John Hicklenton
British comics artist (1967-2010)
John Hicklenton (8 May 1967 – 19 March 2010), aka John Deadstock, was a British comics artist best known for his brutal, visceral work on flagship 2000 AD characters like Judge Dredd (in particular Heavy Metal Dredd) and Nemesis the Warlock during the Eighties and Nineties.
He had multiple sclerosis and recorded an award-winning documentary about living with the condition. On 19 March 2010, Hicklenton chose to end his life at Dignitas in Switzerland.
Comics
Hicklenton got his first break when he realised a friend at college was Ron Smith's daughter so he made her a Judge Dredd Christmas card.
However, regular work remained elusive until, on the advice of his mother, he phoned Pat Mills directly and their working relationship developed from there. He did other work with Mills including a strip in the now defunct CoolBeansWorld site. He also drew ZombieWorld (as John Deadstock) for Dark Horse Comics, who commissioned him because, as Mills has said "John is the ultimate horror artist ... I defy anyone to show me an artist whose monsters are more grotesque, whose zombies have a more ghastly look in their eye."
Here's Johnny
He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000. Here's Johnny, a documentary about his illness produced by Animal Monday, launched at the Science Museum on 30 January 2008, followed by its world première at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. It got its television debut on More4 on 17 February 2009.
“John Hicklenton” enters the record as british comics artist (1967-2010). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Hicklenton and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6239191. VIAF identifies the subject as 180420874. The Library of Congress control number is nb2011020498. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 2010, 2000 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Hicklenton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.