Chronology
A Dave McKean timeline: the career, year by year since 1963
Twenty-two dates carry the story. Follow the spine downward and watch a Berkshire schoolboy with a stack of Marvel comics turn into the most restless image-maker British publishing has produced.
1963
Born in Taplow, Berkshire
A childhood of drawing, Marvel comics, Warren magazines and rented films begins by the Thames.
1982
Enters Berkshire College of Art and Design
Four years of formal training, a video library obsession and first paid illustration jobs on the side.
1986
Meets Neil Gaiman
Two unknowns circle the London small-press scene around Escape Magazine and decide to make a book.
1987
Violent Cases published
The debut graphic novel announces a partnership and a method: memory as collage.
1988
Black Orchid at DC
The painted miniseries brings both men to American attention, and DC keeps their number.
1989
Sandman #1 and Arkham Asylum
The first specimen-box cover appears in January; by autumn, the Batman book is a bestseller.
1990
Cages begins
The 500-page solo work starts its six-year crawl alongside the monthly cover deadline.
1992
Signal to Noise collected
The Face serialisation becomes a book, moving the collaboration outside comic shops.
1994
The music year
Voodoo Lounge, Testament's Low and Alice Cooper's The Last Temptation all carry his images; Mr. Punch closes the Gaiman graphic-novel run.
1995
Demanufacture and The Vertigo Tarot
Fear Factory's sleeve becomes an industrial-metal icon; Rachel Pollack's tarot text gets 78 McKean cards.
1996
Sandman ends, Cages ends
Issue 75 closes the cover run in the same year the solo masterwork finally ships. The awards arrive in a cluster.
1997
Picture books and the Dark Tower
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish opens the children's shelf; Stephen King's Wizard and Glass takes his illustrations.
1999
Four sleeves, four genres
Machine Head, Dream Theater, Kreator and Counting Crows all release McKean covers within one year.
2000
Pictures That Tick
The short-comics collection wins the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustrated Book of the Year Award.
2002
Coraline
The illustrations for Gaiman's novel fix the book's visual identity for a generation of readers.
2005
MirrorMask
The Jim Henson Company feature, written by Gaiman, directed and designed by McKean, premieres at Sundance.
2008
The Graveyard Book and the Fat Duck
US-edition illustrations for Gaiman's Newbery winner; Heston Blumenthal's cookbook gets the same hands.
2012
The Gospel of Us
The Port Talbot passion-play film with Michael Sheen wins two BAFTA Cymru awards.
2014
Luna
His most personal film takes the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards.
2015
Wolf's Child
Site-specific theatre with Wildworks at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
2016
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash
Commissioned by 14-18 NOW and the Imperial War Museum; the war painter meets his biographer.
2021
Raptor
The Dark Horse graphic novel returns to full-length, fully painted storytelling.
Reading the shape of Dave McKean's career
Three patterns stand out once the dates line up. First, the overlaps: Cages was drawn at night while the Sandman covers shipped monthly, and the album work landed in the same stretch. Second, the pivots cluster: 1996 ends two defining projects at once, and the film decade opens almost exactly when the music work closes. Third, the gaps are load-bearing. The quiet years before Black Dog and again before Raptor were spent on exhibitions, short films and commissions, and both books emerged changed by them.
Anyone using this page for research should treat the sections as the footnotes: every date above has a fuller account somewhere in the catalogue, from the Sandman covers to the film work to the graphic novels themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Dave McKean start his career?
Professionally in the mid-1980s: he took illustration jobs while still at Berkshire College of Art and Design, which he attended from 1982 to 1986, and published Violent Cases with Neil Gaiman in 1987, within a year of leaving.
What was Dave McKean's busiest period?
The first half of the 1990s takes some beating: monthly Sandman covers, Cages in progress, the Vertigo Tarot, and the run of album commissions from Voodoo Lounge to Demanufacture, all overlapping.
When did Dave McKean move into film?
MirrorMask premiered in 2005, but the groundwork was laid at art school, where world cinema rentals shaped his eye. The Gospel of Us followed in 2012 and Luna in 2014, with a collected edition of short films arriving in 2018.
What has Dave McKean made most recently?
The 2021 graphic novel Raptor is the most recent full-length work on this timeline, following Black Dog in 2016. Exhibition projects, covers and shorter pieces continue to appear between the big books.