Rebellion Offers Their Tribute To 2000AD Artist Dave Taylor Who Passed Away

Goodbye To A UK Comics Original

Rebellion just offered their tribute to 2000AD artist Dave Taylor who passed away at the weekend and here’s that tribute…

Everyone at Rebellion is deeply saddened to learn of the death of artist Dave Taylor, who has passed away suddenly at the age of 61.

Deeply intelligent but self-effacing and with an easy manner that won him many friends, Taylor’s eventful career saw him work on high-profile American superhero comic books before deadlines and ill-health led to him being told he would never work in comics again.

Yet he would go on to a creatively fruitful career at 2000 AD, producing much of the best work of his career.

Born in the seaside town of Hoylake on the Wirral, his childhood dyslexia prevented him from getting into art school and a fledging career as a rock guitarist was cut short when he dislocated two fingers while being chased by a gang of punks. Becoming a pub worker and cellar man, he never lost a love of comics fed by black-and-white reprints of American comic book titles, Asterix, Tintin, and – of course – 2000 AD.

‘Comics kind of frustrated me, so when 2000 AD came out it was just when I needed it,’ he told the Judge Dredd Megazine in 2008. ‘It had always been an entertainment before that and 2000 AD was doing stuff that I loved imagining and had been imagining for years and people were publishing this stuff – it was quite a revelation! It was 2000 AD that made me think of doing it as a career.

“The first thing I’d ever wanted to be was a comic book artist and I was going to try and do it again. Art had failed, music seemed boring. Something else would catch my eye for a bit but I’d always end up coming back to comic books.”

With just a self-published black-and-white 20-page comic – Tom Tom Macoubre – under his belt, he met legendary French artist Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud at a convention in 1988, badgering his agent Jean-Marc Lofficier for hours to show his portfolio to the man himself. Encouraged by Moebius to learn how to draw classically, when he returned to Liverpool he enrolled in art college. Within three months, he received a call from Marvel’s UK offshoot with an offer of a six-issue series of Zorro and went on to co-create ‘British X-Men’ series Gene Dogs with writer John Freeman.

He then made the leap to American mainstream comics just as the inflated ‘90s comics ‘bubble’ burst. Borrowing money from his mother, he attended New York Comic Con: ‘I decided that if I got work in America I’d continue working in comics but if not I’d go back to the pub. It was a make or break thing.’

The gamble paid off. He was picked up by Marvel off-shoot Defiant and in 1995 was headhunted by DC Comics to work with Matt Wagner on Batman: The Riddle Factory. This led to several Batman projects, including working with Alan Grant on the Shadow Of The Bat series, and designing the Batman and Robin logos for the Warner Bros movie.

As time went on, he became unhappy with the pressure to draw in the ‘house style’ expected by US comics companies:  ‘I ended up going insane because I was doing the job I’d always wanted to do, but not happy doing it. That was tragic, if I can’t be happy doing this, how can I be happy? Towards the end I started mentioning it, but as far as they were concerned I was producing regular pages – if you’re quick enough and it’s not killing you, what’s the problem? But it just wasn’t artistically satisfying.’

His next work was a bizarre Avengers-style mix of naked women and BDSM clothing in a futuristic setting inspired by Mayan culture – Tongue Lash was an unconventional hit based on an illustration by Moebius. It was Taylor’s style at its most European and began an artistic journey that moved him rapidly away from the ‘house’ style of American comics and towards his own.

Batman & Superman: World’s Finest was Taylor’s attempt to regain artistic control over his career, a European book for the American market – full of clean lines and more subtle colours. However, Taylor found the experience so deeply unpleasant, with moving deadlines and an inker brought in to assist, that he suffered a double hiatus hernia and could barely sit up, never mind work.

Again assuming his career was over, friend and 2000 AD artist Peter Doherty reminded Taylor of the reason he’d wanted to work in comics in the first place – Judge Dredd: ‘I blamed comics for everything, I didn’t even read them anymore. I thought I’d made a mistake and shouldn’t have been doing them at all. Pete just said to me ‘didn’t you always want to draw Judge Dredd?’ I decided if I could get a job I really enjoyed, I’d be able to start doing it all again. I’d be able to get over all the problems I’d had.’

After contacting Alan Grant, he got his first work on Dredd before proposing an idea that became the Judge Anderson story ‘Big Robots’. Running in the Megazine in 2007, the story saw Mega-City One blocks come alive before going on a rampage, and began a fruitful career at 2000 AD that lasted until his death.

‘I sit at my desk and the first five or ten minutes of the day I have to get used to the fact that I’m drawing Judge Dredd,’ he said in 2006. ‘I’ve got to stop the excitement, make it a little more boring than it is – this is great, I’m being paid what I wanted to do 25 years ago. It is all a bit insane. I’ve always felt restricted in whatever I’ve done. Until 2000 AD. And I have to remind myself with each that there’s no boundaries. I read the next couple of pages for my next Dredd with the old filter on from when I was drawing Batman and had to re-read them; I love Boo Cook’s work – he reminds me that there aren’t any restrictions, just do it.’

Thanks in no small part to his association with Moebius, his style developed into a hybrid of British and European influences that came with a incredible design sensibility, best exemplified by his collaboration with world-renowned graphic designer Chip Kidd on Batman: Death by Design, a New York Times bestseller published in 2012. He was a master at portraying the enormity of Judge Dredd’s world, the opening pages of ‘Big Robots’ reveal a dizzying sci-fi vista that is almost unmatched in its scale and scope. He was also a keen satirist, portraying Nigel Farage in 2015 as ‘Bilious Barrage’, a bigoted demagogic bore who earns the ire of Judge Dredd.

It made him the ideal artist for Megatropolis, his last major work for 2000 AD, in which writer Ken Niemand reimagined Judge Dredd as a slow-burning art deco sci-fi noir. Influenced by films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and infused with stylish architecture and pastel colours, it was a artistic tour de force and the perfect vehicle for Taylor’s unique blending of classic art styles and comics.

Perhaps most importantly, it also appeared to give him the satisfaction that he had long craved: ‘I’ve come back to 2000 AD because it’s what I love. Remembering that really fired me up – I want to go and sit at my drawing desk and be inspired. It sounds obvious but it’s quite a new concept. I’m just doing what I want to do. And that’s 2000 AD.’

Diagnosed with prostate cancer, which then spread to his bones, earlier this year Taylor became paralysed from the rib cage down but maintained that he was still working on the second book of Megatropolis, which he described as ‘the most rewarding, gratifying, exiting and downright fun series I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on’, and which he leaves tragically unfinished, as well as a short ‘Judge Death’ story.

‘He was confident he could get the Death story finished by the end of August because he wanted to stay working,’ said 2000 AD editor Matt Smith. ‘Even after his diagnosis, he was remarkably upbeat and determined that he could adapt – which makes his sudden passing all the more heartbreaking. He was a wonderful and talented artist and lovely to work with, delivering some of the best work of his career. I think ‘Megatropolis’ contains some of his finest pages.’

Comics has lost a unique talent. Taylor’s story was one of pursuing a life in comics that would not only match his ambition to create good art but fulfil the dreams he had held since he was a child. He leaves us poorer for his passing and he will be most sorely missed by all who knew him and those who enjoyed his incredible work.

Our most heartfelt condolences go out to all of Dave’s family and friends.

Dave Taylor 1964-2025