END OF AN ERA

The word is out (via The Hollywood Reporter) that Marvel Comics is leaving New York and moving to Los Angeles.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, a trip to the Marvel offices usually meant I’d be spending the entire day there—not just discussing work with my editors, but catching up on our lives, discussing (to purloin a phrase) life, the universe, and everything with an extraordinary editorial staff that included Danny Fingeroth, Tom DeFalco, Mark Gruenwald, Mike Carlin, Bob Budiansky, Carl Potts, Ann Nocenti, and many more. These folks weren't just my editors, they were friends—and the Marvel office was a kind of home away from home. The same was true of the Distinguished Competition. (I'd often spend one day at Marvel, another at DC. Different faces, same vibe.)

Those offices were a place to work, but they were also places to hang out, meet up with fellow freelancers, goof around, share ideas. So much history, so many wonderful memories. Knowing both companies are gone from New York makes me sad.

I'm still working with Marvel all these years later. The current staff is a talented group of good people—and I send them all my very best as they wrestle with tough decisions in the months ahead.

Calling something the end of an era is a tired cliche, but in this case, it's justified. Comic books and New York City have been synonymous since the dawn of the industry. Not anymore.

SILENCE DAY 2026

Wishing a happy, blessed Silence Day to my Meher Baba family around the world.

"Everything else may fail—Love never fails."—Avatar Meher Baba 

AMAZING!

The massive Amazing Spider-Man #1000 is coming your way in September and I've got a story—focusing on Peter Parker's tangled, traumatic relationship with the Osborn family—in the collection, illustrated by the great Humberto Ramos. If you could see Humberto's pencil art for this Goblin-centric tale, your eyes would pop out of your head (in the very best way).

Can't wait for everyone to read this one. For now, enjoy Humberto's variant cover!

Update: AIPT just released a preview page (minus lettering) for our story and you can see it below. Fantastic, isn't it?

WHAT THE IF?

I had a chat with the fine folks at CBR about my upcoming What If? tale that takes a new look at Kraven's Last Hunt. The amazing art (by Yildiray Cinar) and color (by Alex Sinclair) alone is worth the price of admission. You can read the article right here. 

MORE CAPED CRUSADER

The second season of Batman: Caped Crusader is coming to Amazon Prime Video on July 31st and you can watch the trailer below. What's my episode about? I've signed an NDA so I can't reveal a thing (beyond the fact that, y'know, Batman is in it), but you'll be able to see it soon enough. Here's to more Cape to come!

GOING GALACTIC

I've got two conventions coming up in July. First is GalaxyCon New Orleans (July 10—12) and then comes GalaxyCon Raleigh (July 23—26). For some reason I'm not listed on the GalaxyCon site for either convention, but I suspect that will be corrected shortly.

These will be my first cons of the year and I'm really looking forward to getting back out there and meeting the folks who read, and appreciate, my work.  

Update:  For reasons too complicated to get into here, I will not be at the New Orleans GalaxyCon. GalaxyCon Raleigh—July 23—26—is still a go. See you there, I hope! 

LEN DAY

The great Len Wein would have been 78 today. Here's an excerpt from a tribute to Len I wrote, and posted here, back in 2014.

We miss you, Len.

                                                          ***

When I first began working with Len, he was—despite being just past thirty—already a legend in the industry. This was the writer who, with the equally-legendary Bernie Wrightson, created the groundbreaking Swamp Thing series. Unless you were around when that book debuted, you can’t really grasp how truly revolutionary Swamp Thing was, how different from everything that had come before it. I remember being floored by the emotional power of the art, the pulp-poetry of the language and the big beating heart at the story’s core. You couldn’t read an issue of Swamp Thing without feeling something, without being moved.

If that series was all Len had done, his place in Comic Book Heaven would be secure, but he was also the guy who co-created Wolverine, one of the most successful, and popular, characters in the medium’s history... resurrected and revitalized the X-Men franchise...had memorable runs on everything from Justice League to Hulk, Batman to Spider-Man...and, oh, yes, was editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics along the way. Len could do slam-bang superhero adventure with the best of them, but the hallmark of a Wein story wasn’t the action, it was that aforementioned beating heart. All of Len’s best work was marked by a deep humanity and a profound compassion.

Which is why, when I entered his office in the spring of 1979, I counted myself among the lucky ones: I didn’t realize just how lucky until I got to know Len. There are some writers whose work you admire, but then you meet them and it’s impossible to make the leap from the words on the page to the person across the table: there seems to be some great cosmic disconnect—and, yes, a great disappointment, as well. (It’s unfair to expect a writer or actor or musician to somehow be the embodiment his art—the work alone should be more than enough—but we hope for it nonetheless.) With Len, though, the man and the work were one. He was just like his stories: charming, funny, eloquent and all heart. He extended that heart to me. There wasn’t a hint of self-importance to the man. His editing style was warm and welcoming. He taught through encouragement, enthusiasm. Even if he didn’t like a particular story—and, believe me, some of my early scripts were massively flawed—he never eviscerated the work, never bullied: just found a gentle way to guide me out of the morass of my own inexperience and onto solid creative ground.

In a very short time, Len became not just my editor, but my friend and first real mentor in the comic book business. He saw a spark of something special in my stories and, through his patient guidance, helped fan that spark into a flame. There I was, an insecure, working class kid from Brooklyn, uncertain of my own talent, wondering if I could carve a career for myself in this wonderful, and hugely peculiar, business—and there was The Legendary Len Wein providing the answer: “If you want it, you absolutely can.”

You can’t put a price on that.