John Layman
writer
John Steele Layman (born November 13, 1967) is an American comic book writer and letterer. Layman is most known for his writing published by Image Comics: Chew, its spin-off/midquel series Chu (Saffron Chu), the stand-alone Outer Darkness, and the crossover series Outer Darkness/Chew, as well as the Marvel Comics series Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness, Gambit, and Cyclops: A Pirate's Life for Me.
Career
Once an editor for Wildstorm, a branch of DC Comics, Layman turned to writing comics full-time in 2002, mainly for Marvel Comics.
He also worked on several comic books based on licensed properties, such as Xena: Warrior Princess and ThunderCats, as well as crossovers like Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness.
From 2007–2010 he worked as a writer for Cryptic Studios, a video game developer in Los Gatos, California.
Layman has written a number of creator-owned titles at Image Comics, such as the graphic novel Puffed, and Chew, with artist Rob Guillory. Chew has gone on to achieve much success, being nominated for two Harvey Awards, two Eagle Awards, and winning an Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2010.
In April 2022, Layman was reported among the more than three dozen comics creators who contributed to Operation USA's benefit anthology book, Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds, a project spearheaded by IDW Publishing Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier, whose profits would be donated to relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees resulting from the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“John Layman” enters the record as writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Layman and writer 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 Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15502397. The first chronological checks are 1967, 2002, 2007 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Layman” 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.