Script droid John Smith (pictured) is a comic strip writer who was born in Darwen, Lancashire in 1967 and is not yet dead. He has created the character of Devlin Waugh, a gay vampire exorcist who works for the Vatican in the future, when recruitment policies are presumably a lot laxer. Devlin was created for the Judge Dredd Megazine. Smith is also responsible for the charming reptilian jack-of-all-trades Tyranny Rex, female covert operatives Pussyfoot 5, the X-Files-esque Dead Eyes and the reality-shaping post-mortem operatives of Indigo Prime, all found rampaging through the pages of 2000 AD. (And he wrote Slaughter Bowl for the 1993 'Summer Offensive'.)
Like Pat Mills, Smith attempts to unite all his characters into one coherent universe. Unlike Pat Mills, his storytelling style is allusive and splintered, juxtaposing panels from different time periods or areas with scant explanation, with the narrator's focus twitching from one character to another like a compass needle in an electromagnetic storm. His stories definitely put the reader's neurons through their paces, but aren't everyone's cup of synthi-caff.
Smith has written for Starblazer twice, for the late lamented Crisis (he wrote New Statesmen) and for Tharg's Future Shocks. He has also created Danzig's Inferno, Leatherjack and A Love Like Blood, and written episodes of Robo-Hunter, Rogue Trooper, Tharg's Terror Tales, Tales from Beyond Science, Tales from the Black Museum, Pulp Sci-Fi, Revere, Hellblazer and Vector 13. One of his episodes of Indigo Prime involves Christ being removed from the cross by a dying Nazi, jettisoned into space and replaced by a horrific Cthulhu-type abomination that amazes the onlookers by bursting into a pullulation of purple tentacles. It's not clear whether it's possible for a writer to be more offensive and bizarre than this, but he'll probably give it a go.