Nick Abadzis

Early life Abadzis is of Greek and British parentage and raised in Sweden, England and Switzerland. He is British by nationality.

Career

In 1987, he secured a job at Marvel Comics' UK publishing branch where he was, at that time, the youngest-ever editor.

Abadzis went freelance in 1988 when his career as a cartoonist took off in the pages of legendary UK comics and music magazine Deadline. Here he created two of his best-known characters, Hugo Tate, a stick-man lost in a figuratively drawn world, and the shapeshifting Mr. Pleebus, who later starred in his own series of children's books. His series Hugo Tate ran in Deadline magazine from 1988 to 1994. Some of this series was collected as Hugo Tate: O, America in 1993, which won in 1994 a UK Comic Art Award for best graphic novel.

As a part of the British Invasion of American comics, he wrote Children of the Voyager for Marvel in 1993 and Millennium Fever in 1995 for Vertigo.

His graphic novel, Laika, about the eponymous dog, the first living creature from Earth to enter orbit, was published in 2007. Laika was well-received, with the New York Press remarking that "the British comics creator has fashioned a poignant and accurate portrait of the lives Laika touched in the three years leading up to Sputnik 2's launch. His characters — including the dog – are as real as the story he's telling: animated with complex personalities, flaws, humor and emotion." Laika won an Eisner award in 2008 for Best Teen graphic novel and a further nomination for Best Reality-based Work. In the same year it was nominated for a Harvey Award for Best Original Graphic Album. In 2009, the book won Meilleur Scénario (Best story/script) – Festival du Livre Aéronautique at Le Bourget Book Festival in France, and at the Napoli Comicon Awards, Italy for Best Foreign Graphic Novel.

Abadzis also worked as a newspaper cartoonist on The Sunday Correspondent (now defunct), and as a freelance illustrator and comics writer and as a development and consultant editor on a range of best-selling children's magazines for various British publishers. He has also moonlighted as a TV writer for the children's animated show Bob the Builder. He has created Cora's Breakfast for The DFC, which has run in the comic section of the weekend Guardian. The Trial of the Sober Dog, a graphic novella, was serialised in The Times over a six-month period in 2008.

Beginning in May 2010, Abadzis' one-off comics have been published weekly in Nib-Lit Comics Journal.