Simon Fraser (comics)

Simon Fraser is a British comics artist and writer best known for his work on Nikolai Dante, a series he created with writer Robbie Morrison in 2000 AD, Tales of the Night Watchman for So What? Press, and Kingsman: The Red Diamond for Image Comics.

Career
Fraser's early work includes Lux and Alby Sign on and Save the Universe, a 1993–1994 collaboration with novelist Martin Millar co-published by Acme Press and Dark Horse Comics. Despite having little interest in football, he worked on Roy of the Rovers, including drawing the character's final appearance in 1995. This led to David Bishop's commissioning him to work on Shimura in the Judge Dredd Megazine, where he first collaborated with Robbie Morrison.

The pair then created Nikolai Dante, a swashbuckling adventure story set amid dynastic intrigue in a future Russia, which debuted in 2000 AD in 1997. Fraser was the main artist on the strip, occasionally rotating with other artists, until 2002; the primary artist since then has been John M. Burns, although Fraser returned to the character in 2006 for the storyline "Sword of the Tsar". Also for 2000 AD, Fraser has drawn a number of Judge Dredd stories.

Returning to the Judge Dredd Megazine in 2003, he collaborated with writer Rob Williams on Family, a black and white series about a crime family with superhuman powers, which has recently been published as a collected edition. In 2005 he drew a four-part adaptation of Richard Matheson's Hell House, scripted by Ian Edginton and published by IDW Publishing.

Fraser produced art on The Adventures of Nikolai Dante for 2000 AD, and the self-penned Lilly MacKenzie and the Mines of Charybdis which was published online, a page per week (every Friday) as part of the online comics collective Act-i-vate.

In 2015, he started drawing covers for the horror comic, Tales of the Night Watchman, published by So What? Press. From 2017 to 2018, he was the primary illustrator for the Kingsman comic book sequel The Red Diamond for Image Comics, written by Rob Williams. In 2018, he drew the sequential art for "The Ghost Train", about the elevated train involved in the infamous Malbone Street Wreck returning to terrorize the city on the centenary of the accident, which kicked off Tales of the Night Watchman's run as a newspaper strip in Brooklyn, New York's Park Slope Reader.   The story debuted in the paper's Spring 2018 edition, number 64. The strips were colored by Gary Caldwell, Simon Fraser's frequent collaborator.

Accolades
In 2018, Fraser received a Ringo Award nomination for best cover artist for his work on Tales of the Night Watchman, Kingsman, and The Consultant.

Interviews

 * 2002 interview with 2000ADReview
 * 2005 interview with The Nexus
 * Meet the Scot who brings the biggest comic book heroes to life, The Daily Record, July 25, 2009