Peter Milligan is a British comics writer long resident in London. Milligan has been active in comics since the early 1980s, first at 2000 AD and independent comics, later working for DC Comics (frequently at their Vertigo imprint) and Marvel Comics. Milligan has long been friends with Grant Morrison, and the two writers frequently use the same characters and make references to each other's work. Artists with whom Milligan has worked productively include Duncan Fegredo, Jamie Hewlett and Mike Allred.
Titles on which Peter Milligan has worked.
- 5 Ronin
- Animal Man - Wrote the six issues immediately after Morrison wrapped up on the series.
- Bad Company
- Batman - First wrote the character in the early 1990s with Dark Knight, Dark City, a three-parter in which The Bus Came Back with The Riddler on it. Has done various stretches and arcs with the character since.
- Bix Bartonnote
- Britannia - Valiant Comics limited series
- Britannia: We Who Are About to Die
- Britannia: Lost Eagles of Rome
- The Eaters
- Enigma - Miniseries that Comic Book Resources has cited as his best work.
- Hellblazer
- Hewligan's Haircut note
- Human Target
- Infinity, Inc.
- Justice League Dark
- The Punisher MAX
- Shade, the Changing Man - Series that brought Milligan's cult to the US, based on a then-obscure character created by Steve Ditko.
- Shadowman - Wrote the later issues of the 2012 book
- X-Force (Milligan & Allred)
- X-Statix - Probably his definitive Marvel work, a Sequel Series to his X-Force run. Milligan has followed it with spinoff miniseries with Dead Girl and Doop.
- X-Men - Not as Milligan-y as X-Statix, but he did create the character of Bling.
- X-Cellent - A Sequel Series to X-Statix, in which Guy Smith is forced to create a new X-Statix team to fight X-Cellent, a villainous team run by his predecessor, Axel Cluney.
Tropes associated with Peter Milligan:
- Gender Bender: Shade has to possess dead bodies to exist in this dimension, and one of them was a female murder victim. The body eventually defaulted to male, but he lived as a woman for a few issues. Fury from Infinity, Inc. also switched from male to female.
- Genre Deconstruction: All over the place in both his superhero and sci-fi comics. Shade was known for much more picaresque plots than the standard superhero comic, as well as a psychologically fragile hero. His take on X-Force cast new heroes as the kind of C-list celebrities who struggle to get talk show bookings.
- Identity Amnesia: A large part of Human Target, as well as Shade, the Changing Man. One story also dealt with a Bruce Wayne who had no evidence that he was Batman because he was actually a telepathic criminal who'd tried to hack Batman's brain.
- Shoot the Dog: Heroes and antiheroes are faced with this a lot. Orphan gave a dangerous Reality Warper his dream come true by welcoming him into the X-Statix, then killed him. The Riddler also forced Batman to cut a baby's throat in "Dark Knight, Dark City", and while it was a lifesaving tracheotomy it was also for a Black Magic ritual.
