Peter Milligan

(London) is the spiritual father of internationally successful surrealist comic books like Shade, The Changing Man, Hellblazer and Skin, but he also wrote Greek Street, a tribute to Greek mythology seen through the eyes of the violent present-day citydweller. Owing to the coarse language and the hard-boiled violence it was quite a job for Milligan to get a book like Skin published. The hero in this comic strip, which eventually came out in 1992, is a skinhead who was born without arms and legs because his mother used thalidomide. Milligan has also come up with new versions of Batman and since 2001 has invented the stories about the mutant superheroes of X-Statix. In spite of the brute force and explicit use of language in his books Milligan also deals with social issues such as homosexuality (one of his heroes is gay), war traumas (one of the main characters in Greek Street is a traumatised soldier who fought in Afghanistan). Milligan also wrote screenplays for two films, Pilgrims and An Angel for May.

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