Back Down the Line, by John Bolton

John Bolton started his career as a comic artist with 'House of Hammer/Halls of Horror' in the late seventies. He worked for Marvel UK, and in 1981, he created a story for the American publication 'Bizarre Adventures', which resulted in more work overseas, including 'Marada the She Wolf' for the magazine Epic Illustrated. Bolton applied his "full painted" graphic style to several titles during the eighties, such as 'Pathways to Fantasy', 'Alien Worlds', 'Twisted Tales', 'Alien Encounters', 'Tales of Terror' and 'Tapping the Vein'. In the nineties, he created 'Orbit', 'Clive Barker's The Yattering' and 'Jack'.

He is also a popular cover artist for series such as 'The Vampire Lestate', 'Aliens', 'Army of Darkness' (Dark Horse) and 'Man-Bat'. 'Gifts of the Night' was published by DC Comics in 1999. Among his later credits are 'Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall' and 'God Save the Queen'. He made illustrations for various card and roleplaying games like 'Magic the Gathering' and 'Vampire'.

In 1990 the U.S. avant-garde band The Residents released the album 'Freak Show' (1990), which spawned a 1992 comic book adaptation, 'The Residents' Freak Show' (Dark Horse Comics), in which Kyle Baker, Brian Bolland, Charles Burns, Matt Howarth, Dave McKean, Pore No Graphics, Edwin "Savage Pencil" Pouncey and Richard Sala all visualized one of the songs into a comic strip. Les Dorscheid provided colouring. Burns illustrated the book cover. Bolton illustrated the song 'Wanda the Worm Woman'. A limited hard-cover special was made too, sold with a 13-minute CD titled 'Blowoff', inspired by songs from 'Freak Show'. Two years later a CD-rom followed, 'Freak Show', with a cover illustrated by Richard Sala. In 1995 The Residents released another CD-rom, 'Bad Day on the Midway' (1995). The project was originally proposed as a TV series script in collaboration with David Lynch, but eventually these plans fell through. The CD-rom features visual designs by cartoonists like Leigh Barbier, Steve Cerio, Ronald M. Davis, Georganne Deen, Poe Dismuke, Bill Domonokos, Doug Fraser, Peter Kuper, Dave McKean, Pore No Graphics, Jonathon Rosen and Richard Sala - who visualized the song 'Oscar's Story'. A companion book was released the same year, followed by a soundtrack album the next year and a novel in 2012. Another cartoonist who once made a comic book about the Residents is Adam Weller.

Back Down the Line, by John Bolton

www.johnbolton.com

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