Pat Mills

Mills and John Wagner met as sub-editors at DC Thomson in Dundee, then went freelance and were asked to do something about IPC's tired boys' titles. Mills answered with Battle, then with Action, which was pulled from the shelves in 1976 for being too violent, and then with 2000 AD, which he created and edited through its first issues. Few writers get asked to reinvent British comics three times in three years; fewer manage it every time.

You've met his work even if you've never read a prog. Neither Judge Dredd film would exist without the comic Mills built, though Dredd himself was Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's creation, and Doctor Who fans will know his early strips for Doctor Who Weekly, including "The Iron Legion" with Wagner and Dave Gibbons. Off the page he has campaigned for years for fairer creator royalties, which, for a writer who distrusts anyone in charge, is less a footnote than a thesis.

The gateway drug is Nemesis the Warlock, where humanity's galactic empire is the villain and the alien is the hero, which tells you most of what you need to know about Mills. The deep end is Charley's War, the First World War from the trenches, drawn by Joe Colquhoun and as close to literature as British war comics ever came. The curio is Misty, the girls' horror comic he launched in 1978, now a cult favourite thanks to Rebellion's reprints.