1. John Wagner was born on 1949 and is an American-born British comics writer.
24 Facts About John Wagner
1. 2.
John Wagner is the co-creator, with artist Carlos Ezquerra, of the character Judge Dredd.
3.
John Wagner has worked in children's humour and girls' adventure comics, but is most notable for his boys' adventure comics; he helped launch Battle Picture Weekly, for which he wrote "Darkie's Mob", and 2000 AD, for which he created numerous characters, including Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter and Button Man.
4.
John Wagner continues to write for 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine.
5.
John Wagner was born in Pennsylvania, US, in 1949, the product of a war marriage.
6.
When John Wagner was twelve his parents separated and his mother returned to Greenock in Scotland with the children.
7.
John Wagner got the job, starting in the Fiction department, and went on to become chief sub-editor of the romance comic Romeo, and wrote horoscopes.
8.
John Wagner asked Wagner to join him and help develop characters.
9.
Mills and John Wagner were dissatisfied with the sanitised nature of boys' comics and wanted to make them harder-hitting, with more working-class heroes.
10.
John Wagner continued to write for girls' comics, including scripting gymnastics strip "Bella at the Bar" for Tammy, and was appointed editor of the ailing boys' weekly Valiant.
11.
John Wagner suggested the new title needed a cop story, and his proposal, "Judge Dredd", took the Dirty Harry archetype further, imagining a violent lawman, empowered to dispense justice on the spot in a future New York.
12.
Artist Carlos Ezquerra was asked to visualise the character, but John Wagner initially hated the elaborate look Ezquerra came up with, thinking it "way over the top".
13.
John Wagner returned to write the character from issue 9, and has written the majority of Judge Dredd stories since.
14.
Grant and John Wagner introduced the Ventriloquist in their first Batman story and the Ratcatcher in their third.
15.
John Wagner did most of the development work, and wrote three of the five strips in the opening line-up, including "America", illustrated by Colin MacNeil, which examined the totalitarian nature of the Judge system through the story of a young woman who becomes a pro-democracy terrorist, and "Young Death: Boyhood of a Superfiend", with art by Peter Doherty, which told the origin of Dredd's arch-enemy Judge Death in humorous style.
16.
John Wagner did not resume writing for 2000 AD for more than three years.
17.
John Wagner has continued to be the main writer of "Judge Dredd" in 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine.
18.
In 2016 John Wagner teamed up with Grant to create a new comic for BHP Comics.
19.
Pat Mills describes John Wagner's writing as "romantic but not emotional".
20.
John Wagner is well known for writing terse scripts, described by artist Dave Gibbons as being like "exciting telegrams".
21.
John Wagner says he does not think visually, but rather "in terms of plot developments [and] dialogue", preferring to leave the visual decisions to the artist.
22.
John Wagner felt that the screenwriter did a poor job adapting it, and Coltrane did not understand the character.
23.
John Wagner was unhappy with the result, feeling they had filmed "the wrong script" and that "Stallone was badly advised".
24.
John Wagner had backed the film once he saw the group of actors Cronenberg had gathered.