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
