Ben Templesmith may not have invented the vampire genre, but he sure caught the wave. Over the past few years, the undead have invaded pop culture in full force—and just like an actual plague, there’s not much that can be done to contain it.

A decade ago, Templesmith was a relatively unknown artist in the land Down Under. He graduated from Curtain University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia in 1998 and made a living as a local freelance illustrator for a few years after that. But in 2002, he secured his first gig in American comics working on Hellspawn with a relatively unknown writer named Steve Niles.

Niles and Templesmith worked well together and later that year, the duo launched a threeissue mini-series called 30 Days of Night—and the vampire craze blew up. Each issue sold out one print run after another, and they began fetching insane amounts of money when they showed up on eBay. The series put both creators on the map, spawning numerous sequels and a feature film.

Since then, Templesmith has been working on the Image Comics series Fell with Warren Ellis, and writing and illustrating his own series Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse. He’s been nominated for an Eisner Award four years in a row, and received an International Horror Guild Award nomination in 2008. He’ll be in Salt Lake City signing (according to his Website) “comics, ladies’ boobs and small children” this Saturday for Black Cat Comics’ five-year anniversary.

Ben Templesmith @ Black Cat Comics 2261 S. Highland Dr. Suite A, 801-461-4228, Saturday, May 9, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. BlackCat- Comics.com