Ben Templesmith (born 7 March 1984) is an Australian comic book artist best known for his work in the American comic book industry, most notably the Image Comics series Fell, with writer Warren Ellis, and IDW's 30 Days of Night with writer Steve Niles, which was adapted into a motion picture of the same name. He has also created book covers, movie posters, trading cards, and concept work for film.
Templesmith was born 7 March 1984, in Perth, Western Australia. He graduated from Curtin University with a bachelor's degree in Design, and holds a diploma of Cartoon and Graphic Art from the Australian College of Journalism.
Templesmith produced his first commercial American comics work in 2001, providing the art for Todd McFarlane Productions' Hellspawn, which was published by Image Comics. He has gone on to create his own original works as well as contribute to many licensed properties at various publishers, most notably IDW Publishing, with which he had an exclusive agreement through most of 2008 and part of 2009 before returning to being a freelancer.
Other licensed properties that Templesmith has worked on include illustrating "Dark Journey", a story in issue #17 of the Dark Horse Comics anthology series Star Wars Tales in 2003, and the covers to Devil's Due Publishing's ' #1 in 2004 and IDW's G.I. Joe #0 in 2008.
Original works Templesmith has produced include the miniseries Welcome to Hoxford, the New York Times best-selling ' Tommyrot: The Art of Ben Templesmith, Conluvio and Choker at Image Comics with writer Ben McCool. He also provided a number of covers for the Oni Press series Wasteland.
In April 2012, DC Entertainment announced that Templesmith would be one of the artists illustrating a new digital Batman series with stories set outside regular DC continuity.
In March 2013, Image Comics announced Ten Grand with writer J. Michael Straczynski, with Issue #1 published in May of the same year. In August, Templesmith vanished without giving any explanation, forcing the publisher to replace him with CP Smith starting with Issue #5.
Starting in November 2014, Templesmith launched Gotham by Midnight from DC Comics with writer Ray Fawkes. It was poorly received ; DC Comics quickly replaced Templesmith by Juan Ferreyra (starting with Issue #6) before cancelling the series after Issue #12.
In June 2021, Templesmith announced that he would be reteaming with Ellis to continue the series, in spite of the scandal around sexual coercion/numerous affair-having allegations against Ellis ("So many of us") since 2020. That same month, Image Comics made a separate announcement stating that they would not be publishing the planned continuation in light of the backlash.
Since 2014, Templesmith's career has been limited to a handful of self-published releases.