Garry Leach, the British comic book artist and art director who helped launch the modern version of Marvelman (who was later renamed Miracleman), has passed away at the age of 67.

Leach first broke into the comic book industry doing work on IPC Magazines's iconic 2000 A.D. anthology, including early Dan Dare and Judge Dredd stories in 1978 and 1979, as well as the regular The VCs feature in 1979-80. He left IPC in 1981 to join Dez Skinn's new company, Quality Communications, where Leach was the company's art director as well as being the artist on the revival of Marvelman, the lead feature in Quality's main anthology, Warrior. The series, written by budding comic book superstar, Alan Moore, was acclaimed right out of the gate. Leach reflected on the success of the strip in 2014, "We were just a bunch of guys who wanted more creator control than we could get at the big UK publishers. Their ideas were at least 10 years behind the times, 2000AD was the rare exception and we were already working on that. When the first strips came in we knew we had something special and the fan reaction was incredible. The real cruncher was the Eagle awards where we scooped a stash and we also won best Action Strip, Best Writer and Best Adventure Artist from the S.S.I. ( Society of Strip Illustrators ) as these were our industry peers it was quite a big deal. Even that didn't really indicate the longevity Marvelman would have, or that he would become an iconic character, it still surprises me now."

Leach, though, found that he could not properly maintain the deadlines on the feature, so he planned on Alan Davis filling in for him (with Leach inking Davis' earliest Marvelman stories to help with the transition), but Leach decided to move on and Davis became the feature's main artist. Leach then co-created the Warrior feature, Warpsmith, with Alan Moore. The alien characters, the Warpsmiths, later became prominent supporting character in Moore's Marvelman. Leach maintained ownership of the characters, though, and Moore only used them in Marvelman with permission from Leach.

In 1988, Leach formed Atomeka Press with Dave Elliot and their lead anthology, A1, opened with a new Warpsmith story by Leach and Moore. When the first iteration of Atomeka folded, Leach got out of comic books for a while to work in advertising, but he returned in the late 1990s as John McCrea's inker on Hitman with #23. Leach remained on the series until it ended with issue #60. Hitman #34, the classic issue where Tommy Monaghan gives Superman a pep talk, won Leach, Ennis and McCrea an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue/Single Story.

During this period, Leach also inked a few other comics (including a year's worth of the series The Monarchy with McCrea and writer Doselle Young after Hitman ended) and in 2002, he was the initial artist on Warren Ellis' Global Frequency series (which had a different artist in each issue). By virtue of drawing that first issue, Leach designed a number of the major characters in the series. Leach then inked Chris Weston on the first half of Marvel's The Twelve maxiseries, with writer J. Michael Straczynski. Leach and Elliot have also revived Atomeka Press a few times in the last couple of decades.

Most recently, Leach had been working with CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker and his wife, Michelle Zuiker, with their Zuiker Press company, which produces graphic novels based on the personal experience of young people.