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Peter Milligan CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF VERTIGO Writer:Shade, the Changing Man; Hellblazer; Animal Man; Human Target;Greek Street Milligan started his comic career with short stories for 2000 AD in the early 1980s. By 1986, Milligan had his first ongoing strip in 2000AD called Bad Company, with artists Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy. Bad Company was a popular future war story and helped Milligan become better known. Concurrently, Milligan, Ewins and Brendan McCarthy had been working on the anthology title, Strange Days for Eclipse Comics. Strange Days featured three strips, Paradax, Freakwave and Johnny Nemo. Milligan, McCarthy and Ewins produced three issues of this psychedelic comic, it was not a great seller but it picked up a small, loyal readership. The most conventional strip, Johnny Nemo, had its own series while the more quirky Paradax had a two issue series published by Vortex Comics in 1987. By 1989 Milligan was swapping between more conventional strips such as Bad Company, while still writing his more surreal efforts in 2000AD, such as Hewligan's Haircut with artist Jamie Hewlett. Milligan with artist Jim McCarthy created the Steve Ditko-inspired Bix Barton. This was first run as a black and white strip for its first outing ("Barton's Beasts") the second strip was called "Carry On Barton" (originally "Carry On Snuffing"), the strip was very popular and was a precursor of Devlin Waugh and others. In 1989 he had his first work published by DC Comics. Skreemer was a six issue mini series with art by Brett Ewins that was somewhat lost in the midst of the so-called "British Invasion" of American comics of the time. A dark post-apocalyptic gangster story, it did receive critical acclaim but did not sell well. Milligan however was soon to become a regular writer for DC while still working on his more personal comics in the UK in comics such as 2000AD, and its spin off titles Crisis and Revolver.