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 A Thousand Sons, the first Black Library book to hit the New York Times Bestseller list, the infamous short story The Last Church. On the other hand, he did write The Reflection Crack'd, which had Fabius Bile rape Fulgrim with an iron rod. So fail there. Oh, and Codex: Black Templars.

He also wrote the Sigmar novel, the third novel of which gives a brief preview of the origin story of Morkar the Uniter. Very nice Mr McNeill, now write that novel.

Differences with Matt Ward

He's taller and has less hair than Ward. Also, he wrote the Ultramarines from the perspective of a novellist, so they're not simply Mary Sues. Ward's inability to stop jerking off over the Smurfs leads him to depict them as caricatures of themselves that can do no wrong, whereas McNeil is a more competent writer who's willing to let the Ultramarines have flaws without making them look like absolute failures.