Joshua Dysart (born June 21, 1971) is an Eisner Award-nominated, New York Times Best Selling American comic book writer known for dark themes, humanist horror and a fascination with the roots of violence. He has done work for DC Comics, Vertigo Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, IDW Publishing, Penny-Farthing Press, Virgin Comics and Random House Books.
Dysart co-created and wrote Violent Messiahs in 1997. The first eight issues were collected in the graphic novel, Violent Messiahs Vol. I: Book of Job in 2002 and was nominated for the Harvey Award, the Wizard Fan Award, and the Eisner's Russ Manning Award. The last four issues, a story arc entitled "Lamenting Pain" was not collected until 2009, when IDW Press decided to publish a trade which also featured never before seen developmental material and an unseen short story by Dysart.
More work followed, including a two-year stint as the monthly writer of Swamp Thing, writing issues #9—29 of the fourth series. His run featured the art of Enrique Breccia and Richard Corben (among others) on interiors and John Totleben and Eric Powell on covers. Dysart has also worked on Conan and Hellboy and is has co-written with Mike Mignola on a series of projects in the same setting as Hellboy.
He is currently writing a revamp of The Unknown Soldier for Vertigo. The storyline takes place in Acholiland Uganda in 2002 during the war between the Lord's Resistance Army and Ugandan People's Defence Force. Dysart spent a month in Northern Uganda for research. Issue #1 of Unknown Soldier was released in October 2008. The book is a monthly. It was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2009. It was featured on the front page of the art section of the New York Times and Dysart was interviewed by the BBC, who also published some of his research photos on their website. . In December of 2009 Dysart gave an exhaustive interview to WORLD VISION REPORT about his experiences in the conflict zone and attempts to adapt them into a mainstream, commercial work.
In June of 2010, Vertigo Comics published Dysart's graphic novel based on Neil Young's 2003 album Greendale. Cliff Chiang drew the book.. It spent two-weeks at #3 on the New York Times Graphic Novel Best-Seller list.
Media tie-ins
Dysart has become extensively involved in multi-media crossovers. He authored the one-shot Van Helsing: Beneath the Rue Morgue (an original story featuring the character from the Universal film) and penned Skull & Bones: A Monster House Story, which was tied into the Sony animated children's Monster House. He's also had his comic books included in the packaging for both the Hyborian Adventures MMO computer game from Funcom and the Hellboy video game from Konami. He has written a two volume 270 page graphic novel for Avril Lavigne entitled Make 5 Wishes which was published by Del Rey Manga and Random House. That book has been printed in over seven languages as well as digitally distributed throughout Asia. His six-issue comic book mini-series adaptation of the Deepak Chopra novel A Story of Enlightenment was halted when the company, Virgin Comics, went under.
Advocacy and education
Dysart has, on multiple occasions, taught and talked about the role of comics in pop-culture, as well as actively promoted comics "he feels bring a wider audience to the medium". He has produced discussion panels for the West Hollywood Book Fair in 2006 and moderated in 2007' as well as written about the virtue of comics for the LA Weekly. In 2008 and 2009 he was a special guest at Ohio University's Aesthetics Technology Lab and even wrote a short comic story about his experiences there that featured the art of Ronald Wimberly. In 2009 Dysart spoke at the University of Miami on his experiences writing the Unknown Soldier. That same year he interviewed Bryan Lee O'Malley on the (at-that-time) upcoming Scott Pilgrim film. In 2010 he interviewed David Petersen on his Eisner-award winning Mouse Guard comic.
