Brendan McCarthy began his comic career in 1977 with 'Sometime Stories' co-created with friend, Brett Ewins. But due to been ripped off by the publishers it wasn't till his next project 'The Electric Hoax' that he had his first paid published work. Commissioned as writer/artist of the strip he soon discovered that it was taking much longer to write than draw, so Brendan ask one of his friends to help him with the script. This friend's name was Peter Milligan, so began the infamous Milligan/McCarthy partnership. The Electric Hoax would appear as a weekly one-page comic strip in UK music paper, Sounds throughout 1978.
 
While working on The Electric Hoax, Brendan began to approach the newly published 2000AD for work and succeeded with a 'Tharg's Future Shock' in 1977. As would become traditional with new 2000AD artists, after cutting their artistic teeth on a couple of Future Shocks (a sort of six page comic sci-fi version of the Twilight Zone) they would be promoted to work on the title's flagship character, 'Judge Dredd'. Brendan worked on several Dredd stories mostly with co-artist Brett Ewins, these included episodes of the 'Judge Cal Saga', as well as Book 2 of Dredd's robotic side-kick 'Walter the Wobot'. He worked on several more Dredd strips between 1977-1981, also contributing to an all new series that would become as popular as Dredd, 'The ABC Warriors'. His final 2000AD work for four years would be one of Alan Moore's Future Shock, 'The English/ Phiondrutian Phrase book' in 1981.
 

Brendan disappeared from the comics industry for a few years. But In 1983 he returned with his first America work, 'Freakwave' which appeared in the anthology comic, "Vanguard Illustrated". Freakwave was originally a Milligan and McCarthy film proposal for a 'Mad Max goes surfing' movie.
 

Freakwave would return the following year with the Milligan / McCarthy / Ewins collective gene pool anthology comic that was "Strange Days". Published by American company Eclipse Comic it featured Freakwave, hard-bastard private detective, 'Johnny Nemo' and the beer drinking superhero slob, 'Paradax'. Strange Days ran for three issues throughout 1984. In the same year Brendan returned to British comics contributing several stories to the short lived UK weekly horror comic 'Scream!'. Brendan drew three stories 'Goodbye Uncle George', 'The Punch and Judy Horror Show' and 'The Final Cut' and also produced a cover.
 
Brendan returned to the pages of 2000AD in 1985 with more Future Shocks, this time penned by now long time creative partner, Peter Milligan. 1986 saw the debut of Milligan and McCarthy's first ongoing 2000AD story "Sooner or Later" and a series of Judge Dredd episodes that would introduce the 'McCarthy' look to the Judge's uniform. This look paid homage to the 'big boot' style of Dredd art produced by Mike McMahon but taken even further, the most striking design would be the flared samurai-style helmet. This interruption of Dredd would make Brendan one of the Judge's definitive artists. These Dredd episodes include the story, 'Atlantis' which introduced for the first time the British counterpart to the American Judges, the uniform was designed by McCarthy.
 

Brendan returned to the US Market in 1987 with a spin-off from Strange Days, giving cab driver turned celebrity superhero, Paradax his own title. Paradax also featured a Freakwave spin-off staring the 'old gent' double act of "Rudcliff and Williams", plus the occult psychedelic splendour of 'Mirkin the Mystic'. 1987 also saw Milligan and McCarthy's comic work reach a different audience with the debut of their national newspaper strip, 'Summer of Love'.
 

There was another return to the pages of 2000AD and another series of Judges' uniform designs in 1988. The Oz (Australian) Judges' uniform and the elaborate designs for the fanatical 'Judda', a group of genetically engineered Judges who had turned themselves into a quasi-religion. The Judda were part of the Dredd mega-epic 'OZ', for which Brendan also drew several episodes. Brendan's last 2000AD work, would be a collaboration with self-confessed 'McCarthy Freak', Jamie (Tank Girl) Hewlett in 1989.
 

 

In 1989 Brendan also contributed to the 'only comic worth missing a good party for', 'Deadline' for which he wrote and drew 'Bob the Blob' using the alias LOAF. There was also a Milligan/McCarthy contribution to the UK anthology comic, 'A1'. 'Hollow Circus' saw a more experimental form of comic strip artwork from Brendan. The story used a stream of images that flowed into one another unhindered by the use of panel borders. This technique would later be used in his graphic novel SKIN.
 
The late 80's saw a huge surge of interest in the medium of comics. Riding on this wave 2000AD began to sprout several spin-off titles aimed at a more mature audience. The first of these new titles was 'Crisis' launched in 1988, followed by 'Revolver' in 1990. Brendan produced work for both titles, for Crisis in 1989 he painted a series of one-pager entitled, 'Artoons', he also produced with constant collaborator, Peter Milligan and painter Carol Swain, 'SKIN'. The story of a thalidomide Skinhead growing up in early 70's London, it immediately gain the label of 'controversial', so much so that the Printing company that handled Crisis refused to print it, resulting in the story been withdrawn from the comic. 1990 saw the launch of Revolver, an attempt to tap into the 60's-retro atmosphere that was happening in the UK at the time (Revolver was named after the Beatle's album).
One of the strips that appeared in the comic would be 'Rogan Gosh', originally planned as a simple Indian style sci-fi story and a 'warm-up' strip to some grand Milligan and McCarthy magnum opus, Rogan Gosh grew into probably Milligan and McCarthy's finest work so far.
 
1992 would see Brendan's last comic strip output for well over a decade as he would disappear into the dizzy show-biz heights of TV and Film design for the next thirteen years. Before he departed he returned to Judge Dredd for a finally time with a painted story for music magazine, 'Rock Power". And after several years in limbo SKIN would be finally published after finding a home at Tundra. But his finally comic strip work would be for the DC / Vertigo series 'Shade the Changing man' written by Peter Milligan. A self-confessed Steve Ditko fan, he had wanted to work on the new version of Shade since the first issue but was only able to draw the concluding episode of 'The Road' story-arc and produce covers for the series.
 
 

Although Brendan is now firmly established in the TV / Film industry he has returned to comics for the occasional Vertigo and 2000AD cover and to design the look of several comic characters, including Grant Morrison and Mark Millar's the Skrull Kill Crew. In 2005 he published his illustrated visual autobiography 'Swimini Purpose' which collected over 30 years of work. The book sold out within a week and is now a much sort after collectors item. And in 2006 Brendan finally returned to drawing a full comic story with the last issue of DC Comic's 'Solo' which featured new takes on DC characters such as The Flash, Batman and Johnny Sorrow plus a few new ones.
 
After spending several years in Los Angeles developing some of his ideas for film, TV and animation Brendan has now returned to live in the UK and has a number of new comic projects in discussion.