David Lapham (born 1970) is an Eisner Award winning American comic book writer, artist, and cartoonist, best known for his work on his groundbreaking independent comic book Stray Bullets.
Lapham started his career in 1990 as a penciller at Valiant Comics where he was discovered by editor Jim Shooter. He went on to join Shooter at Defiant Comics where they co-created Warriors of Plasm in 1993.
He set up his own publisher El Capitan Books in 1995, in order to publish Stray Bullets which he wrote, drew and lettered himself. By the end of that year Miramax had hired Lapham to write and direct a feature film. It is unclear what came of this contract as no movie has yet been produced. He then took a sabbatical from Stray Bullets in 2000, to produce his nine issue period murder mystery Murder Me Dead also from El Capitan Books.
Lapham began accepting more mainstream comics work from 2005 onwards, writing a storyarc for Top Cow Comics' The Darkness ("Hell House", Vol. 2 #17-20), a 12 part Batman storyline in Detective Comics ("City of Crime" #801-808 and 811-814) for DC Comics and writing and pencilling the six part Daredevil Vs. Punisher: Means And Ends limited series for Marvel Comics. In late 2006, Marvel released Giant-Size Wolverine #1, with a 34 page Lapham story illustrated by David Aja, and DC began releasing Tales of the Unexpected with an 8 issue arc starring the Spectre which was also written by Lapham. Vertigo published the original graphic novel Silverfish in July 2007 and his interpretation of Terror, Inc. was released under the Marvel MAX line. He then wrote the Vertigo series Young Liars and took over from Garth Ennis as writer on Crossed.
This choice to do more mainstream work has led to the near-abandonment of Stray Bullets (with one issue left in the current arc), as well as a self-published futuristic science fiction limited series, The Parallax Man. The series was announced to debut in 2005 but Lapham had less time to devote to it, and issues have never been solicited. He has expressed that he is still interested in both projects, but is unsure when he will be able to complete them. In March 2010 reported he planned with Dark Horse a Comic series over the Predator franchise.
Harbinger: The Beginning
In May 2005, Valiant Entertainment announced that they would be releasing a deluxe Hardcover collection of the complete Harbinger origin story (Harbinger #0-7) entitled Harbinger: The Beginning. The collection would digitally recolor and remaster the original books and include a new "Origin of Harada" story by Jim Shooter, the writer who had penned the most beloved Harbinger stories.
