Introduction
David Lapham is an American comic book writer, artist, and cartoonist, best known for his work on the independent comic book Stray Bullets.
Biography
David Lapham started his career in 1990 as a penciller at Valiant Comics. He went on to work under editor Jim Shooter at Defiant Comics, where they co-created Warriors of Plasm in 1993.
He set up his own publishing company, El Capitan Books, in 1995, to self-publish Stray Bullets which he wrote, drew and lettered himself. 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 doing more mainstream comics work from 2005 onwards, writing a story arc 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 eight-issue arc starring the Spectre, which was also written by Lapham. Vertigo published the original graphic novel Silverfish in July 2007, and he drew Terror, Inc. for the Marvel MAX line. He then wrote the Vertigo series Young Liars and took over from Garth Ennis as writer on Crossed.
Stray Bullets as of 2007 was uncompleted, with one issue left in its arc, as was a self-published futuristic science-fiction miniseries, The Parallax Man. The series was announced to debut in 2005 but was never solicited. Lapham in 2007 expressed interest in completing both projects. 2009 saw the release of Dark Horse: Noir, which included a Stray Bullets story to finish the incomplete arc. In March 2010, it was reported that he was working on a Predator series for Dark Horse Comics.
In March 2014, the long-awaited 41st and final issue of the initial Stray Bullets run was released after the Laphams made a deal with Image Comics. On the same day, an Omnibus of all 41 issues was released, as well as the first issue of a new series called Stray Bullets: Killers. At Image, Lapham has continued Stray Bullets as a series of story arcs separated into discrete miniseries: Killers lasted eight issues, and then Lapham returned after a hiatus with a second arc/miniseries entitled Sunshine & Roses.
Awards
- Eisner Awards
- 1996 – Best Writer/Artist (for Stray Bullets).
- 1997 – Best Graphic Album: Reprint (for Stray Bullets: Innocence of Nihilism)