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Rory Root on Kevin O’Neill Visiting Comic Relief November 18 (PR)
posted November 4, 2007
 

Comic Relief: The Comic Bookstore, is excited to welcome Kevin O'Neill back to the States on his 8 day ComicsPRO national tour for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier! Kevin will be stopping by Comic Relief on Sunday, November 18th from 1PM-3PM. Pick up your copy of L.O.E.G. The Back Dossier when it comes out on the 14th and then head back for what is sure to be an afternoon to remember!

Visit www.comicrelief.net for further updates, photos of the event will be posted afterwards.

Kevin O'Neill began working as an office boy at the UK publishing company IPC at the early age of 16, working mainly on children's humor titles in various positions for his first few years. O'Neill eventually felt the need to depart from children's titles, so when he caught wind that IPC was planning a science fiction title called 2000 AD he went to Pat Mills and requested a transfer. His work on 2000 AD started with creating cover art and pin-ups, and progressed to creating short strips such as Tharg the Mighty strips and Future Shocks. However, it was when he collaborated with Pat Mills on Ro-Busters that he took on his first major ongoing strip.

O'Neill and Mills continued to collaborate on 2000AD titles like ABC Warriors, Ro-Jaws' Robo-Tales: "The Inside Story", and the popular Nemesis the Warlock.

His violent and unusual style would gain him successes with his fans but also get him into trouble his publishers. With his first major work with DC, a story written by Alan Moore for the Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2 in 1986, the Comics Code Authority objected to O'Neill's art stating that there was nothing that could be changed to gain approval and that it was his style that was found objectionable, eventually DC decided to print the comic without the Authority's stamp. That same year DC published the O'Neill and Mills' graphic novel Metalzoic, it was highly acclaimed was one of DC's first creator owned stories. With their mutual disdain of the superhero genre O'Neill and Mills created Marshal Law, published as a six issue mini-series for Epic Comics. Marshal Law stories would eventually be printed by a number of different publishers as well as in an on-line and an illustrated novella format.

In 1999 O'Neill teamed up with Alan Moore for a six issue series called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, published by series for America's Best Comics. It involved characters in Victorian literature such as Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain and Dr. Jekyll. It was huge success and was followed by another equally successful six issue series. Currently 1999 also saw the final Nemesis the Warlock story by O'Neill in the special Prog 2000 millennium edition of 2000AD. He continued to work on small strips for Negative Burn published by Caliber Comics and his next major title is the highly anticipated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier.

Comic Relief, located at 2026 Shattuck Ave (at University Ave., near the Downtown Berkeley Bart Station), is celebrating 20 years of having America's finest selection of graphic novels across all genres and hosting many of its greatest artists, writers, and creative iconoclasts. Comic Relief is excited to be a part of Kevin O'Neill's ComicsPRO national tour for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier on November 18th , 1pm - 3pm. The store is open from 11am to 10 pm Monday through Saturday and 12 am to 8 pm Sunday, and can be reached by phone at (510) 843-5002, by email at [email protected], and can be found on the internet at www.comicrelief.net .