Chuck Dixon was born on April 14, 1954 and grew up in the Philadelphia area, reading comics of all genres. He has stated that Steve Ditko was perhaps his favorite comic book creator growing up, and that he looked up to the artwork of artists such as Alex Toth and Russ Heath. His earliest comics work was writing Evangeline first for Comico Comics in 1984 (then later for First Comics, who published the on-going series), on which he worked with his then-wife, the artist Judith Hunt. His big break came one year later, when editor Larry Hama hired him to write back-up stories for Marvel Comics' The Savage Sword of Conan.
In 1986, he began working for Eclipse Comics, writing Airboy with artist Tim Truman. Continuing to write for both Marvel and (mainly) Eclipse on these titles, as well as launching Strike! with artist Tom Lyle in August 1987 and Valkyrie with artist Paul Gulacy in October 1987, he began work on Carl Potts' Alien Legion series for Marvel's Epic Comics imprint, under editor Archie Goodwin. He also produced a three-issue adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit for Eclipse with artist David Wenzel between 1989 and 1990, and began writing Moon Knight in June 1989.
Batman and Punisher
His Punisher OGN Kingdom Gone (August, 1990) led to him working on the monthly The Punisher War Journal (and later, more monthly and occasional Punisher titles), and also brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Denny O'Neil, who asked him to produce a Robin mini-series. The mini proved popular enough to spawn two sequels - The Joker's Wild (1991) and Cry of the Huntress (1992) - which led to both an ongoing monthly series (which Dixon wrote for 100 issues before leaving to work with CrossGen Comics), and to Dixon working on Detective Comics from #644-738 through the major Batman stories KnightFall & KnightsEnd (for which he helped create the key character of Bane), DC One Million, Contagion, Legacy, Cataclysm and No Man's Land. Much of his run was illustrated by Graham Nolan.
He was DC's most prolific Batman-writer in the mid-1990s (rivalled perhaps in history by Bill Finger and Dennis O'Neil) - in addition to writing Detective Comics he pioneered the individual series for Robin, Nightwing (which he wrote for 70 issues, and returned to briefly with 2005's #101) and Batgirl, as well as creating the team and book Birds of Prey.
While writing multiple Punisher and Batman comics (and October 1994's Punisher/Batman crossover), he also found time to launch Team 7 for Jim Lee's WildStorm/Image and Prophet for Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios. He also wrote many issues of Catwoman and Green Arrow, regularly having about seven titles out each and every month between the years 1993 and 1998.
CrossGen
In March, 2002, Dixon turned his attention to CrossGen's output, slowly leaving Robin, Nightwing, Birds of Prey and Batgirl over the next year (although he co-wrote with Scott Beatty the origin of Barbara Gordon's Batgirl in 2003's Batgirl: Year One). For CrossGen he took over some of the comics of the out-going Mark Waid, taking over Sigil from #21, and Crux with #13. He launched Way of the Rat in June 2002, Brath (March '03), The Silken Ghost (June '03) and the pirate comic El Cazador (Oct '03), as well as editing Robert Rodi's non-Sigilverse The Crossovers. He also wrote the Ruse spin-off Archard's Agents one-shots in January and November '03 and April '04, the last released shortly before CrossGen's complete collapse forced the cancellation of all of its comics, before which Dixon wrote a single issue of Sojourn (May '04). Dixon's Way of the Rat #24, Brath #14 and El Cazador #6 were among the last comics released from the then-bankrupt publisher.
Other publishers
In mid-2004, he wrote a number of issues and series' for smaller publishers Devil's Due Publishing and Moonstone Books during this period, returning briefly to DC, but mostly diversifying with comics at several publishers, including several issues of Simpsons Comics for Bongo Comics (for whom he has worked quite regularly from September 1998 to the present) and a couple of projects with Image. In May 2006, he contributed to IDW's Free Comic Book Day Transformers giveaway, leading to Dixon writing the Transformers: Evolutions miniseries.
Return to DC
In July 2004, Dixon also began his return to the DC Universe with Richard Dragon, a revival of the Dennis O'Neil and Jim Berry-created 1970s Kung-Fu character, which ran for 12 issues. In March of the following year, he returned briefly to Nightwing before shifting his efforts to the Wildstorm imprint, writing the stand-alone The Unconquered (Aug '06 - Jan '07); the movie-adaptation of Snakes on a Plane, movie-spin-off Nightmare on Elm Street and the Wildstorm Universe title Grifter/Midnighter from May 2007.
In January 2007, he wrote the mini-series featuring Green Arrow's son Connor Hawke, (who had assumed the Green Arrow mantle under Dixon's tenure on that title in the late 1990s) called Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood, and in March 2008, Dixon returned to writing Robin. He also wrote Batman and the Outsiders (from Dec '07), a project he was signed to at the last minute, after original writer Tony Bedard dropped out due to being occupied with Final Crisis-related work. On June 10, 2008, Dixon announced on his forum that he was no longer "employed by DC Comics in any capacity." The reason for this sudden announcement is currently unknown, Dixon has generally tried to remain silent as to why he was let go from DC.
After DC
It has been announced that he will take over the writing on Dynamite Entertainment's series The Man with No Name based on the well-known western character. He is also currently writing a G.I. Joe series for IDW Publishing. In March, 2009 Moonstone Books published a new Airboy one-shot written by Dixon entitled Airboy 1942: The Best of Enemies.
Controversy
Dixon, a well-known social conservative, offended some groups of the buying public by announcing his views regarding the depiction of homosexuality in comic books aimed at younger readers. Allegedly, he felt that homosexuality and other material with sexual undercurrents was not appropriate for what he identified as comics promoted as aimed at children.
DC Comics continued to assign him work on titles that featured openly gay super-heroes. Some believe that Dixon used his position as writer of Batman and the Outsiders to send a message to gay readers when he published an out-of-context preview of his first issue on the Internet. This preview appeared to portray Batman as disproving of a character's homosexuality. Dixon then went online to announce, "In my opinion, the fact that Thunder and Grace are an 'item' is irrelevant to Batman. He registered that they're close and that's as much as he needed to know. That they're lovers does not factor into Batman's view of their roles in the Outsiders. Batman is not curious about anyone's relationship with anyone else unless it impacts him or his Mission. Batman doesn't know who the current American Idol champ is. Or whether K-Fed's a better parent than Brittany. He is only omniscient about what is important to him. If Thunder were getting it on with Harley Quinn, he'd have a problem with that. But as long as everyone shows up ready to battle evil and give their all, Batman does not care what they do in their downtime so long as it's in the confines of the law. If anything it was the ultimate exploration of Batman's attitude toward same-sex relationships: the man doesn't care. If you want to think that I slipped my own opinion in here, maybe I did. But only because I think Batman shares my personal views here. A person's sexual make-up is irrelevant unless THEY make an issue of it."
In the first page of Huntress #1, he also cited labor unions as "maybe" an example of organized crime, comparable to dope, prostitution, and gambling.
