Ted McKeever

Ted McKeever is an American artist whose first professional comic work appeared in 1986, when he published the first five parts of his series Transit (Vortex Comics), establishing his trademark style. This was followed in 1987–1988 by his 12-part series Eddy Current, a "12-hour book" that centers on an inmate’s escape from an asylum. The work is quintessential McKeever: darkly humorous, while showing an "ordinary" person caught up in extraordinary events. Eddy Current was nominated for the Eisner Awards for Best Single-Issue (#1), Best Black-and-White Series, Best New Series, and Best Artist (for McKeever) for 1988.

Ted McKeever the painter.

His thirty-plus-years career also includes such titles as Plastic Forks, a 5-part series (Epic, 1990) that explored the world of animal and human experimentation, albeit in a disturbingly surreal way. Metropol (Epic 1991–1992) a twelve-issue apocalyptic story of the fight between angels and demons amidst a pandemic plague, set in a modern industrial landscape. And The Extremist (Vertigo, 1993), a four-part tale written by Peter Milligan, about a woman who finds that her husband’s secret life, which she discovers upon his death, leads her into a shocking underworld of extreme sex and violence.

McKeever also created a number of works exploring alternative realities within the world of DC superhero comics. With Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, he produced an Elseworlds trilogy: Superman's Metropolis, Batman: Nosferatu and Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon, all retellings of the DC mythos as seen through German expressionist films.

In addition to Milligan and Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, McKeever also has collaborated with comics creator Dave Gibbons and confrontationalist Lydia Lunch.

In 2010 McKeever began producing his darkly personal projects for Jim Valentino's Shadowline imprint. Starting with Meta4, he then continued between the years 2011 through 2016, where he produced the series’ Mondo, Miniature Jesus, The Superannuated Man, and finally the semi-autobiographical five-issue farewell series Pencil Head, before he walked away from the comics industry for good.[1]

In 2017/2018, he self-published three limited-edition absurdist manuals titled Funky Porcini, presented by the Ministry of Allegory and the Department of Metaphorical Studies.

Since then, he has intentionally fallen off the grid, and now apparently resides in some kind of cement hut where he solely creates paintings that defy categorical definition.