Maxwell Stockbridge (born January 1st 1908 and still not dead), a retired intelligence agent and former bull fighter, lion tamer, human cannonball and chicken wrangler from Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, and three times winner of the Ernest Wise prize for literature, was the original writer of the long-running series of prose stories starring the retro-pulp vigilante Night Raven (pictured) which ran in various Marvel UK magazines including Savage Action, Marvel Super-Heroes Monthly, The Daredevils, Mighty World of Marvel, Savage Sword of Conan and Captain Britain throughout the early to mid 1980s, as well as various stories in Doctor Who Magazine. Or rather, he would have been, had he been a real person: in fact, Max was just a pseudonym used initially by Alan McKenzie and later by other writers including Paul Neary, Steve Parkhouse, Simon Hudson and Alan Moore; the name was inspired by classic pulp writer pseudonyms Maxwell Grant and Grant Stockbridge. Maxwell Stockbridge, whose first credit seems to have appeared in November 1981, was eventually retired by Moore when he began placing his own credit on the later Night Raven stories, but the mythical Max was commemorated nonetheless by the village of Stockbridge in Marvel's long running Doctor Who series, and the village's most notable resident, U.F.O. spotter Maxwell Edison. There is no Ernest Wise prize for literature, either.
- See also: Curt Vile.