Graham McNeill

A writer for the Black Library.

Not Dan Abnett, but forms the Holy Trinity of Black Library writers with him and Sandy Mitchell, ( Which makes ADB the holy child or something )

Wrote the Ultramarines novels and some Iron Warriors shit. When he's writing them, the Ultramarines are not just tolerable but actually awesome.

He's also written several Horus Heresy books, including the infamous short story The Last Church.

Differences with Matt Ward

Like our spiritual liege Matt Ward, Graham McNeill is a fan of the Ultramarines. While you would expect that this would be fail, McNeill's writting not only makes it tolerable, but down right awesome. What makes McNeill a better writer than Ward is a simple overriding principle: Graham McNeill does not write the Ultramarines as flawless Mary Sues. In fact, Uriel Ventris, the protagonist of McNeill's Ultramarines series, has Uriel screw up massively in every book. His first campaign as a Captain saw Uriel release the Nightbringer on the galaxy, which had fans assuming that the Ultramarines had just damned the entire galaxy to a slow, agonizing death. The revelation that the C'tan are now shards limits this somewhat, but Ventris still probably doomed most of the Ultima Segmentum to a horrible death.