Steven Murray (born December 21, 1975), known professionally as Chip Zdarsky, is a Canadian writer, illustrator, and journalist.
Zdarsky is best known for co-creating the Image Comics series Sex Criminals with writer Matt Fraction. For a long time, he tried to keep "Steven" and "Chip" as separate personas, with the former being a professional journalist, and the latter a self-described "idiot who doesn’t know" what he's doing. Now that most, if not all, of his fans are in the know, he will respond openly to being called Steven, though he still acts a bit goofy when being "Chip".
In 2015, Zdarsky began focusing more on writing comics (as opposed to drawing them), by relaunching Howard the Duck for Marvel Comics, which lasted for two volumes spread over a year. He then followed that series up with runs on Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man and Marvel Two-in-One, both launching as part of the Marvel Legacy era. During this time, he also wrote Jughead for the rebooted Archie Comics line, as well as the creator-owned sci-fi romp Kaptara for Image. In 2019, he started his run on Daredevil. Recently, in 2021 onward, he's moved to DC Comics, starting off with Batman: Urban Legends, once again pitting Batman against his rogue son Red Hood in the middle of a mob war, and Justice League: Last Ride, a divergent tale where the death of Martian Manhunter kicks off the League's last hurrah. He's just recently succeeded Joshua Williamson as writer of the main Batman title, the page of which ya can find here.
Selected bibliography:
Artist
Image Comics
- Sex Criminals (2013 — 2020)
Writer
Archie Comics
- Jughead (2015 — 2016)
Comixology Originals
- Afterlift (2020)
Image Comics
- Crossover (2020) - guest-wrote issue #7, featuring his Author Avatar
- Stillwater (Image Comics) (2020)
- The Silver Coin #1 (2021)
- The White Trees (2019)
Marvel Comics
- Howard the Duck vols. 3 & 4 (2015 — 2016)
- Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (2017 — 2018) — He won an Eisner award for Best Single Issue for #310, his final issue on the title.
- Marvel Two-in-One vol. 2 (2017 — 2018)
- Spider-Man: Life Story (2019) note
- Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow (2021) note
- Daredevil vol. 6 (2019-2021)
- Daredevil vol. 7 (2022-)
- X-Men / Fantastic Four (2020)
- Avengers: Twilight (2024)
DC Comics
- Batman:
- Batman (Chip Zdarsky) (2022) note
- Batman: The Knight note
- Batman: Urban Legends (2021) note
- Justice League: Last Ride (2021)
Chip Zdarsky (and his work) contain examples of:
- Doing It for the Art: Both Zdarsky and Fraction have been very open about the fact that they figured Sex Criminals would be a labor of love, and were surprised by how popular it became.
- Refuge in Audacity: Only Chip Zdarsky can get away with admitting that he's drunk when accepting his Eisner Award...then post a tweet the next day implying he slept with it.
- Signature Style:
- A very goofy, surreal writing style (especially on Howard The Duck), and intentionally bad puns, with a secretly poignant, sentimental side at times.
- However, in a number of occasions, such as his run on Daredevil, he has proven to be a talented writer even when not writing comedy.
- As an artist and illustrator, he is known for being minimalist and stylized, best seen in his covers for his own series Spider-Man: Life Story (though the interior art is by Mark Bagley).
- A very goofy, surreal writing style (especially on Howard The Duck), and intentionally bad puns, with a secretly poignant, sentimental side at times.
