A HOLIDAY BREAK

Taking a social media break for the holidays. See you in January. 

Happy holidays to all, whatever you choose to celebrate. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Here's to a kind, compassionate 2026. God knows we need it.

A LITTLE MORE FROM BRAZIL

The fine folks at my Brazilian publisher, Pipoca & Nanquin, have posted an interview I did with the amazing Alexandre Callari at CCXP—and you can watch it below. Enjoy and, once again, happiest of holidays to you all!

THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

Yes, it's our annual Creation Point tradition when, born out of my inordinate love for this heart-filling, soul-transforming, sacred and transcendent season, I present a short Christmas tale I wrote called The Truth About Santa Claus. This, as always, is my way of wishing all of you the happiest of holidays, the merriest of Christmases. 



May the new year bring some much needed kindness, compassion, wisdom, and love to this world. 

Happy! Merry!

THE TRUTH ABOUT

SANTA CLAUS

“THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS!”

He’d been thinking about it for days—ever since he heard Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo announce it on the school bus—and he didn’t believe a word of it, not one word. (Well, maybe ONE.) But Cody had to be sure, absolutely, positively sure—

—and that’s why he was hiding behind the couch at midnight on Christmas Eve.

His mother was there, asleep in his dad’s old easy chair, the reds and blues of the Christmas tree lights making her look peaceful and happy and impossibly young.

The tree, by the way, had not ONE SINGLE PRESENT underneath it.

That didn’t make sense. If there WAS no Santa Claus, if his mother was the one who bought the presents, wrapped the presents, stacked them under the tree, then how come she hadn’t done it? How come she wasn’t awake RIGHT NOW arranging them all?

He got scared. Maybe there wasn’t going to BE a Christmas this year. Maybe Mom had lost her job and they didn’t have any money and so she COULDN’T buy him any presents and—

And then Cody glanced over at the windows and noticed that it was snowing.

Or was it?

If that was snow, it was the WHITEST snow he’d ever seen. It was snow as bright as moonbeams, as bright as sunlight, as bright as...

Stardust.

Quickly, but quietly (he didn’t want to wake his mother), he scurried to the window and looked out.

It was coming down and coming down and COMING DOWN all across town, whirling and whipping, spinning and gyrating, out of the night sky. Glowing so brightly that it almost hurt his eyes to look at it. And Cody saw that it certainly wasn’t snow, and it absolutely wasn’t rain, it wasn’t ANYTHING he’d ever seen before. But each drop, no...each flake, no... each BALL of glowing WHATEVER IT WAS, seemed to pulse and spin, soar and vibrate, as if it were alive.

And the stuff, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS (and he knew now that it was magic. He just KNEW), wasn’t collecting on the streets, wasn’t piling up on the rooftops. It was MELTING INTO (that’s the only way he could put it: MELTING INTO) every house (no matter how small) and apartment building (no matter how big).

EVERY house and apartment building.

EVERY.

He looked up.

And there it was: coming RIGHT THROUGH THE CEILING of Apartment 3F, HIS apartment, swirling, like a tornado of light, around the chandelier and then down, down, down—

—STRAIGHT FOR HIS MOTHER.

At first he almost yelled out a warning, “Mom! Wake up! MOM!” But something made him stop.

Instead of yelling he ducked back behind the couch and watched, eyes peering over the top.

Watched as the light-tornado wheeled around his mother, so fast, so bright, that he could hardly even SEE her. But he COULD see her. Most of her, anyway.

And what he SAW...

The light poured in through the top of her head, through her eyes, through her chest, through her toes. It lifted her up—still sleeping!—and carried her out of her chair and across the room. And as she floated—

—she started to change:

Her hair became white, her nose became red, her belly ballooned like the most pregnant woman in the history of the world. Her feet grew boots, her head grew a hat, her nightgown grew fur. An overstuffed sack sprouted, like a lumpy angel’s wing, from her shoulder. And then—

AndthenandthenandTHEN, it wasn’t his mother there at all, it was him, it was SANTA CLAUS! STANDING RIGHT THERE IN CODY’S LIVING ROOM! Santa Claus who, with a laugh (exactly like the laugh Cody always knew he had, only better) and a twinkle in his eyes (exactly like the twinkle he’d always imagined, ONLY BETTER) reached into his sack and pulled out package after package, present after present, and placed them, carefully, like some Great Artist contemplating his masterpiece, under the tree.

When he was done, Santa Claus stood there, grinning and shaking his head, as if he couldn’t BELIEVE what a beautiful tree this was, how wonderful the presents looked beneath it. As if this moment was the greatest moment in the history of Christmas, as if this apartment was the only place in all the universes that such a Christmas could ever POSSIBLY happen.

And then the MOST amazing thing happened:

Santa Claus turned.

He turned slowly. So slowly Cody couldn’t even tell at first that he was moving at all. And—slowly, SLOWLY—those twinkling eyes, that Smile of smiles, fixed itself on the two boy-eyes peering, in wonder, over the top of the couch.

And what Cody felt then he could never really say: only that it was better than any present anyone could ever get. Only that it made his heart so warm it melted like magical WHATEVER IT WAS, trickling down through his whole body. Only that it made him want to reach out his arms and hug Santa Claus, hug his mother, hug his father (and FORGIVE him too, for running out on them) and his aunts and uncles and cousins (even his Cousin Erskine who was SUCH a pain) and Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo (who really wasn’t so bad most of the time) and all his friends and teachers and the kid in his karate class who always smelled SO BAD and, embarrassing as it sounds, it made him want to hug everyone and everything in the whole world including rabbits and snakes and trees and lizards and grass and lions and mountains and, yes, the EARTH HERSELF.

Cody wanted to hold that gaze, to keep his eyes locked on Santa’s, forever. (Or longer, if he could.) Wanted to swim in that incredible feeling, drown in it, till GOD HIMSELF came down to say: “Enough!”

Except that he blinked. Just once. But in that wink of an eye, Santa was gone. Cody’s mother was asleep in the chair again and, for one terrible moment, the boy thought that the whole thing must have been a dream.

Except, under the tree: THERE WERE THE PRESENTS.

Except, out the window: THERE WAS THE SNOW, the rain, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS, shooting up, like a blizzard in reverse, from every house, every apartment building. Shooting up into the heavens, gathering together like a fireball, like a white-hot comet—

—and fading away into the night: going, going...

Gone.

Without so much as a tinkling sleigh-bell or a “Ho-ho-ho.”

Not that it mattered.

Cody looked at his mom.

Cody kissed her.

“I love you,” he said. And he was crying. Happy tears. Christmas tears. Like moonbeams, like sunlight. Like stardust.

Mom stirred in the chair, smiled the softest sweetest smile Cody had ever seen. “I love you, too,” she said.

And then she drifted back to sleep.

Cody sat at her feet, warming himself, warming his SOUL, by the lights of the tree.

And soon, he, too, was drifting off to sleep. And as he drifted, a wonderful thought rose up, like a balloon, inside him. Rose, then POPPED—spreading the thought to every corner of his mind. Giving him great comfort. Great delight:

“One day,” the thought whispered, “when you’re all grown-up, when you have children of your own. ONE DAY,” the thought went on...

“It will be YOUR TURN.”

Merry Christmas.

©copyright 2026 J.M. DeMatteis

BRAZIL!

Back from Brazil, jet lagged and very grateful for the incredible experience my wife and I had at the CCXP convention, which just may be the biggest convention in the world (yes, even bigger than San Diego). Huge thanks to the amazing Ivan Costa and his incredible, generous staff...Alexandre, Daniel, and Bruno of Pipoca & Nanquim (publishers of Moonshadow and Blood), who were such warmhearted hosts...and, most of all, to the extraordinary Brazilian fans, whose enthusiasm, sincerity, and big hearts touched us deeply. A magical trip!

Here's a video from my writing masterlcass. You can find many more CCXP videos over at my Youtube channel. Aproveitar!

A TRIBUTE TO KEITH

I joined the fine folks at the Scary Stuff podcast to talk, in depth, about my longtime collaboration with Keith Giffen, with a special focus on our 1987 Doctor Fate mini-series. The podcast also features celebrated horror novelist, and Giffen pal/collaborator, Brian Keene. If you're a Giffen fan, I think you'll enjoy this. You can listen right here.

A MARVEL REUNION

Thanks to the fine folks at the Capes and Lunatics podcast, I got to have a fun chat with longtime Marvel writer and editor D.G. Chichester, catching up for the first time in many years. We talked about working on Spider-Man and Daredevil, the early days of Epic Comics, the ups and downs of the freelance life, and other things. Enjoy!

THRILLS!

Live now on Kickstarter: A great new collection of short fiction, featuring stories by Steven Grant, Paul Kupperberg, Alisa Kwitney, some guy named DeMatteis...and many more. Edited by my old pal Bob Greenberger. Come join us for some thrilling adventures!

MEHER BABA, MOON KNIGHT, AND MISQUOTES

I recently received copies of a new Moon Knight Epic Collection that included my short run on the title. Although these stories were collected fairly recently in an omnibus edition, I hadn’t actually looked at the stories since I wrote them, back in the early nineties. When I flipped the new collection open to the first page of the first story, my heart sank a little because I suddenly remembered a massive goof that made its way into the story. And, as you’ll see, it was all my fault.  But let’s go back to the beginning:

In 1991, when Marvel editor—and all around great guy—Danny Fingeroth invited me to take over the ongoing Moon Knight series, I took a deep dive into the character’s history (I wasn’t overly familiar with MK, although I thought he had one of the coolest costumes in comics). During that deep dive, one Moon Knight antagonist in particular jumped out at me, a conflicted vigilante—created by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz—named Stained Glass Scarlet. I soon came up with the basis of a storyline called “Scarlet Redemption” and set to work.

As the title suggests, the theme of this six issue arc was absolution, second chances; the core idea being that no one, whatever their flaws, whatever their sins, is ultimately beyond redemption. In order to underscore that, I began the story with a quote from my spiritual master, Avatar Meher Baba (and if you want a little background on my connection to Meher Baba, read this):

“Saints are God’s assets and sinners are His liabilities. God, the infinite source of wisdom and justice, goes on eternally turning His liabilities into assets.”

Perfectly fits the theme, right?

I wrote the first issue script, proofed it, sent it off to Mr. Fingeroth, and, when the book (beautifully illustrated by penciler Ron Garney and inker Tom Palmer) was lettered, went over it with Danny to ensure the script was clear and make any necessary last minute changes.  We locked it and Moon Knight #26 went off to the printer.

Some time later, Danny gave me what’s called a make-ready:  a copy of the final printed comic, minus the cover, which the editor would get before the book hit the shops. I took the make-ready home, stretched out in bed, and started to read.  What I saw on page one was this:

“Saints are God’s assets and sinners are His liabilities.  God, the infinite source of wisdom and justice, goes on eternally turning His assets into liabilities.” 

Somehow, in transcribing the quote, I’d flipped the words “assets” and “liabilities,” completely transforming, and corrupting, the meaning of the quote—and I hadn’t noticed till I laid eyes on the printed book. (It’s a strange phenomenon that I’ve experienced multiple times: I can proof a script over and over and then, when the printed book is in my hand, a glaring error immediately jumps out at me with a mocking leer.)

To say I was devastated is a massive understatement. I had misquoted my own spiritual master, turned His words upside down—upending the theme of my story in the process—and it was now in print for thousands of people to see and misinterpret! I felt like a total idiot, and, given my nature, would have tortured myself about it for days (perhaps months) had I not suddenly realized that the date was April 1st: April Fool’s Day. A perfect day for me to feel like a fool and for Meher Baba to have a gentle laugh at my expense. Somehow, that knowledge dissolved my misery and I was able to laugh at the situation—and myself. 

It was too late to fix that misquote, but I made sure to include the actual quote on the next letters page, along with an apology to the Meher Baba community, seeking my own second chance, my own comic book redemption, in the process. (I was, apparently, living out the theme of the story, albeit in a far less melodramatic fashion.) 

I’d forgotten about the incident till flipping open that Epic Collection brought it all roaring back. A powerful reminder that, despite our best efforts, being human means we screw up, we fail, we fall on our faces—and that the Universe is always there, sometimes with a roar of April Fool’s Day laughter, to forgive us. 

Thanks, Baba.   

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM

The third issue of Spider-Man '94 is out next week. AIPT has a preview and you can find it here. You can also check out a few pages below. Story by yours truly, art by Jim Towe, color by Jim Campbell, lettering by Joe Caramagna—and the whole shebang is overseen by our amazing editor, Danny Khazem. Enjoy!

AN UNLIMITED RETURN

Had a fun reunion with my old friend, writer/producer Stan Berkowitz, talking about our Justice League Unlimited episode "The Return" with our charming hosts Susan (Wonder Woman) Eisenberg and James Enstall. You can listen to the Justice League Revisited podcast right here.

BOO!

Happy Halloween! Before Orson Welles produced his classic "War of the Worlds" radio drama, he launched the Mercury Theater with this memorable production of "Dracula." Enjoy...and don't eat too much candy today!

AUSTRALIAN SIGNALS

I took a (cyber) trip to Australia to talk to David Finn of the Signal of Doom podcast about John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan...and, oh yeah, comic books. You can listen to it right here.

BLAZING SKULLS

There's a new Marvel Masterworks collecting the Ghost Rider run I did with artist/co-plotter (and all around great guy) Bob Budiansky. I wrote an introduction to the collection and you can read it below. (Seems appropriate just a few days before Halloween, doesn't it?)

In the early 1980s, not long after I’d started working for Marvel Comics, my phone rang and it was Tom DeFalco—soon to be not just one of my favorite editors but favorite people—asking if I wanted to take over the writing duties on the Ghost Rider book from the great Roger Stern. My answer, unsurprisingly, was a wildly enthusiastic “Yes!”—not so much because I loved Ghost Rider (if I was making a list of my favorite Marvel characters at the time, GR would have been near the bottom. A guy with a flaming head who rides a motorcycle? It just didn’t appeal) but because, as a freelancer, always on the lookout for more work, always eager for new challenges, the offer of another regular gig was too good to pass up. (I probably would have responded with an equally-enthusiastic “Yes!” if Tom had offered me Millie the Model.) I’d already auditioned for Tom, working on a couple of GR fill-ins (featured in the previous Ghost Rider Masterworks) illustrated by my Defenders collaborator, the late, great Don Perlin, and I assume that’s what landed me the gig. But doing a few fill-ins and signing up for a lengthy run are two very different things.  

 

As mentioned, I wasn’t a massive Ghost Rider fan. Oh, I’d read the early issues, and I was especially enamored of the stories illustrated by one of the true masters of the form, Mike Ploog (what a thrill it was, many years later, to collaborate with Mr. P on Abadazad and The Stardust Kid), but I hadn’t really followed Johnny Blaze’s adventures after that—so I took a deep dive into the recent issues by Stern and Bob Budiansky. Roger, of course, never failed to deliver an engaging story. Budiansky’s work was new to me, but his ability to provide crystal clear storytelling and expressive emotions—all wrapped in the requisite shadows, fog and bone-chilling mood required for a book steeped in the supernatural—was impressive.

 

Still, Ghost Rider was, like many a Marvel title in the early 70s, when the tight grip of the Comics Code had been considerably loosened, a horror book, and I wasn’t exactly a horror enthusiast: Oh, I’d watched all the requisite movies as a kid—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man and the rest (it probably says a lot about me that, growing up, my favorite spooky movie wasn’t any of those but the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which played endlessly on local New York television)—but my taste in the fantastic ran more to tales of everyday people whose lives take a left turn into the mysterious and magical: I was more a child of Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling than Bram Stoker and Stephen King (both of whom I’d read and enjoyed). But during my apprenticeship at DC Comics—where I broke into the business writing for their line of monster-centric anthology comics—I discovered that I had a knack for the horrific. I wrote numerous tales of blood-suckers and beasts, creating the ongoing I…Vampire and Creature Commandos features along the way. And I saw that the line between Serling and Stoker was thinner than I’d imagined. Horror didn’t have to be in your face blood and gore (although a good shock now and then could serve the story well), it could be a doorway into the unexplored shadows within the human psyche and the human heart. I was surprised to discover how at home I was in those shadows, with those creatures of the night.

 

I shouldn’t have been: I’ve always been fascinated by duality, in the world and, more significantly, in each of us. “Good and evil,” Dostoyevsky wrote, “are so monstrously mixed up in man.” All of us contain the purest of angels and the most maniacal of demons, the spires of Heaven and the pits of Hell, and our lives can often be a tug of war between those twin forces, as we seek a way to balance and, perhaps, transcend them. Tales of the supernatural offer an opportunity to literalize that war, and explore the paradoxes within the duality that so obsessed me: Even a demon has an angel in their heart somewhere, and even angels might be tempted by the darkness. That’s a formula for compelling stories, and a character like Johnny Blaze, who is literally at war with his inner demon, was—in the masterful hands of Stern and Budiansky—a genuinely compelling character.

 

Reading through the terrific work that Roger and Bob had done together—I couldn’t have asked for a better foundation to build my stories on—I saw that the relationship between Blaze and the demon Zarathos (a name Bob and I cooked up together. More on that later) was a doorway into both the psychological and spiritual aspects of our nature. All the themes I loved, as both a writer and a human being, were there for exploration. And, suddenly, I wasn’t just excited by the opportunity of a new gig, I was excited by the metaphysical worlds I could explore, the intriguing tales I could tell. 

 

I was now officially a Ghost Rider fan. 

 

All very heady and philosophical, right? But mainstream comics also have to offer big action and larger than life characters. The tug of war between Blaze and Zarathos supplied the ruminative meat, but Blaze’s supporting cast, from the denizens of the Quentin Carnival to the strange and deadly antagonists who rose up to challenge the Ghost Rider, provided the energy and fun.  Adding to that fun was the fact that Bob Budiansky and I were co-plotting the book. I was a little cautious at first, I’d never co-plotted with an artist before, but I soon learned that Bob has a first-rate sense of story—as he later proved with memorable runs writing Transformers and Sleepwalker—and, within our first few issues, it became clear that we shared the creative chemistry absolutely necessary for a comic book to work. That chemistry can’t be created, it can’t be forced: It’s either there or it’s not. I’ve been in situations where I’ve written a solid script, the artist has done excellent work, and yet the final story falls flat. It’s missing some spark, some creative combustion that’s beyond words. Never a problem with Budiansky.

Working on Ghost Rider with Bob was a wonderful experience. No egos, no arguments: We’d get on the phone and spend an hour or two throwing around ideas, I’d go off and expand those ideas into a fully fleshed out plot, Bob would pencil the story, bringing it to life in his unique and powerful way, after which I’d supply the finished script. It was a joyful partnership—I don’t recall any major disagreements along the way—and Bob and I soon became not just collaborators, but friends.

 

Together we deepened the Ghost Rider mythology, digging into the how and why of the nameless demon who lived inside Johnny Blaze (he wasn’t anonymous for long: I still have a clear memory of the two of us bouncing names back and forth, like a game of tennis, till we came up with Zarathos)…created the soulless man named Centurious, who proved pivotal to Johnny’s story, both past and future…set Blaze against the tragic, tormented Steel Wind and the mysterious Sin Eater…developed the manipulative Freakmaster (a character mentioned, but never clearly seen, during Roger’s run)…and brought in classic Marvel characters like Mephisto and Nightmare. One of my favorite stories in this collection is GR #78, “The Empire of Sleep,” in which the Lord of the Dream Dimension takes us on a tour of every dark corner in Blaze’s psyche. It also features one of the oddest scenes I’ve ever written (and one I still love): Doctor Strange, Doctor Druid, and Daimon Hellstrom engaged in a heated game of jacks. Another of my favorites in this collection, Ghost Rider #76, was plotted and drawn by Don Perlin, who came up with an idea that was simple, exciting, and emotionally powerful: Johnny Blaze and Zarathos—now separated by Mephisto—in a race for their ultimate freedom, riding motorcycles, side by side, through the bowels of Hell.

Budiansky and I were zooming along at high speeds, too, but our collaborative motorcycle soon slammed into a brick wall when word came down from On High that Ghost Rider was cancelled. (In those days at Marvel, if a book dipped below 100,000 copies a month, it was on the chopping block. Today, a book consistently selling in the 90,000 range, as GR did, would be a runaway best seller.) But there was good news, too: We were given significant advance notice, allowing us the time to create a Grand Finale that would write an end to the saga of Johnny Blaze and Zarathos, giving Johnny and his true love, Roxanne Simpson, the “happily ever after” we thought they deserved. Bob and I were determined to complete Johnny’s tale in a way that respected the character and his history and I think the two-part tale in Ghost Rider #80 and 81 did just that. A definitive conclusion is something that rarely happens in comics and I remain grateful we were given the chance. 

 

It's astonishing to me that our Ghost Rider run is now more than forty years old—“time,” as Bob Dylan observed, “is a jet plane, it moves too fast”—and, despite the fact that comics have jumped through many stylistic hoops since the early 80s, I hope these stories still entertain, excite, and perhaps enlighten just a little. One thing time hasn’t changed: the warm memories of working with Tom D and Bob (and a tip of the hat to inkers Dave Simons and Kevin Zuban and letterers Joe Rosen and Diana Albers, all of whom added immeasurably to these tales). And deep thanks to Johnny Blaze and Zarathos for allowing us to hop onto their flaming motorcycle. 

 

It was a quite a ride.

SEND IN THE CLONES

Another clip from the recent St. Louis Galaxycon, this time from a Spider-Man panel: First comes a question about the 2023 mini-series Spider-Man: The Lost Hunt—and then we dive into the origins of the controversial Clone Saga. That's John Beatty, Bob Hall, Christopher Priest, and moderator Chris Irving on the panel with me.

HAIL GIFFEN!

Here's a little clip from a Justice League panel at the recent St. Louis Galaxycon, where I sing the praises of the late, and truly great, Keith Giffen. On the panel with me are Kevin Maguire, Alan Davis, Christopher Priest, and our host, Chris Irving.

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET

Here's another new interview for you: This time I'm talking all things Superman (and much more!) with the fine folks who host the Men of Steel podcast. Up, up, and away!

INTO THE OMNIVERSE

I chat with one of my favorite podcasters, the erudite Eric Anthony of the Omniverse Comics Guide podcast, about...many things—and you can listen below.

BROOKLYN DREAMING

Tomorrow sees the release of Dark Horse's new hardcover edition of Brooklyn Dreams. I wrote an introduction for the occasion and you can read it below.

In the mid-1980’s, I was writing a very strange, and deeply personal, space saga called Moonshadow for Marvel Comics’ groundbreaking Epic imprint.  Moonshadow was the project that cracked me open as a writer, allowing me to step outside the confines of the Marvel and DC universes and be myself.  For the first time I wasn’t “writing comic books,” I was just writing, exactly the way I wanted to, telling exactly the story I wanted to.

 

Moonshadow was, in many ways, an autobiographical work, but the autobiography was filtered through the phantasmagoria of Moon’s adventures.  It was my life, shoved into the deepest waters of my unconscious and then yanked up from the depths:  flapping like a fish, dripping with imagination and allegory.  One of the reasons I recast my life as a work of fantasy was because I always viewed existence itself as a work of fantasy.  I believed then—and believe even more now—that the best way to truly capture this fathomless, hallucinatory, profound, absurd and joyfully sacred thing we call Life is through stories of the fantastic.  So-called “realistic fiction” often spends so much time dwelling on the details of the “real world” (something I maintain doesn’t even exist), studying that ashtray in the corner of the room or that childhood trauma in the corner of the mind, that it misses the infinite layers and levels of psychic and spiritual wonder we walk through, and interact with, every day.  Put simply:  If life is a dream—and I believe it is—you’d better write a dream.  If life is a fairy tale—and, again, I believe it is—then you’d better write a fairy tale. 

 

So why, then, did I write Brooklyn Dreams?  It, after all, presents itself as the true-life adventures of a thinly-veiled version of myself, struggling through adolescence amidst the chaos and euphoria of an extraordinarily dysfunctional Brooklyn family:  not a spaceship, ghost, magic book or super-hero in sight.

 

Despite my belief that tales of the fantastic are often the best doorways into the truth of our lives, I’m a great admirer of authors who can create stories about the allegedly real and then push so deep into the soil of that world that they come out the other end in Wonderland.  My literary hero, Dostoyevsky, could do that.  J.D. Salinger.  Isaac Bashevis Singer.  And, of course, my other literary hero, Ray Bradbury.  What?  You say Bradbury is a science-fiction writer?  Well, yes, he’s been justifiably celebrated for his extraordinary, and extraordinarily poetic, tales of outer and inner space; but my favorite Bradbury book, one of my favorite books of all time, is Dandelion Wine:  a simple novel that tells the simple tale of a single summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding.  Only it’s not simple:  Bradbury fixes his X-ray eyes on the mundane aspects of Doug’s life, sees right through them and exposes the magic and wonder, the cosmic terror and cosmic joy, hiding beneath the surface.

 

As I finished work on the final issue of Moonshadow, I wondered if I could do the same with a coming-of-age saga of my own. 

 

Of course, I didn’t grow up in the well-scrubbed, All American Green Town of Bradbury’s youth.  I grew up in the far noisier, messier and wildly unstable terrain of Brooklyn, New York, in an era—the late 1960’s and early 1970’s—when questioning the nature of reality was the order of the day.  As much as I adore Dandelion Wine—it’s forever imprinted on my consciousness, swimming in my bloodstream—I saw my gestating story as a fusion of Woody Allen’s Radio Days and Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.  Mel Brooks meets Be Here Now.

 

I’d already attempted something like it, albeit on a small scale, with Moonshadow.  Every issue included sequences that I referred to as “Brooklyn Interludes”:  stories—some fabricated, some pulled directly from my own experiences, most of them a collision of the two—that detailed the life of Moon’s mother, Sheila Fay “Sunflower” Bernbaum.  I loved writing those sequences, loved exploring the world of Sheila’s Brooklyn childhood, conjuring the spirits of her lunatic relatives.  With Brooklyn Dreams I wanted to bring my own childhood, my own lunatic relatives, directly onto the stage, turning those interludes into the main act.  Using the eyes of youth to expose the miracles hidden beneath the Brooklyn streets.   

 

Whether I succeeded or failed is up to the reader to decide.  One thing I think is beyond dispute, though, is the brilliance of Glenn Barr’s illustrations.  I remember the book’s original editor, Mark Nevelow (who later turned the project over to Andy Helfer and Margaret Clark) showing me Glenn’s samples and my astonishment as I realized that this was the style I’d been envisioning for Brooklyn Dreams all along.  I’d been seeing pictures in my head and there they were, in front of me:  I knew immediately that I’d found my artist. 

 

No matter what I asked of Glenn—and I asked plenty—he always rose to the challenge and, more often than not, not only met it but transcended it.  His work was a breathtaking mixture of realism and cartoon, New York apartment buildings and surreal inner landscapes.  Somehow—and in the end, it’s the will of the gods, we really had nothing to do with it—Glenn and I fused our visions seamlessly and the result was one of the most satisfying collaborations of my career.  (A fellow writer once told me that he’d always believed that the best graphic novels were birthed by a single creator, that a writer-artist team could never approach that kind of unified vision.  Brooklyn Dreams changed his mind.  And that’s a compliment I still treasure.)  Writing the original four-volume series was both exhilarating and terrifying:  I’d never exposed myself so nakedly in my work and I often felt like I was tottering on a high-wire, one trembling step away from falling.  But, with a little luck and grace—and the safety net of Glenn’s illustrations—I made it across to the other side.

 

Every writer has favorite literary children.  Looking back over a more than forty year career, I can think of two or three other works that mean as much to me as Brooklyn Dreams.  I can’t think of any that mean more.  

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

COSMIC CURMUDGEON: IN PRAISE OF KEITH GIFFEN

The Hero Squared Complete Collection is out now from Boom! Studios and I wrote an introduction—singing the praises of my much-missed friend and collaborator Keith Giffen—that you can read below.

It’s been nearly two years since he passed away, but I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Keith Giffen is gone. Keith had his share of health issues in his later years, but he was such a feisty, tenacious guy I was sure he’d outlive us all. “Someday,” I once told him, “the Earth will be an apocalyptic hellhole, all of humanity will be gone, but you’ll still be here, sitting in the rubble, smoking a cigarette.”  

Keith, as anyone who worked with him can attest, was one of the most brilliantly creative humans ever to work in comics, the Jack Kirby of my generation of creators. He was a curmudgeon with a heart of gold. An extraordinarily generous collaborator. And, as my wife observed, “He was like a character out of a Keith Giffen story.”

 

The curmudgeon part was half-real/half-performance art. (He could launch into cynical and hilarious monologues about the state of the world that were as good as anything you could find on an HBO comedy special.) The heart of gold was evidenced by his generosity to his friends in the business: Keith was the kind of guy who—if he heard you were hurting for work—would pick up the phone, call an editor, and say, “Hey! Why aren’t you using so-and-so? What’s your problem? Give ‘em work!” He was also a champion of new talent, happy to kick open doors of opportunity— that might otherwise have proved immovable—on their behalf.

 

We were thrown together on our original Justice League run (and thanks to our brilliant editor Andy Helfer for doing the throwing) and the way we worked on JLI was pretty much how we continued to do it straight through to the end: Keith would create the plot—he’d draw them out, crafting little mini-comics, each one a masterclass in visual storytelling—after which I’d sit down to dialogue, often writing the first thing that came into my head. Sometimes what I wrote hewed closely to Keith’s story and sometimes I created entirely new plot lines and character relationships that had nothing to do with what Keith had done.

Someone else might have taken offense—“How dare you alter my brilliant creative vision?!”—but Keith always encouraged me to follow my muse. He, in turn, would build on what I’d done, always surprising me with his extraordinary leaps of imagination. It was like a game of tennis: We’d hit the ball back and forth and, as we played, the stories evolved into something more than either of us could have ever achieved on our own. I don’t know if that kind of creative relationship would work for other people, but it certainly worked for us, pushing us both to be better. 

Despite the fact that JLI and its many spin-offs were a huge success, I don’t think any of us—including the inimitable Kevin Maguire, whose art was so important to our initial success—realized just how special our creative union was. It was another job—a fun job, but a job nonetheless—and, when our League ran out of steam after five years, we moved on and didn’t look back.

 

It wasn’t until ten years later—when Keith, Kevin, and I reunited for our Eisner-winning Formerly Known As The Justice League—that we all went, “Hey…we’ve got something special here.” The three of us did more Justice League together, as well as a short Metal Men run I’m extremely fond of, and a Defenders mini-series for Marvel.

Keith and I made sure to keep working together with regularity after that, right through to our Scooby Apocalypse series that ended in 2019. (It wasn’t the project that mattered most to me when I worked with GIffen, it was the collaboration itself. I would never have done a Scooby Doo series with anyone else: Scooby Apocalypse evolved into a gig that I absolutely loved and that’s all down to the fun the two of us had putting it together.) We created a significant body of work over the course of thirty-plus years, but my favorite Giffen-DeMatteis collaboration remains the book you’re holding in your hands right now: Hero Squared.

 

The original idea for Hero Squared was Keith’s, but, once I’d enthusiastically signed on, we talked regularly, and in-depth, about the series, discussing the characters, the stories, where we wanted them to go; but, because our approach remained as anarchic as it was back in the Justice League days, our conversations didn’t necessarily reflect what ended up on the page. Once Keith started plotting (and, for part of H2’s run, he dispatched with the mini-comics and wrote what was, essentially, a guide draft. I eventually convinced him to go back to the mini-comics because I found that method more liberating), the final product might have nothing to do with what we’d talked about. I, in turn, continued my tradition of playing with the scripts: adding layers to our oddball cast of characters, taking the stories in new, unexpected directions. (Let’s have a round of applause for Joe Abraham, Nate Watson, and the other gifted artists who helped bring the Hero Squared universe to life. And a heartfelt tip of the hat to Boom! founder Ross Richie who made it all possible.)

As the years passed, a funny thing happened: This guy who was a favorite collaborator became more than that. He became a friend. Sure, we’d get on the phone every week or so to discuss the stories we were working on, but we’d also talk about our families, politics, the ups and downs (and ups and downs and ups and downs) of the freelance life. In the pre-Covid years, I saw Keith regularly at conventions, often sitting next to him, passing Giffen-DeMatteis issues back and forth between us for signing, and chatting away.

The truth is, if Keith and I had met out in the so-called Real World, I don’t think we would have ever become friends—we were very different people—but coming together creatively opened the door for us to come together as human beings. And I’m so very grateful for that. (Thanks, Andy.)

When people ask me what it was like to work with Giffen, one story always comes to mind. I’ve told it before—apologies if you’ve heard it—but it really defines the man. It was the late 1980’s. We were standing in the halls of DC Comics on a Friday, Keith telling me his idea for a new story: the secret origin of one of our most ridiculous characters, the brain-dead, canine Green Lantern named G’nort. Keith spent five or ten minutes spinning the entire tale, in detail. You could see he was excited. He liked this wonderfully goofy story and he wanted to do it—just the way he’d envisioned it. The problem was, I didn’t like it. And I told him I didn’t.

Did Keith get angry? Did he tell me I was a talentless jackass who had no right passing judgment on his incandescent genius? No. He just looked at me for a second, took a breath, shrugged—and then launched into an entirely new origin of G’nort, which he created on the spot. And it was perfect. I can’t think of many people who could switch creative gears like that, but Keith had more raw creativity than just about anyone I’ve ever known: a tsunami of stories and characters and odd, brilliant notions. A one-of-a-kind mad genius whose seismic impact on the comic book industry will be felt for years to come.

Wherever in the multiverse you are, Mr. Giffen, know that you are well-remembered. And sorely missed.

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis