Paul Johnson orbited the peripheries of the British comic book industry in the early 1980s, self-publishing and appearing in short-lived publications such as
Pssst! and
Escape. His first major comics work was the
graphic novel ''London's Dark
but he came to international attention when he painted the art on The Road to Nowhere
, the fourth and final chapter of The Books of Magic'' mini-series, written by
Neil Gaiman and released by
DC/Vertigo in 1993. Johnson worked abroad for
Marvel Comics (
Interface,
Hellraiser,
Children of the Voyager),
DC Comics (
Mercy,
Invisibles,
Legends of the Dark Knight) and
Dark Horse Comics (
Aliens) before working in Britain's home-grown industry for
Crisis,
2000 AD, and the Eaglemoss publication
Spinechillers. In 2000 Johnson was awarded a grant by the Arts Council of Great Britain to run a series of comic book workshops with
Ed Hillyer (also known as Ilya) at
Great Ormond Street Hospital, resulting in the publication of
Hospitales, which was distributed free of charge in hospitals across the UK. In addition to his interest in comics, Johnson wrote regularly for the
IPC music magazine
Uncut from 1999 to 2004. Influenced by the work of European comics artists such as Moebius (
Jean Giraud),
Hugo Pratt,
Alberto Breccia and
Lorenzo Mattotti, Johnson struggled to find work that interested him as most commercial publishers failed to make the jump from producing superhero comics to the more esoteric genres of their continental counterparts. Disillusioned with the opportunities available to him, Johnson retrained as an
acupuncturist and
herbalist. He is now in private practice and lectures regularly at LCTA, England's largest college dedicated to teaching Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is the chief presenter on
How To Locate Acupuncture Points - The Definitive DVD, released in 2008. ==Bibliography==