Career[edit]

Deighan worked up the Scottish underground comics title Electric Soup in 1990, writing and drawing The Greens, a parody of The Broons strip published
by D. C. Thomson. It was in working on this book that he adopted the pseudonym of Frank Quitely (a spoonerism of "quite frankly"), as he did not want his
family to know it was his work, worried that they may have found it upsetting. [8]

Initially Electric Soup was only distributed locally in Glasgow, then it was picked up by John Brown Publishing for widespread national UK distribution. This
brought Quitely's work to the attention of Judge Dredd Megazine editor David Bishop. He was given work on Shimura, written by Robbie Morrison,
and Missionary Man, by Gordon Rennie, quickly rising to prominence. He drew various stories in Paradox Press' series of The Big Book Of graphic novels,
as well as work in Dark Horse Presents for Dark Horse Comics.[9]

His first major work in American comics was Flex Mentallo in 1996, a Doom Patrol spin-off written by fellow Glaswegian Grant Morrison for DC
Comics' Vertigo imprint. Initially he worked on strips for anthology titles such as Weird War Tales, and drew three issues of Jamie Delano's 2020 Visions, as
well as various covers for DC. He later drew his first full length graphic novel, Batman: The Scottish Connection, with writer Alan Grant[9] in which The Greens
make a cameo appearance. Quitely and Grant worked on a one-shot titled Lobo: The Hand-to-Hand Job later retitled as It's a Man's World. Although Quitely
did all the pencils, the story was not released.[10]

2000 saw Quitely and Morrison collaborate again, on JLA: Earth 2.[11] The graphic novel was met with positive critical response, and later that year Quitely
took over from Bryan Hitch as artist on The Authority, with Mark Millar as writer.[9]

New X-Men promo art by Quitely, displaying his ornate line work and expressive faces

Quitely left The Authority to draw New X-Men.[12] Quitely illustrated a Destiny story for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Endless Nights hardcover graphic novel
in 2003.[13] After leaving New X-Men, Quitely drew the mini-series We3 in 2004, again in collaboration with Morrison.[14] He shared the 2005 Best
Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team Eisner Award in a tie with artist John Cassaday for his work on the book. That same year, he and Morrison were
nominated for Best Limited Series for that book, and Quitely additionally was nominated for the Best Cover Artist Eisner for both We3 and Bite Club.[15] He
wrote and drew new instalments of The Greens for the Scottish underground comic Northern Lightz,[16] and in 2005 Morrison and Quitely designed a series
of tarot cards for Intensive Care, an album by popstar Robbie Williams.

In December 2004, Quitely signed to a two-year exclusive contract with DC Comics, where he illustrated All-Star Superman.[17] The twelve issue series, yet
another collaboration with Morrison, began publication in November 2005. Quitely and Morrison's work on the series won them the Eisner Award for Best
New Series in 2006, with Quitely collecting another nomination for Best Penciller/Ink