James D. Hudnall

James David Hudnall (born April 10, 1957 in Santa Rosa, California) is an American writer who began his career in the comic book field in 1986 with the series Espers, published by Eclipse Comics. He later worked for Marvel and DC on such titles as Alpha Flight, Strikeforce: Morituri, and his own creation Interface, which was a sequel to Espers. He also wrote graphic novels such as Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography, Sinking, Streets and The Psycho.

His series Harsh Realm was adapted to television by X-Files producer Chris Carter in 1998. Hudnall and co-creator Andrew Paquette sued Carter and Fox Television when they failed to give them credits on the show. The suit was later settled and as part of the settlement Hudnall and Paquette received credit in the opening titles of the show, in a precedent setting decision by New York Federal court judge John Martin.

Hudnall's other works includes: The Age of Heroes, Aftermath, Shut Up And Die, Two to the Chest, Chiller, Devastator, Hardcase and The Solution. He writes a libertarian leaning blog under the Pajamas Media group, a network of political blogs.

Hudnall's parents divorced when he was two and his mother remarried to a man in the US Navy. The family settled in San Diego, California in the 1970s, and after graduating from Point Loma High School, Hudnall joined the U.S. Air Force in 1976. He was stationed in England.

After his discharge from the Air Force, Hudnall went to Coleman College in San Diego where he majored in computer science. He worked as a computer software consultant in Orange County, California, Sonoma County, and briefly in England. On returning to the states, he settled in Orange County, Ca where he began to read comics again. This renewed his interest in the medium and got him interested in writing, which was an earlier ambition. Now fully motivated by his love of comics and novels, Hudnall attempted to self-publish a comic in 1982, a time when small press comics were rare.

In 1985 he started working with Eclipse Comics as a marketing director in order to learn the comics business. In 1986 his first comic, Espers, got him enough acclaim to get a job at Marvel and DC. From there he went on to work for almost all the major publishers in American Comics, including Image, Dark Horse and Malibu.

Hudnall switched from writing comics to internet development in the late 1990s, while producing more limited work over the years, such as Trigs for Humanoids and 2 To the Chest from his own company Dark Planet Productions.

In 2009 he began writing for the media criticism blog Big Hollywood, which was founded by Andrew Breitbart. He since created the weekly comic strip "Obama Nation" with comics artist Batton Lash for Big Hollywood, which ran on Big Government and the news media criticism comics strip "Useful Idiots" with comics artist Val Mayerik which ran on Big Journalism. These series ran for several years. A 2011 Obama Nation cartoon was called racist by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell which he claimed caricatured First Lady Michelle Obama and President Obama in ways that stereotype African-Americans, without showing the cartoon or talking to the comic's creators. Such claims were publicly denied by Hudnall and Lash which said they were doing a political lampoon, nothing more.The sites changed after Andrew Breitbart's death and Hudnall stopped doing the series.

Hudnall later went into digital comics in 2012 when David Lloyd created the online comics anthology Aces Weekly by teaming with previous collaborator Val Mayerik on Blue Cat. The series is ongoing as of 2013.

In the fall of 2013 Hudnall released his first novel, The Age of Heroes: Hell's Reward which is part of a planned series. A second series of novels, the Secret Team, is slated to debut in 2015.

His graphic novel, Sinking, which is the fictional autobiography of a schizophrenic, earned him an Eisner Award nomination. The Spanish translation of Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography won an award in Latin America for best graphic novel.