He soon started writing Captain Britain, helping to revamp the character with Paul Neary and Alan Davis in Marvel Superheroes issue #377.
He says it was based on 616, a variation on the Number of the Beast, because "Dave Thorpe, who wasn't a fan of the modern superhero genre, was responsible for most of the more madcap or satirical elements — such as recording his opinion of the Marvel Universe with the designation 616.
A novella, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect, was published in 1988 by Hooligan Press, with illustrations by comics artists Simon Bisley, Brian Bolland, Brett Ewins, Duncan Fegredo, Rian Hughes, Lin Jammett, Pete Mastin, Dave McKean, Savage Pencil, Ed Pinsent and Bryan Talbot.
Thorpe conceived, commissioned, and edited a series of titles on behalf of Macdonald-Futura matching best-selling literary authors with notable comics artists, a project forced to be abandoned upon the suicide of that publisher's owner, Kevin Maxwell.
In the 1990s, until 1999, Thorpe founded and managed the Publications arm of the Centre for Alternative Technology, which commissioned and published approximately 90 titles under his supervision.
David Thorpe is a founding member of the One Planet Council (2014), Special Consultant on Sustainable Cities Collective, and was from 2000–2013 the (part-time) News Editor of Energy and Environmental Management magazine, on which website he also had a weekly op-ed column.