Brian Wood (born January 29, 1972) is an American writer, illustrator, and graphic designer, known for his work in comic books including DMZ, Demo, Northlanders, The Massive, Marvel Comics' The X-Men, and Star Wars, as well as writing television pilots, web series adaptations of his comics, and video game work including at Rockstar Games.
Wood's work contains sociopolitical commentary, particularly on the topics of media and conflicts, climate change, and identity. Much of his work is about or takes place in New York City.
Early life Brian Wood was born January 29, 1972, and grew up in the village of Essex Junction, Vermont, where he attended Hiawatha Elementary School and Essex High School. He is a lifelong stutterer, has spoken publicly about seeking therapy to deal with childhood trauma and the loss of his mother to cancer.
He moved to New York City in 1991, where he worked as a bike messenger, an experience of New York City that informed many of his future projects.
After graduating in 1997 from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in illustration, Wood worked a series of design jobs at internet startups, including iVillage, Bigfoot, and Nerve.
Career
Early work Wood's first professional work in comics was the five-issue dystopian limited series Channel Zero, published by Image Comics in 1998, which began as part of his graduation project for Parsons School of Design. Channel Zero was orphaned shortly after Image Comics sold out of the first print run of the collected edition, opting not to return to press, and AiT/Planet Lar acquired it soon afterwards. In 2012 Wood regained the publishing rights and Dark Horse Comics took up the publishing, releasing a "Complete Collection" that included the original graphic novel, the prequel series Channel Zero: Jennie One with Becky Cloonan, his Public Domain design book material, and numerous other extras from the early development of the property.
Following Channel Zero, Wood took a two-year break from comics. In early 2000, comic book writer Warren Ellis offered Wood a co-writing job on Marvel Comics' Generation X, as part of Ellis' Counter-X run. Wood co-wrote issues #63–70 with Ellis and 71–75 on his own, before the series was canceled as part of incoming Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada's attempts to simplify the X-Men franchise. Wood would not work again with Marvel until 2012.
AiT/Planet Lar and original graphic novels Wood was employed as a staff designer for Rockstar Games.Manning, Shaun (August 4, 2003). "WWC: Brian Wood One-on-One". CBR.com. While working there, he produced a series of original graphic novels. The first was Couscous Express with artist Brett Weldele, This was followed by a trilogy of bike messenger books, The Couriers, The Couriers: Dirtbike Manifesto, and The Couriers: Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker, all drawn by Rob G. Several characters are shared between Couscous Express and The Couriers, and in 2012 all four books were collected together and published by Image Comics.
Larry Young's AiT/Planet Lar heavily promoted Wood during this time, including designating the month of January 2002 as "Brian Wood Month" during which they offered exclusively his works. Wood also served as AIT's branding designer and overall creative director for a short period of time, and designed covers for Warren Ellis' Come In Alone, Badlands, and Black Heart Billy. In January 2007, Intrepid Pictures optioned the feature film rights to Wood and Rob G.'s graphic novel The Couriers with Javier Grillo-Marxuach set to pen the screenplay.
Demo, Local, and the single issue format
In 2003, Wood partnered with artist Becky Cloonan to create Demo, an anthology series of twelve 'done-in-one' or 'one-shot' stories about young people with superpowers. Although initially inspired by the aborted NYX project, the series was not traditionally superhero and instead compared emerging powers to autistic themes and tragic love stories. The series was well-received, and Wizard, a steadfastly superhero-oriented comics magazine, named Demo its 2004 "Indie of the Year". The series was also nominated for two Eisner Awards in 2005, for "Best Limited Series" and "Best Single Issue" (for #7, "One Shot, Don't Miss"). Thirteen Minutes cites Wood and Demo as "blipping a young artist named Becky Cloonan onto everyone's collective radar screen, and cementing Wood's relationship with this frequent collaborator."
Wood and Cloonan moved Demo from AiT/Planet Lar to Vertigo Comics in 2008, announcing a "Volume 2" of the series, upping the total number of short stories to 18. In 2015, Wood and Cloonan took the publishing rights to Dark Horse Comics, producing the single volume The Complete Demo.
The Demo format proved successful so Wood went on to replicate it, with some changes, for his 12-issue series Local at Oni Press, which launched in 2005 and was drawn by artist Ryan Kelly. NPR named it one of its Best Graphic Novels of the year and called it a "contemporary ballad to the idea of the open road... Megan moves from state to state, dealing with roommates and dead-end jobs and looking for an existence that befits her intelligence and desire for authenticity. She's not a lost cause; she simply chooses, for personal reasons, to drift a while." DMZ, Northlanders, and DC Comics exclusivity Demo was the book with which Wood and Becky Cloonan first gained Vertigo's attention. Editor Will Dennis approached Wood and invited him to pitch, and editor Shelly Bond hired Becky Cloonan to illustrate the series American Virgin. The inspiration for DMZ had come to Wood in early 2003, at a time when the 9-11 incident in New York City and the invasion of Iraq dominated the U.S. national psyche. Wood had just moved to San Francisco from New York City, and the experience of recalling in that political atmosphere the memories and story ideas he had accumulated over a decade living in the city instigated the creation of the artwork that would become the foundation of DMZ. Initially developed as Wartime, a five issue black-and-white miniseries, the comic was consciously a project of importance to Wood, representing a return to the perspective of his breakthrough work Channel Zero, a bleak portrayal of youth culture and anti-authoritarian expression in the repressive environment of Giuliani-era New York City. After the "Wartime" title had been disqualified as too close a title to a recent Books Of Magic miniseries, Wood considered a host of alternatives including "Embedded", "No Man's Land" and "The War for New York" before settling on "DMZ".
DMZ launched as a monthly series on August 9, 2005. It ran for seventy-two issues, and was collected in twelve trade paperbacks. A Deluxe Edition of five hardcovers were published in 2014, followed by softcover editions of same in 2016. A two volume compendium set was published in 2020.
In August 2006, DC Comics announced that Wood was signed to an exclusive contract. This was announced at the same time as Wood's second monthly title for Vertigo, the historical series Northlanders. Described as an anthology series that takes a realistic, "street level" looking at Vikings, the series ran for 50 issues before being cancelled due to low sales. It was collected into seven trade paperbacks, and then re-cut into three volumes that presents the stories in a different sequence than originally published.
In 2006, editor Shelly Bond announced Minx, a young adult graphic novel imprint aimed at the teenage girl market. Wood and artist Ryan Kelly produced The New York Four for the imprint. Years later, they would return for The New York Five, published under the Vertigo label. The sequel was nominated for an Eisner award in 2012 for Best New Limited Series. In 2014, Wood and Kelly took the books to Dark Horse Comics and produced the collected edition The New York Four, containing the complete story.
In 2008, Wood was nominated for Best Writer at that year's Eisner Awards, for DMZ, Northlanders, and Local.
During the term of his exclusivity to DC Comics, Wood also wrote DV8 Gods And Monsters for the WildStorm imprint, and a short run on the Supernatural licensed comic. In 2011, Wood was rumored to write the relaunched Supergirl series as part of DC's New 52 initiative, but it did not come to pass. This generated some confusion and commentary, particularly after DC's New 52 website inadvertently leaked Wood's name as the series writer. Wood stated, "I don't really know what I can and can't say about it, even now. But to answer at least part of your question, I did not turn down "Supergirl." I would have loved to be the writer on "Supergirl." I have over a year's worth of "Supergirl" story outlines and several scripts sitting right here." Soon after, Wood declined to renew his DC Exclusive.
In 2021, Wood reported that DC Entertainment had renewed the Northlanders publishing agreement.
Outside of the exclusivity, Wood wrote the miniseries Supermarket and the graphic novel The Tourist during this time, for publishers IDW and Image Comics respectively.
Return to Marvel and the "all-female" X-Men In late 2011, Bleeding Cool reported that during Fan Expo Canada, Marvel teased a Brian Wood return in 2012, alongside an image of Wolverine's claw marks. CBR later revealed the project as Wolverine & the X-Men: Alpha and Omega, a four issue series with Mark Brooks on art. Wood then took over on the main, "adjective-less" X-Men title starting with #30 and wrapping up with #37.
Wood returned in 2013 with the #1 selling relaunch of X-Men with an all-female "A-list" roster: Jubilee, Storm, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey and Psylocke. USA Today quoted Wood as saying, "I feel like as far as the X-Men go, the women are the X-Men. Cyclops and Wolverine are big names, but taken as a whole, the women kind of rule the franchise." The reaction to the title was mostly positive, but some took offense at the lack of male characters, and others at the execution. Journalist Laura Hudson interviewed Wood for Wired Magazine, and quoted him as saying, "There's too much cheesecake out there that is sold, or at least marketed, as a 'strong female' character or book when it's anything but, it just reinforces the worst opinions of the most sexist fans, and we gain no new ground. We probably lose ground. I'm not approaching this new X-Men as a 'female book,' but I'm writing it as a high action X-Men comic, and with some luck that will nullify some of these poisonous critics who go looking for something to feel angry/uncomfortable/threatened by." The title was included in the Battle of The Atom miniseries. Wood left the series in 2014 with issue #17, saying, "I left the title on my own accord, no drama, no pressure, just moving on," and writer G. Willow Wilson took over.
Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel created the Shogo Lee, Jubilee's adopted infant son. He appeared as a time-traveling adult hero Sentinel-X in Battle of the Atom.
Concurrent with the X-Men, Wood also took over monthly writing duties on Ultimate Comics: The X-Men with issue #13. He continued until issue #33. He and artist Paco Medina created the mutant Nomi Blume aka Mach Two. His final work for Marvel during this time was to take over writing the Moon Knight reboot Warren Ellis began. He scripted issues #7-12.
Image Comics and Dark Horse Wood returned to Image with three miniseries: Mara with Ming Doyle, Starve with Danijel Žeželj and Black Road with Garry Brown.