Lee Sullivan (comics)

Biography

Sullivan trained as a wildlife and technical illustrator at Barnfield College before working as a graphic illustrator for British Aerospace. As a fan of Doctor Who he was inspired by the launch of Doctor Who Weekly to prepare sample art but as his output was slow at the time, he was put off when David Lloyd told him what the rates were.

He then worked as a freelance illustrator for advertising from 1983 when he met John Higgins who was writing a music magazine comic story, The Bizniz. Sullivan ended up colouring Steve Yeowell's art on the story and later Higgins introduced him to the editors at Marvel UK. He began work there in 1987 providing covers for The Transformers until he got his break in 1988 drawing a Doctor Who story written by John Freeman. and has subsequently been published in a number of titles including: Transformers, ThunderCats, Death's Head, RoboCop, TekWorld, Thunderbirds (from 2000 to 2005) and 2000 AD.

He has worked on various Doctor Who strips, contributing semi regularly to Doctor Who Magazine since 1988, drawing the Eighth Doctor strips that appeared in the Radio Times in 1996 and drawing 64 strips for Doctor Who - Battles in Time from 2006 to 2009. He has also provided artwork for Doctor Who webcasts that appeared on BBCi including Death Comes to Time, Real Time and Shada along with artwork for the official Doctor Who website. He produced line artwork for alternate issues of Doctor Who DVD Files and worked as pencils/inks artist on The Amulet of Samarkand graphic novel for Hyperion Books which was published in late 2010. In 2013 Sullivan returned to Doctor Who comic strips this time for the US IDW producing artwork for the Second Doctor instalment of their 50th Anniversary story 'Prisoners of Time', and also an Eleventh Doctor strip used in the Royal Mail Doctor Who Prestige Stamp Book, part of the range of UK commemorative stamps issue. 2014 saw the release of Titan's Twelfth Doctor comic book series and Sullivan created a variant cover for issue 1. A frame he drew from the 1989 DWM Seventh Doctor comic strip 'Nemesis of the Daleks' featuring Abslom Daak appears briefly in the 2014 televised Doctor Who episode Time Heist.

Since 2015 he has been regular artist on Titan Comics 'Rivers of London' comic - a canonical comic strip extension of the series of novels written by Ben Aaronovitch concerning the supernatural police procedural fantasy adventures featuring full-time policeman and trainee wizard Peter Grant. The comic book series is written by Doctor Who alumni Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel.

Sullivan plays the saxophone and toured the UK as part of a Roxy Music tribute band for over a decade before quitting in 2015.