Carlos Ezquerra
| Carlos Ezquerra | |
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Ezquerra in 2005
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| Born | Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra 12 November 1947 Zaragoza, Spain |
| Pseudonym(s) | L. John Silver |
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Notable works
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Judge Dredd Strontium Dog Just a Pilgrim The Stainless Steel Rat |
Carlos Sanchez Ezquerra (Zaragoza, 12 November 1947) is a Spanish comics artist who works mainly in British comics and currently lives in Andorra. He is best known as the co-creator of Judge Dredd.
Ezquerra started his career based in Barcelona, drawing westerns and war stories for Spanish publishers. In 1973 he got work in the UK market through agent Barry Coker, drawing for girls' romance titles like Valentine and Mirabelle, as well as westerns for Pocket Western Library, and a variety of adventure strips for D. C. Thomson & Co.'s The Wizard. The UK was a popular market for Spanish artists as the exchange rate meant the work paid well, but Ezquerra moved to London to be near the work, settling in Croydon with his wife.
In 1974, on the strength of his uncredited work for The Wizard, Pat Mills and John Wagner headhunted him, through Coker, to work for the new IPC title Battle Picture Weekly. He drew "Rat Pack": inspired by the film The Dirty Dozen, the strip, written by Gerry Finley-Day, featured a gang of criminals recruited to carry out suicide missions. But his commitments elsewhere meant he couldn't draw it full-time, and other artists were also used. In 1976 Battle editor Dave Hunt convinced him to commit himself to the title, offering him the laid-back anti-hero "Major Eazy", written by Alan Hebden. Ezquerra drew nearly 100 episodes in the next two and a half years, basing the character's appearance on the actor James Coburn.
He was asked to visualise a new character, future lawman "Judge Dredd", for the science fiction weekly 2000 AD, prior to its launch in 1977. His elaborate designs displeased the strip's writer, John Wagner, but impressed editor Pat Mills, and his cityscapes persuaded Mills to set the strip further into the future than initially intended. But Wagner (temporarily) quit over ownership issues, and Ezquerra followed him when the first published appearance of the character was drawn by another artist, Mike McMahon. He returned to Battle, where he once again teamed up with Alan Hebden to create "El Mestizo", a black gun-for-hire who played both sides against the middle during the American Civil War.
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