Jonathan L. Howard

Jonathan L. Howard is a British writer and game designer, known mainly for his novels about Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. He lives with his wife and daughter near Bristol.

Work

Howard worked as scriptwriter and video game writer since the early 1990s, and co-wrote the Broken Sword series of games, among others. He came to readers' attention with his series of black comedy novels about the necromancer Johannes Cabal.

Other works include the Russalka Chronicles, a series of young adult submarine warfare science fiction novels. Set on the ocean planet Russalka, named after the mythical mermaid by its Russian colonists, they follow young civilian submariner Katya Kuriakova as she lives through a time of increasing conflict between the colonists' two main factions and the remnants of a failed Terran invasion. The first novel, Katya's World (2012) was well received by critics, with Publishers Weekly noting its "strong cast and a believable sense of danger", and io9 highlighting that, unusually for young-adult fiction, the novel featured a broad cast of competent adult supporting characters and refrained from giving the protagonist a romantic interest.

He also wrote the series "Goon Squad" an ongoing episodic story that unfolds in monthly issues. It is set in an alternate version of Manchester where the existence of “special talents”—people who possess unique powers or abilities—has been public knowledge since the 1940s. The series follows The Goon Squad, a team of special talents who work for the police to catch high-ranking criminals. The series started in January 2014, took a hiatus in 2015 and continued in January 2016. The last installment ("The End of the Year Show") was released in 2016. However, the story was left at a cliffhanger so there is the possibility of a continuation.

Howard is also a writer of the computer game Atomfall (Rebellion Developments, 2025). He wrote a related comic strip about the game which appeared in the Judge Dredd Megazine as part of the marketing of the game.