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

WATCHING THE WHEELS

October 9, 2025 will mark the 85th anniversary of John Lennon’s birth. In celebration of a brilliant artist who remains at the top of my rock and roll pantheon, here—in chronological order—are my top ten Lennon solo songs.  (This could have easily been a top twenty, but I restrained myself!)

1. Cold Turkey

Lennon’s first single outside the confines of the Beatles was the anti-war classic “Give Peace A Chance.” He followed that with one of the most extraordinary songs of his career, the soul-shredding addiction saga “Cold Turkey.” I can’t imagine any other major rocker of the era putting out a song this naked, this raw.

2. Instant Karma

Lennon’s first official solo single—the two others were released when the Beatles were still a unit (or believed to be)—is another of his greatest, and his first collaboration with Phil Spector. “Instant Karma” is a joyful cosmic anthem, a rollicking rush of spiritual uplift, buoyed by the spectacular drumming of Alan White.

3. God

1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band remains one of the most unique and powerful albums in the history of rock and roll, and this song is the transcendent grand finale to Lennon’s tortuous emotional journey. In a little over four minutes, he puts the final nails in the coffin of the sixties and charts a path forward into the new decade. A masterpiece.

4. Imagine

What can I say that hasn’t been said already?  “Imagine” is the song that will forever define Lennon in the public’s mind: a utopian vision that some have called hopelessly naive. But if we can’t dream, how can we change the world? Needed now, more than ever. 

5. Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

John and Yoko took a public domain folk song called “Stewball” and used it as the foundation for a Christmas classic, complete with holiday bells and a children’s choir. The Christmas season never officially begins for me until I hear this song. 

6. Mind Games

After the debacle of the Sometime In New York City album (which is neither as bad as we thought it was back in 1972, nor as groundbreaking as Lennon and Ono wanted it to be), Lennon needed a reset—and “Mind Games” was the first step. The lyrics are a wonderful, Lennonesque phantasmagoria, but the message is familiar: “Love is the answer.” 

7. Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)

Lennon went through did some serious wrestling with personal demons (and he had many) during his so-called “Lost Weekend” period, but the result was one of his finest albums, the brilliant Walls and Bridges. “Nobody Loves You” is to Walls as “God” was to POB: It’s the essence of the entire journey, boiled down to one harrowing, unforgettable song.

8. Stand By Me

The standout track on Lennon’s troubled oldies album, Lennon’s take on this Ben E. King classic is the definitive version. “Stand By Me” has extra meaning for me because I was there in the studio when Lennon and his backup band (which featured my old friend Jon Cobert) filmed the promotional video for this song. An amazing day.

9. Watching The Wheels

After five years away, John and Yoko returned to recording, joining forces for the excellent Double Fantasy album. “Watching The Wheels” was Lennon looking back on those five years with typical wit and philosophical musing. But the song ultimately became a final statement from an artist who left us too soon.

10. Grow Old With Me

Just Lennon at the piano in the Dakota, recording onto a cassette tape. But despite that (or perhaps because of it) “Grow Old With Me,” which appeared in this fragile form on the posthumous Milk and Honey album, never fails to move me. A simple, heartfelt paean to marital love, “Grow Old With Me” could have been written by Paul McCartney: The two of them had more in common than Lennon ever fully acknowledged.

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

IN PRAISE OF GERBER

Marvel recently released a new Marvel Masterworks volume, collecting more of Steve Gerber's classic, iconoclastic run on Man-Thing. I wrote the introduction to the book and you can read it below.

Much as I adore 1960s comics—the innocent, inspiring DCs early in the decade and the Marvel explosion led by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Steve Ditko—the 70s might be my favorite comic book decade. The 60s saw Jack, Stan, and Steve breaking new ground in sometimes radical ways (just as the Beatles, Dylan, the Who, and others were doing in rock and roll; it was a revolutionary time all around), building a new foundation for the comic book form as they constructed that impressive skyscraper called the Marvel Universe.

The following decade saw an astonishing influx of new talent to the industry, hungry young writers and artists who were raised on, revered, those classic stories, and wanted to not just build on that foundation, but construct some dazzling new structures of their own. The result? Seminal works like Roy Thomas and Barry Smith’s Conan, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing, Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula, Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy’s Master of Kung Fu, Steve Englehart’s Doctor Strange (with Frank Brunner and Gene Colan), Jim Starlin’s Warlock, and… Well, I could go on, it was truly an embarrassment of riches: a staggering body of work by creators at the very top of their game. These are the books that kept me reading comics at a time when I might have left them behind—I’d just turned 16 when the new decade dawned—and the creators I still hold in highest regard.

But if I was forced to pick my favorite comics of the 1970s, I’d choose the works of two very different talents: Jack Kirby, the medium’s elder statesman, who proved, with his interlocking Fourth World books at DC, that he remained universes ahead of everyone else (and we’re still trying to catch up), and the man I’m here to laud and celebrate: Steve Gerber.

I first came across Gerber’s work in an issue of The Incredible Hulk, plotted by Roy Thomas and scripted by Steve. Truth is, when I’d see a new writer’s name in the credits, I’d wince a little. No matter how talented, it usually takes time for a storyteller to find their level, to become comfortable with the format, and it often showed. Looking back, there was nothing particularly memorable about that Hulk story, but something in Gerber’s voice—and he had one, right from the start; not many writers can do that—impressed me. He seemed comfortable, at home, in the medium; he didn’t stumble out of the gate, he sprinted confidently ahead. I’ll have to remember this guy’s name, I thought. I’ll have to pay attention to his work. And I did.

It became clear, very quickly, that Steve Gerber was a mold-breaker. He had, as noted, a unique, individual voice at a time when many of Marvel’s writers—even the very best of them—were burying their individuality beneath a layer of Stan Lee-isms. Gerber stepped into the Marvel Universe, looked around at the towering structures that Kirby, Lee, and Ditko erected, bowed in deference to their collective genius, and then started kicking those towers down with ferocious glee.

I could write an entire essay about Steve’s work on Defenders (where he blew the superhero genre to pieces and never bothered to put it back together) or Howard the Duck (the first overground-underground comic book: If you weren’t around then, you simply can’t fathom the impact Howard had on the comics landscape), or just about any of his 70s Marvel work (which in no way denigrates the superb work he did later; this era just happens to be my favorite because that’s when I discovered Gerber). But we’re here to discuss the stories in this volume from my favorite Steve Gerber series of all: Man-Thing.

According to legend, Man-Thing was created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow at a time when the comic book business was becoming enamored of the horror genre (the loosening of the Comics Code had a lot to do with that). Around the same time Manny oozed out of the swamp in the short-lived black and white magazine Savage Tales, DC launched their own bog-beast with Wein and Wrightson’s “Swamp Thing” story in House of Secrets. By 1972, both characters had their own ongoing features and, from this reader’s perspective, Swamp Thing was winning the competition: There was a gorgeous pulp-poetry infusing Wein’s prose and a horrifying elegance to Wrightson’s art. Their collaboration remains a high point of the medium. It would have been easy for Gerber to take his cues from Len and Bernie when he took over the Man-Thing feature in Adventure Into Fear #11—but, being Gerber, he went off in a very different direction.

Man-Thing (it didn’t take long for the character to get his own book) essentially became a stealth anthology series. Yes, there were recurring characters like aspiring sorceress Jennifer Kale and down (and down and down) on his luck Richard Rory, but the story was the star here and the looser format allowed Gerber to ignore, and shatter, the medium’s expectations. To follow his unique muse wherever it led him.

I suspect Steve was a fan of Rod Serling and his anthology series, The Twilight Zone, because you can feel the influence of episodes like “The Shelter” and “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” in his Man-Thing work: stories, driven by a kind of righteous fury, that thrust people into desperate situations, forcing both their inner demons and inner angels to the surface. Stories where characters speak in feverish, frustrated, wildly poetic monologues, illuminating themselves, and the human condition, in the process. (Brian, in this volume’s classic “Song Cry of the Living Dead Man,” may be the single most Serlingesque of all Gerber’s protagonists: The direct descendant of Gart Wiliams of “A Stop At Willoughby” and Martin Sloan of “Walking Distance.”) In a way, Man-Thing himself is the Serling figure in Gerber’s tales: Rod as swamp monster, shambling onto the stage when necessary to introduce and sum up the drama.

This is not to suggest that Gerber was copying Serling: The man was sui generis and Man-Thing became an ongoing vehicle for his compelling and idiosyncratic worldview. Looking back, it seems that the muck-monster’s swamp home was—perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not—a representation of Gerber’s own psyche; each character who stepped on the stage another aspect of that psyche. But if all the Man-Thing stories offered were a form of self-therapy, they would have soon been forgotten. What made them unique was Gerber’s constant inventiveness and, more important, his ability to dig deep into his characters, to drill down into their emotional and psychological core. And that’s what drives these stories more than anything: raw emotion. It’s the force that touches Man-Thing himself, for better and worse, again and again. When I teach writing classes, I tell my students that a great story requires the writer to thrust a (metaphorical) knife deep into their chest and bleed onto the pages. Gerber did that every issue: The stories were profoundly personal and, simultaneously, universally relatable. They made me feel, touched my heart—sometimes elating and sometimes devastating me. And that emotional authenticity is, I think, the main reason Gerber’s Man-Thing stories still resonate today.

Yes, a lot of it is fairly bleak—Gerber is turning over rocks in both the collective consciousness and his own, and finding the worms and maggots hiding underneath—but there’s also an undercurrent of hope, of reaching for the light, as well. Ayla’s love is what redeems Darrel the Clown’s soul; Sybil’s sacrifice heals Brian’s shattered consciousness.

But these are comic books and they’re not created in the vacuum of a writer’s mind. In comics, great stories require great artists to bring them to life on the page, and Gerber had some truly brilliant collaborators. The early tales in this collection were drawn by the masterful Val Mayerik, whose offbeat, atmospheric style perfectly suited the tone of Steve’s work (I had the pleasure of collaborating with Val in the 1990s, on a stand-alone story for Marvel’s short lived Amazing Adventures anthology called “Pogrom”: It was sensitive and difficult subject matter and Val handled it with grace and power), but the bulk of the stories were brought to life by one of my favorite artists, and favorite people, the great Mike Ploog.

Long before I ever met Mike and collaborated with him on Abadazad and The Stardust Kid, I was a huge fan, floored by his Marvel work—most notably on Ghost Rider, Kull the Destroyer, Weirdworld and, of course, Man-Thing. Mike was right at home in Manny’s mystical swamp, because the Ploog Universe literally dripped with mood, mystery and wellsprings of emotion. His monsters were touched with humanity and his humans were often a hairsbreadth away from becoming monsters themselves. More important, Mike was a master storyteller who could deliver the big gut-punching moments, but also understood the importance of letting the eye flow, subtly and easily, from panel to panel: leading the reader on with a gesture here, a facial expression there, each panel an integral part of a larger tapestry.

Looking back, it’s amazing that Mike was even working at Marvel, because he didn’t fit any company molds: Ploog, like Gerber, was unique. A one-off. A very singular beast. Yes, you can see the influence of Will Eisner—Mike apprenticed with Eisner, after all—but Mike absorbed that influence and created his own unmistakable visual stamp. (Frank Chiaramonte inked many of Mike’s Man-Thing stories and it was that rare, magical case of a penciler and inker who were perfectly matched. Even the best inkers can sometimes obscure the strengths in a pencil artist’s work, but Chiaramonte inked Ploog as if he was channeling Mike himself. Look at the issues where it’s all Ploog and there’s hardly a difference. They were an extraordinary team and it’s a shame we didn’t get more of them.)

One of Marvel’s founding fathers, the legendary John Buscema, brought several of the stories in this volume to life, most notably the aforementioned “Song Cry of the Living Dead Man.” I can only imagine what Buscema—who, despite the brilliant work he did in the genre, was never a huge fan of superheroes—felt about this story. It must have been baffling in some ways, but it also must have been liberating. He clearly pours everything he’s got into it, stretching his formidable storytelling talents into new realms. Klaus Janson’s inks, oozing and dripping with marshy mood, only heighten the power of the story.

“Song Cry,” along with the Darrel the Clown two-parter collected here and the “The Kid’s Night Out” (which will appear in a future Masterworks) are, for me, the peak of Gerber’s Man-Thing work. But, really, it’s all peak. Remember: This is pre-Epic Comics. Pre-Vertigo. Pre-Moore and Gaiman and Morrison. But those innovative imprints, those wonderfully disruptive writers, couldn’t have existed without Gerber. Steve was out there dancing alone on the creative precipice—then leaping off it into unknown dimensions. Without realizing it, he was clearing a path for all of us who followed. How lucky we were to walk that path he cleared, then branch off onto distinctive paths of our own.

I only met Steve Gerber once, in the mid-1980s: I was in Los Angeles on business, visiting with Marv Wolfman, and he invited Steve to join us for dinner. I’d love to say Steve and I hit it off instantly, became best pals, and stayed in touch for years after—but that’s not what happened. We shared a pleasant meal, said goodbye, and never encountered each other again. But I didn’t have to be friends with the flesh and blood Steve Gerber in order to know the man. I got to know him, intimately, through his extraordinary stories—many of which are in this equally-extraordinary collection.

And Mr. G—wherever in the multiverse you are: Thank you.

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

DUDES!

Yes, it's another podcast interview—this time with those fine fellows Zach and Adam of the Spideydude Radio Network. We take a deep dive into All Things Spidey, with a focus on Spider-Man '94. The interview is embedded below. Enjoy!

MORE '94!

The second issue of Spider-Man '94 hits shops next week. Here's the hype, straight from Marvel and AIPT:

THE MARK OF KAINE! After his first altercation with KAINE, Spider-Man is left with many unanswered questions. Where did Kaine come from, and what are his connections to the dreaded MORLUN?

Brace yourselves and expect the unexpected as the lore of the hit animated series continues to expand in new and exciting ways!

Written by: J.M. DeMatteis

Art by: Jim Towe

Cover by: Nick Bradshaw, Rachelle Rosenberg

Page Count: 32 Pages

Release Date: October 8, 2025

Preview pages are below. Enjoy!

ACROSS THE GALAXY

My tentative return to wonderful world of comic book conventions continues in a few weeks when I'm a guest for all three days of Galaxycon St. Louis from October 10th—12th. If you're in the area, come by and say hello.  I'll be there with my son Cody and we're looking forward to a great weekend of signing books and meeting the fine folks who read and appreciate my work.

BANDITS!

And the interviews just keep coming. Here's a chat with the Dollar Bin Bandits podcast, talking about Moonshadow, Doctor Fate, Brooklyn Dreams, creator-owned comics, Spider-Man and more. (This was just released, but recorded back in June.)

NERDING OUT

Yes, it's another interview (they seem to come in waves)—this time with the Just Us Nerds podcast, talking about Spider-Man '94, The Twilight Zone, the impact of childhood on our adult lives, the role of critics, Keith Giffen...and other things.  Enjoy!

THE LUNATICS ARE LOOSE!

Had a fun chat with the fine folks at the Capes & Lunatics podcast, talking about Batman Day, Spider-Man '94, and other things. You can watch below...

BATMAN-GERBER DAY!

Happy Batman Day to all who celebrate! My first Batman story was (no kidding!) a coloring book. My most recent work is an episode of Amazon Prime's Caped Crusader for the upcoming second season. And I look forward to more adventures with the Dark Knight in the future. (If you want to take a deep dive into my history with Bruce Wayne, read this.)

And while I have your attention: Let's also celebrate the birthday of the great Steve Gerber. As I've said here before, I wouldn't be the writer I am today if I'd never encountered Gerber's work. Every Gerber story I read was evidence that mainstream comics could be so much more than I’d ever imagined. That there was no creative door that couldn’t be kicked in, no creative wall that couldn’t be torn down. His voice is sorely missed.

THE OCEAN OF IMAGINATION

Where Legends Walk is a new Kickstarter anthology from the fine folks at Oddity Prodigy Productions. The subject running through all the short stories in the collection is one just about everyone reading this post loves: superheroes. I was asked to write an introduction to the book and you can read it below. But, before you do, why not hop on over to Kickstarter and support this worthy project.

***

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!

 

I must have been four or five years old when I first laid eyes on the last son of Krypton.

 

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

 

There he was, in glorious black and white on my TV screen, standing against a cosmic backdrop of planets and stars, arms akimbo, cape blowing in the breeze. Every inch a hero. No, not just a hero: a superhero.

 

It’s Superman! 

 

I don’t think I’d discovered comic books at that age, but I’d already been mesmerized by the Sunday comics sections of the New York Daily News. (It’s as if there’s a chemical in the brain, unique to those of us who love comics, and the first time we see that magical combination of words and pictures, the chemical drops, floods our consciousness, and we’re hooked on this glorious art form for life.) I’m sure it wasn’t long before I realized that the guy on television, so perfectly portrayed by George Reeves, also existed in comic books.

 

Superman. Batman. Wonder Woman. Green Lantern. The Justice League. Then, later, the Marvel heroes: Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, and the rest. I loved them. Hell, I loved all comic books—from Casper and Sad Sack to Archie Andrews and Richie Rich—but the superheroes were something special and they touched my young soul in a unique and profound way.

 

And still do.

 

But why?

 

I’ve asked myself that question many times over the years. There are some who dismiss superhero stories as childish power fantasies, a way for readers to imagine themselves as something they’re not, to project their psyches into the bodies of these spandex-wearing, overmuscled guardians of humanity and, for a moment at least, smash through their personal struggles, their psychological wounds and traumas, with a simple punch. There’s truth in that—a little power fantasy goes a long way—but I think there’s something more at work here, something deeper.

 

Years ago, when I was in India visiting the Tomb-Shrine of the spiritual master Avatar Meher Baba, I had a dream, more like a vision, during which I was shown my true height and power, as both an individual on this earth and a spiritual being in this universe. I quickly realized this extraordinary experience wasn’t unique to me; that we’re all more powerful than we’ve dreamed; that every man and woman has, within them, a divinity, a cosmic heritage, as tall and broad as Creation. A heritage that’s masked, suffocated, by our belief that we’re small, limited, and alone. In essence, we’re all, each and every one of us, Superman, but we’re trapped in the false belief that we’re weak, bumbling Clark Kent—and our life’s work is to throw away the glasses, put on the super-suit, and become the inner hero we’ve been all along. These colorful characters embody our highest selves. Represent our decency, our compassion, our ability to transcend our imagined limitations and do genuine good in the world. They remind us that, in the end, we are the superheroes.

I believe we’ve collectively conjured the superhero pantheon into existence because we need them, birthing them from the universal unconscious to remind us of who we truly are. And I believe that the energy behind these symbols of our highest selves has existed as long as humankind; that we, as a race, have continually dreamed these beings into form in different times, different cultures, under a thousand different names. And we will continue to do it as long as they’re needed. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that they’ve dreamed us, but that’s another essay for another time.)

.

Have I reached too far, gone too deep down the philosophical rabbit hole? Then how’s this? Superhero stories, at their best, are fun. Everything is colorful, larger than life, on a grand scale: big emotions, big actions, big risks, big stakes. Most important: they’re fueled by a seemingly-unlimited ocean of pure imagination. 

 

The book you’re holding in your hands has emerged from the depths of that ocean of imagination. Within it, you’ll find tales written by people who adore superheroes and the strange worlds they inhabit, and who invite you to journey with them through those worlds. And if, along the way, you encounter the hidden truth of your own soul? 

All the better.

 

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

SPECTACULAR

I recently wrote an introduction for a Hungarian collection of my 1990s Spider-Man arc, "The Child Within." Since Marvel (finally!) released the DeMatteis-Buscema Spectacular Spider-Man Omnibus, which contains this story, I thought I'd share the intro here. It's a window into a group of stories I'm very proud of—and a collaboration I still treasure. Enjoy! 

I was ten years old when I first encountered Peter Parker. A friend showed me an early issue of Amazing Spider-Man and, honestly, the Steve Ditko art frightened me. Accustomed as I was to the clean, sculpted look of the DC Comics of the day, Ditko’s Spider-Man, with his full face mask, his bizarre, insectoid posture, looked more like a monster than a superhero: He was too overwhelming, too eerie and disturbing, for my young mind to absorb. 

A few years later I walked into the local Brooklyn candy store where I bought all my comics and saw the John Romita cover of Amazing Spider-Man #39—which featured the Green Goblin dragging a bound Peter Parker through the skies above New York. I was intrigued—you never saw the Joker dragging Bruce Wayne around like that!—but, perhaps remembering my earlier aversion to the character,  I resisted picking it up. That resistance melted the following month for the conclusion of that classic Goblin story—I was undergoing a kind of religious conversion from DC to Marvel around that time—and just adored it: Romita and Stan Lee had me hooked with their combination of operatic emotions and explosive action. (I also gobbled up earlier Spidey stories—back issues were cheaper in the ‘60s—and learned to love the quirky brilliance of Steve Ditko.) From that day on, Peter Parker has remained an important part of my life. Just how important wouldn’t become apparent till I made the transition from fan to professional some years later.

 

Peter is, in many ways, the most psychologically real character in all of superhero comics. (Note I say Peter, not Spider-Man. Mask on or off, these stories are always about Peter Parker.) He’s a regular guy, dealing with life’s problems in a way we can all connect with. He’s not some pure and perfect hero. Not some Chosen One. He’s me, he’s you: a human being, struggling, as I think we all do, to do the right thing in life. But, like most of us, he often screws up, sometimes spectacularly. Peter’s flawed, he fails—but he always faces those flaws, picks himself up and goes back out there again, continuing to do his best, striving to be a good man and live a decent, compassionate life. But, again, this isn’t because he’s special, it’s because he embodies qualities that we all have, struggles we all face.  Maybe we don’t wear masks and shoot webbing, but I think most of us can relate to Peter, can see in him a mirror of ourselves.

My first major Spider-Man assignment came in the early 1980’s when I did a long run on Marvel Team-Up with two terrific artists, Herb Trimpe and Kerry Gammill. That experience allowed me to get to know Peter not as a reader, but as a writer—and it’s a very different experience. You have to absolutely believe in these characters in order to write them, you can’t view them as fictional constructions, and Peter Parker soon became real to me. At the risk of sounding slightly loopy, Peter became my good friend. And it’s a friendship that remains to this day.

  

A few years after Team-Up wrapped, I came back to Spider-Man for the six-part “Kraven’s Last Hunt” storyline with the incredible art team of Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod. Then, in the early 90’s, came the invitation from editor Danny Fingeroth to take over the writing duties on Spectacular Spider-Man. 

 

Danny was a delight to work with, the kind of guy who watched over every detail of the story and art like a hawk but, at the same time, gave me tremendous freedom to tell my stories in my own idiosyncratic way. Working on Spectacular Spider-Man I was able to create a kind of subset of the Spider-Man line: Danny jokingly called it the DeMatteisverse. 

 

There are certain editors who are desperate to put their own stamp on the book, who see the creative team as a kind of pipeline for their own ideas. The best editors—and Danny was one of the very best—are secure enough in themselves and their skill set to hire good people and let them follow their muse, but they’re always there to help you work out any bumps in the creative process, to let you know when something isn’t working. You can’t ask for anything more.

But there was more: I got to work with Sal Buscema.

Sal had done some fill-in issues of Team-Up and also pitched in for a few issues of my Captain America run, but Spectacular Spider-Man was our first proper collaboration. Chemistry between a writer and artist is a strange, ineffable thing. You can’t force it, you can’t create it. I’ve worked with wonderful artists, written terrific stories for them, and then watched the final product just…sit there. There was no spark, no chemistry. No magic. With Sal, the magic was there from the first page, the first panel, of our Spectacular run. We just clicked.  

My plots were usually very tight—page by page, panel by panel, crammed with camera angles, psychological shading and rough-draft dialogue—but whatever was on the page, Sal always took it to another level. The panel-to- panel flow was cinematic and crystal clear, the characters dramatic and achingly human. The man can draw everything—from over-the-top action to small, quiet moments—and weave it all together with grace and power. Sal brought my plots alive with impeccable storytelling, deep emotion, every subtlety I asked for and so much more.

 

In many ways, Sal is the very embodiment of Marvel Comics—he’s drawn virtually every character in the Marvel Universe—and I can’t praise his work, and his work ethic (he’s the very definition of a total pro), enough. Add to that the fact that he’s a truly good person—I’d go so far as to use an old-fashioned word and call him a gentleman—and you can understand why working with Sal on Spectacular Spider-Man remains one of the highlights of my career.

 

The first arc in our two-year run was the story collected in this volume: “The Child Within.” The general idea for the story had been buzzing in my head for a while; I almost did an embryonic version of it for Legends of the Dark Knight at DC, but it fell through at the last minute. I’m glad it did, because the idea provided the perfect framework for exploring the unique Peter Parker-Harry Osborn dynamic: they’re best friends, they genuinely love each other, but, because of Harry’s mental instability, they’ve become mortal enemies. Talk about fodder for great drama! 

 

I’m very interested in what makes people tick—not just in stories, but in life. I’ve done my share of inner exploration, both psychological and spiritual, and that’s always been reflected in my work. I want to know what’s going on inside a character’s head—the “why” of who they are, the emotional and psychological angels and demons that drive them. That’s why I tend to write from the inside out and let the plot build around the characters. I like to dive deep—and “The Child Within” went extremely deep, taking us down through the caverns of memory to the traumatic experiences that formed not just Peter and Harry, but our other antagonist, Edward Whelan, also known as the man-rat, Vermin.

“The Child Within” dealt with the wounds that come when we’re so young that we’re not even conscious of them.  And yet, conscious or not, those wounds shape us.  Peter, Harry and Vermin were all dealing with these primal wounds and they continued to echo through their lives, years later. “The Child is father of the Man” as the saying goes. What we experience in childhood defines us, sometimes haunts us, and if we don’t explore those issues, make peace with them, find balance…well, we may not transform into a man-rat, but life can be extremely difficult.

 

One of the ways small children survive in traumatic situations where they have no control is by taking on responsibility for the events around them: My parents are getting divorced…I’m being abused…so it must be my fault. In a twisted way, this illusory sense of responsibility, this crushing, unearned guilt, gives the chaos a kind of meaning, gives the child a sense, however false, of personal power. Peter’s parents died when he was young, but he was old enough to feel the loss, to be shipwrecked by it, and to internalize it as a sense of responsibility and guilt. A guilt that was only magnified, years later, by the death of Uncle Ben. But you can’t live with that kind of misplaced guilt without it eventually erupting up out of your psyche. And it erupts, big-time, in this story.

 

If Peter survived by taking on too much guilt, Harry survived by living in denial. He’d been psychologically broken by the emotional abuse he suffered at his father’s hands—but he never truly faced it. He couldn’t admit what a monster Norman Osborn was. The only way Harry could survive was by denying the darkness in Norman, blaming others—primarily Peter—for what Norman became, for the damage done to Harry’s life. In the end, he became the very thing his father was—the victim transformed into the victimizer—taking on the mantle of the Green Goblin. But Harry, unlike Norman, had genuine good at his core—although it would take time, and tragedy, for that good to make itself known in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. 

 

In some ways “The Child Within” was a kind of unofficial sequel to Kraven’s Last Hunt, because we picked up Vermin’s story where KLH left off, expanding that character in new, and deeper, ways, exploring—I hope with taste and sensitivity—the trauma, and the painful price, of sexual abuse through Edward Whelan’s eyes. Poor Edward had been made to feel so small, so utterly worthless, by the abuse he suffered at his father’s hands that he actually transformed, becoming a physical manifestation of that abuse, a tormented being so diminished, so filled with shame and self-hate, he felt more at home in the sewers than in the light. (When we returned to the character, for our “Death of Vermin” storyline, Edward finally made it up and out, into that light.) I’m profoundly grateful to Danny Fingeroth, and editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, for allowing me the freedom to explore such a delicate topic.  

 

There’s one more pivotal character in “The Child Within”—as important in her way, as Peter, Harry, and Vermin—and that’s Dr. Ashley Kafka. I’ve found therapy incredibly helpful in my own life and Dr. Kafka (who was inspired, in part, by a therapist friend) was a way for me to inject that perspective into a story that really was a therapeutic journey for all the main characters. I thought it would be interesting to have a character who could do what I, as a writer, loved to do: bore down into the psyches of our cast and provide unique perspectives on the traumas of their past, the demons that drove them. Kafka quickly grew into a fascinating character in her own right—she, too, came from a traumatic background and used the wisdom gained from her experiences to help and illuminate other people’s struggles—and I enjoyed revisiting her in the 2022 Ben Reilly: Spider-Man mini-series.

 

Over the years I’ve written countless superhero stories, for a variety of publishers. There are a handful of these stories that mean as much to me as “The Child Within,” but there are none that mean more. 

 

Enjoy the journey. 

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis