Mitchel Scanlon

Mitchel Scanlon is a British writer of science fiction novels and comics whose best-known contribution to Games Workshop's Black Library is Descent of Angels, the sixth novel in the Horus Heresy series. It tells the early story of Zahariel and the Dark Angels Legion on their home world of Caliban, before the wider galactic civil war breaks out, making it one of the series' more character-driven, coming-of-age entries rather than a straightforward war story.

Beyond the Horus Heresy, Scanlon wrote for Black Library's Imperial Guard fiction, including the novel Fifteen Hours, and contributed short stories across the Warhammer 40,000 line. Outside of Warhammer, he has written novels featuring the 2000 AD comics character Judge Anderson (of the Judge Dredd universe) and worked as a freelance comic book writer, including the Tales of Hellbrandt Grimm series — reflecting a career that moves comfortably between tie-in prose fiction and comics writing.

A reader approaching the Horus Heresy should read Descent of Angels in its numbered sequence, as it sets up character threads — particularly around Zahariel and the Dark Angels' fall from grace — that pay off in later volumes by other authors, including Mike Lee's Fallen Angels. Scanlon's more recent publishing activity is not well documented, and he appears to have stepped back from tie-in fiction after his main run of Black Library and Judge Anderson work.