Peter Hogan Explained

Birth Name:Peter K. Hogan
Write:y
Edit:y
Notable Works:Terra Obscura
Resident Alien (comics)
Nonus:y

Peter K. Hogan is an English writer and comics writer, best known for Resident Alien, which he co-created with artist Steve Parkhouse. Hogan began his comics career as editor of cult British comic magazine Revolver in 1990–1991, before working for 2000 AD, American comic book publishers Vertigo, America's Best Comics and Dark Horse Comics

Biography

In 1978 Pete Townshend, of The Who, asked Hogan to set up and manage his Magic Bus Bookshop in Richmond. He then worked as commissioning editor for Townshend's Eel Pie Publishing from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Projects included Pennie Smith's book of Clash photos, Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry At Rawlinson End, Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray's Bowie – An Illustrated Record. Hogan worked on the editorial side, with John Brown (later the publisher of Viz Comic) on the business side. His known associates at that time were rock music journalists Dave Marsh and Patrick Humphries.

Hogan worked as a record company press officer for Rough Trade during the early days of The Smiths, and for IRS Records where he worked for R.E.M., as well as writing about music and film, for magazines like Melody Maker and Sky and Vox, and much later on Uncut. He went on to write books about The Bangles, The Doors, Queen, R.E.M., The Velvet Underground and Nick Drake.

He also was a contributing writer to a biography about The Monkees pop group.

Hogan is the brother-in-law of noted UK comic artist/typographer/design guru Rian Hughes.

Fleetway then hired Hogan to edit comics, and whilst he was editing Revolver, he also co-edited The Comic Relief Comic with Neil Gaiman and Richard Curtis.

Later, Hogan became a scriptwriter for the 2000 AD comic, working on short story series Vector 13 and Tharg's Dragon Tales, as well as reinventing the long-running Strontium Dog series as Strontium Dogs and supervising the Durham Red spin-off series. Hogan also had a short stint working on Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter. He also created the fantasy Timehouse.

However, when David Bishop took on the editorship of 2000 AD, he informed Hogan that he would commission no more of Hogan's scripts because he "didn't believe his writing fitted the comic [he] wanted 2000 AD to be." The two commissioned scripts, Strontium Dogs "Hate and War" and Durham Red "Night of the Hunters" were heavily rewritten and Hogan asked for his name to be removed – they were credited to Alan Smithee. With hindsight Bishop says "He was rightly furious about having his work summarily rewritten and demanded his name taken off the scripts, which I did. I regret the brutal way I treated Peter: I was in a hurry to make changes and he caught the full force of that haste."[1]

In the 1990s, Hogan wrote for some titles on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, including The Dreaming and The Sandman Presents: Love Street. Most recently, his unpublished followup to the latter, , was published online.[2] Like Love Street, Marquee Moon is a tie-in to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and offers a look at the early days of John Constantine of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer fame.

In addition, Hogan has worked with Alan Moore on Moore's America's Best Comics series, including his own spin-off title Terra Obscura. He also wrote three issues of Tom Strong with artist Chris Sprouse and the two of them returned to the character in 2010 with the limited series Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom.[3]

Since 2011 Hogan has worked on his own Resident Alien series for Dark Horse. This has been adapted by Chris Sheridan into a live action TV show starring Alan Tudyk. It will air in the summer of 2020.

In 2020 Hogan returned to the pages of 2000 AD working with Brendan McCarthy on Zaucer of Zilk: A Zaucer Full of Zecrets.[4]

Bibliography

Comics work includes:

Love Street (with pencils by Michael Zulli, 3-issue mini-series, Vertigo, July–September 1999)

References

Notes and References

  1. Bishop, 2007, page 184
  2. Web site: The Sandman Presents: Marquee Moon online . 8 October 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100504225706/http://www.swampthingroots.com/marquee.html . 4 May 2010 . dead .
  3. Web site: Kevin . Mahadeo . Peter Hogan Forges "The Robots of Doom" . . 14 May 2010 . 14 May 2010 .
  4. Web site: INTERVIEW: Trip the light fantastic again with the Zaucer of Zilk . 14 December 2019 .