Dan Abnett (born 12 October 1965) is a British comic book writer and novelist. He is a frequent collaborator with fellow writer Andy Lanning, and is known for his work on books for both Marvel Comics, and their UK imprint, Marvel UK, since the 1990s, including 2000 AD. He has also contributed to DC Comics titles, and his Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 novels and graphic novels for Games Workshop's Black Library now run to several dozen titles and have sold over 1,150,000 copies as of May 2008. In 2009 he will release his first original fiction novels through HarperCollins' Angry Robot imprint.
As one of the more prolific 2000 AD writers, Abnett was responsible for the creation of one of the comic's better known, and longest-running, strips of the last decade, Sinister Dexter. Other original stories include Black Light, Badlands, Atavar, Downlode Tales, Sancho Panzer, Roadkill and Wardog, based on the game of the same name. Abnett has also contributed to some of the comic's major ongoing series, including Judge Dredd, Durham Red and Rogue Trooper.
His work for Marvel includes runs on Death's Head 2, Battletide, Knights of Pendragon (all of which he co-created), The Punisher, War Machine, Annihilation: Nova and various X-Men titles.
At DC he is probably best-known for his 2000 relaunch of Legion of Super-Heroes as the limited series Legion Lost and then the ongoing series The Legion. His work for DC is usually co-written with Andy Lanning and they are often referred to as DnA.
For Dark Horse Comics he co-wrote Blood Lines with Ian Edginton, as well a penning Lords of Misrule and HyperSonic.
He has written novels set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (Military science fiction genre). They include the Gaunt's Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn trilogy and Ravenor and more recently, the first book of the Horus Heresy series, the SF bestseller "Horus Rising". He has also written five Warhammer Fantasy novels. He also wrote a novel for the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood called Border Princes in 2007.
In 1994, he wrote a promotional comic to promote the opening of the Nemesis roller coaster at Alton Towers. Alton Towers Almanac: Gallery: Nemesis Comic Book
2000s work
At 2000 AD he finished the final book of The V.C.s and started Black Atlantic in the Judge Dredd Megazine, which was drawn by Steve Roberts (seen working on Bec & Kawl) in black and white.
It was also announced that he will be writing The Authority with co-author Andy Lanning, as part of the World's End relaunch of the core Wildstorm titles.
In addition, Dan has done a lot of work on Marvel's "cosmic" characters. They expanded on their work in Annihilation: Nova and Nova, and piloted the next big event Conquest. They said "we were approached by Andy Schmidt, who edited the first 'Annihilation' event, and asked to pilot the next event, which Bill Rosemann is editing." They ended up writing the Prologue, the Nova series crossover and the main Annihilation: Conquest limited series. The characters then became the core of a new Guardians of the Galaxy.
It was announced at Wizard World Chicago in June 2008, that Abnett and Lanning had signed an exclusive deal with Marvel, which they hope will give them time to work on the "cosmic" characters they have been dealing with, as well as more earth-based ones. The contract allows them to finish existing commitments, so they will be able to finish their fifteen issue run on The Authority. In addition Marvel has allowed the contract to include "a couple of exceptions that are not direct competition, for example, Dan's 2000AD work in the UK and his Games Workshop novels." The first major work to emerge after this deal will be War of Kings, a crossover storyline, emerging from Secret Invasion, that pitches Black Bolt (and the Inhumans) against Gabriel Summers (and the Shi’ar Empire) but also draws in other teams and characters, including Nova, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Starjammers. This then led straight into "Realm of Kings" which deals with how the different groups deal with the fallout from the events in War of Kings and this, in turn, was followed by The Thanos Imperative. DnA have also written an Iron Man/]]Thor (Marvel Comics)|Thor]] limited series.
He and Lanning have also written Fusion a crossover series between Marvel and Top Cow.
He has also started Insurrection, a series in Judge Dredd Megazine that aims "to bring to the Dredd Universe something of the epic war-in-space scale of the stuff I write for Warhammer 40K."
Abnett has recently been posted as the screenplay writer for Games Workshop's CGI film Ultramarines being made by Codex Pictures.
Original fiction
On 19 March 2009, HarperCollins' science fiction, fantasy and horror imprint, Angry Robot, announced the acquisition of three original fiction titles by Abnett. The press release from Angry Robot announced:
