Dan McDaid

Dan McDaid was an illustrator for the Doctor Who Storybook 2008 short story The Body Bank. He later wrote, drew and worked as a colourist for the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. He wrote The First, Thinktwice, The Stockbridge Child, Mortal Beloved and The Age of Ice, wrote, drew and coloured Hotel Historia, and drew The Stockbridge Showdown (with Dave Gibbons, Roger Langridge, Adrian Salmon, John Ross, Mike Collins, John Ridgway, Martin Geraghty and David A Roach).

Style

A typical Dan McDaid image of the comic Tenth Doctor. (COMIC: Hotel Historia)

McDaid's art is strikingly different than most other artists working for DWM. It is deliberately representative, rather than realistic. His work is evocative of several artists he claims to have been influenced by, like John Romita, Jr. and Grant Morrison. He describes himself as having a "man-crush on Darwyn Cooke" — something immediately obvious on comparison of his work to Cooke's definitive The New Frontier.

Opinions on other Doctor Who artists

He referred to Marvel UK's work on the earliest strips, such as Pat Mills, John Wagner and Dave Gibbons' Doctor Who and the Iron Legion, as "mind-blowing". He's also noted the commonality between those comic strips and the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, noting in 2008 that after Steve Parkhouse came in to DWM:

... the strips get more otherworldly and oblique, taking Who into territory where the TV show would never go. That was twenty years ago of course — these days, the TV show is practically a spin-off of those comic strips. And more power to it, I say.Dan McDaid

However, he seems to have been most influenced by Scott Gray's Eighth Doctor run, which he claims are his bible for "how to write Who — and particularly Who comics".

External links

• Dan McDaid at comicbookdb.com
• Official website
• Dan McDaid's blog
• Dan McDaid's Twitter account