anthology series of twelve 'done-in-one' or 'one-shot' stories about young people with superpowers.

Although initially inspired by the aborted NYX project, the series was not traditionally superhero and instead compared emerging powers to neurodiverse themes and tragic love stories.

The series was well-received, and Wizard, a steadfastly superhero-oriented comics magazine, named Demo its 2004 "Indie of the Year".

The series was also nominated for two Eisner Awards in 2005, for "Best Limited Series" and "Best Single Issue" (for #7, "One Shot, Don't Miss").

Thirteen Minutes cites Wood and Demo as " blipping a young artist named Becky Cloonan onto everyone's collective radar screen, and cementing Wood's relationship with this frequent collaborator."

Wood also served as AIT's branding designer and overall creative director for a short period of time, and designed covers for Warren Ellis' Come In Alone, Badlands, and Black Heart Billy. In January 2007, Intrepid Pictures optioned the feature film rights to Wood and Rob G..'s graphic novel The Couriers with Javier Grillo-Marxuach set to pen the screenplay.

In 2012 Wood regained the publishing rights and Dark Horse Comics took up the publishing, releasing a "Complete Collection" that included the original graphic novel, the prequel series Channel Zero: Jennie One with Becky Cloonan, his Public Domain design book material, and numerous other extras from the early development of the property.

ComicsAlliance has identified Channel Zero as "The Unofficial Bible of Comics Activism," and noted its "eerie prescience" and "represents an arduous, expressly DIY method of comic book-making that new technology has dramatically changed."

Publishers Weekly called it "significant" and "unapologetically experimental," and "Wood is far more interested in trying out a variety of visual techniques than in creating something that is slick and polished. The result is a graphic novel whose form and content could not be more perfectly matched."

Bleeding Cool placed Channel Zero within a larger cyberpunk movement.

Following Channel Zero, Wood took a two-year break from comics.

Wood would not work again with Marvel until 2012.

Wood was employed as a staff designer for Rockstar Games, designing for video game franchises such as Grand Theft Auto, Midnight Club, Max Payne, Smuggler's Run and Manhunt.

He nonetheless produced a series of original graphic novels, coinciding with a trend within independent comic publishers that favored that format.

The first was Couscous Express with artist Brett Weldele, an action romp about food delivery people.

This was followed by a trilogy of bike messenger books, The Couriers, The Couriers: Dirtbike Manifesto, and The Couriers: Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker, all drawn by Rob G.. Several characters are shared between Couscous Express and The Couriers, and in 2012 all four books were collected together and published by Image Comics.

Wood created and wrote the limited series' Pounded for Oni Press and Fight for Tomorrow for DC Comics's imprint Vertigo.

He also produced Public Domain and Channel Zero: Jennie One during this time, the first of what will come to be several collaborations with artist Becky Cloonan.

Larry Young's AiT/Planet Lar heavily promoted Wood during this time, including designating the month of January as "Brian Wood Month" to exclusively offer his titles only.