Steve Dillon, born in London in 1962, made his own comics in school, and got his first professional work for Hulk Weekly in 1979, at the age of 16. He went on to draw "Nick Fury" for the same title. In the 1980s he drew "Laser Eraser and Pressbutton" for Warrior and "Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer" for Doctor Who Weekly, and "Judge Dredd", "The Mean Arena", "Rogue Trooper" and "Tyranny Rex" for 2000 AD. In 1988 he and Brett Ewins founded the independent comics magazine Deadline, which ran for seven years and gave a platform for artists including Jamie Hewlett, Philip Bond, Nick Abadzis and D'Israeli.
In 1989 he collaborated with co-artist Ewins and writer Peter Milligan on Skreemer, a retro-futuristic gangster thriller with Joycean overtones, published by DC Comics in the USA. He teamed up with Garth Ennis on DC's horror series Hellblazer in 1992-94, and the pair followed that with their own series, the post-modern contemporary western Preacher, in 1995-2000. Since then he has drawn a number of comics for Marvel, including a run on The Punisher with Ennis in 2001-03.