David Chester Gibbons (born 14 April 1949) is an English comics artist, writer and sometimes letterer. He is best known for his collaborations with writer Alan Moore, which include the miniseries Watchmen and the Superman story "For the Man Who Has Everything". He was an artist for 2000 AD, for which he contributed a large body of work from its first issue in 1977.
"For the Man Who Has Everything" is a comic book story by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, first published in Superman Annual #11 (1985). It contains the first appearance of the Black Mercy, a magical, extraterrestrial, plant-like organism which, upon symbiotically attaching itself to its victims, incapacitates them while causing them to hallucinate living out their greatest fantasy.
Nominated for the 1986 Kirby Award for Best Single Issue, "For the Man Who Has Everything" is widely regarded as one of the best Superman stories of all time. As such, it has been adapted for television, most notably the episode of the same name of the animated TV series Justice League Unlimited. It was more loosely adapted into an episode of The CW's live-action Supergirl TV series titled "For the Girl Who Has Everything", and served as inspirations for the episode of Syfy live-action Krypton TV series titled "Mercy" and for two episodes of the second season of Adult Swim's animated My Adventures with Superman.
A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks. It has also been described as a marketing term for comic books.
Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term graphic novel in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha. The term gained popularity in the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978) and the start of the Marvel Graphic Novel line (1982) and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1986, the collected editions of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using graphic novel as a category in book stores in 2001.
Watchmen is a comic book limited series by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-volume edition in 1987. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced Moore to create original characters instead.
Moore used the story as a means of reflecting contemporary anxieties, deconstructing and satirizing the superhero concept, and making political commentary. Watchmen depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. In 1985, the country is edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the protagonists' personal development and moral struggles as an investigation into the murder of a government-sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement.
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic magazine. As a comics anthology it serialises stories in each issue (known as "progs") and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. Since 2000, it has been published by Rebellion Developments.
2000 AD is most noted for its Judge Dredd stories, and has been contributed to by a number of artists and writers who became renowned in the field internationally, such as Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Mike McMahon, John Wagner, Alan Grant and Garth Ennis. Other series in 2000 AD include Rogue Trooper, Sláine, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Nemesis the Warlock and Nikolai Dante.