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Latest Comic Guest Announcement - Tim Truman Writer/Artist: Scout; Conan, Hawkworld, Grimjack, Jonah Hex A GRADUATE of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Tim Truman began his professional career providing illustrations for handbooks for fantasy role playing games. His first comics work was inking a handful of stories for DC’s Sgt Rock title in the early 1980s before introducing Grimjack at First Comics in 1983’s Starslayer #10. The character, which he created in collaboration with writer John Ostrander, graduated to his own title the following year. Truman pencilled only the first 19 issues of Grimjack before moving on to Eclipse for Scout. A creator-owned series that he both wrote and drew, that ran for 24 issues before being relaunched for a further 16 issues as Scout: War Shaman in 1988. Between his work for First – for which he’d also co-written and illustrated 1985’s Time Beavers graphic novel – and Eclipse, Truman had established himself as one of the mainstays of the independent comics scene that was thriving in the late 1980s even going so far as to set up his own publishing/packaging label. Under the Eclipse umbrella, his 4Winds Publishing introduced such Argentinean talents as Carlos Trillo, Enrique Alcatena and Enrique Breccia to the American audience while also releasing Wilderness. Subtitled The True Story of Simon Girty the Renegade, this ambitious two-volume historical biography was Truman’s first foray into Westerns, a genre with which he has remained associated down the years. In tandem with writer Chuck Dixon, Truman’s 4Winds also revived Hillman’s Airboy for Eclipse and created Prowler for that publisher before Truman was approached by DC to reinvent Hawkman. This he did in Hawkworld, a well-received 1989 three-parter that led to an ongoing series for which he and Ostrander wrote the first nine issues after which Truman moved back to Eclipse for 1991’s Dragon Chiang one-shot and to resurrect a 1930s pulp hero in The Spider, which he followed in 1992 with a sequel, another three-parter subtitled Reign of the Vampire King. In between he also began contributing to Grateful Dead Comix, kicking off an association with the band that extended beyond comics and continues to this day. Subsequently Truman – who also collaborated with historian William W Eckert on Tecumseh! (a 1992 retelling of the life of the famed Shawnee chief, published by Eclipse) – teamed up with noted horror author Joe R Lansdale to give DC’s Western hero Jonah Hex a Vertigo-style makeover in the first of three minis. Two-Gun Mojo [1993] was followed by Riders of the Worm and Such [1995] and Shadows West [1999] while the duo also collaborated on 1994’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto four-parter for Topps and on the three issues of Lansdale and Truman’s Dead Folks for Avatar in 2003. Truman also took to writing for other artists, starting off at Valiant for which he scripted 30 issues of Turok, Dinosaur Hunter between 1993 and 1996, when he illustrated Dog Moon, a DC/Vertigo one-shot written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. In the same year he produced the six issues of The Black Lamb for Helix (DC’s short-lived SF imprint) prior to moving on to reunite with Ostrander for The Kents, a 1997 DC Western that to an Elseworlds look at the ancestors of Superman’s adoptive parents in the Old West across its 12 issues. Then came 1998’s four-issue Guns of the Dragon for DC after which he became involved with Star Wars at Dark Horse, writing the Anakin Skywalker tie-in with Episode I: The Phantom Menace as well as 16 issues of the ongoing Star Wars comic between 1999 and 2001. At the same time Truman also scripted Creature Commandos, a 2000 six-parter for DC. In 2001 he wrote a drew the three issues of DC’s JLA: Gatekeeper, pretty much his last comics work until 2005 when he and Ostrander resurrected Grimjack at IDW for the six-issue Killer Instinct, which they followed four years later with The Manx Cat, another six-parter. By that time Truman was also the regular writer of Conan for Dark Horse authoring 42 issues of that title and its 2008 replacement Conan the Cimmerian between 2006 and 2010. Since then he has primarily concentrated on his illustration work but wrote and drew 2011’s Hawken (a six-issue IDW Western) and maintains his links with Robert E Howard’s archetypal sword and sorcery hero by scripting Dark Horse’s various King Conan minis.