REMEMBERING SHOOTER

Jim Shooter, longtime editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and a man who had a profound effect on my career, has passed away.

I broke into the business at DC in the late 1970s, writing for the various anthology books, working with superb editors like Paul Levitz, Jack Harris, and the late, great Len Wein—I think of them as the professors at my personal comic book college—learning the fundamentals of the craft. Under their tutelage I moved, slowly and carefully, from eight pagers to my first book-length stories; from horror tales with twist endings to stories featuring childhood icons like Batman, Aquaman, and Hawkman. I even created a couple of series of my own—"I…Vampire" for House of Mystery and "Creature Commandos" for Weird War Tales—but my creative bicycle still needed sturdy training wheels: I had so much to learn.

I’d sent some samples over to Marvel, which eventually landed in Shooter’s lap. Jim—who I’d also interviewed for a comics-centric piece I wrote for The Soho Weekly News (I was a journalist in those days, too; when you’re a freelancer, you’ve got to keep as many doors open as possible)—saw something in my work and was open and generous with feedback, insight, and encouragement. Shooter was an intimidating figure—unusually tall and very commanding—with a long resume in the business (he’d started writing comics professionally when he was 13!). He was also a superb editor with a deep understanding of story, who was able to communicate that understanding with force and clarity—and soon became the next professor in my comic book college experience.

Under Jim’s watchful eye, I worked on a few fill-in issues (I recall an Iron Man story that I later repurposed as a Captain America tale, an Avengers issue that vanished into oblivion, and a Doctor Strange story, featuring the obscure villain Tiboro, that eventually made it into print), hanging on Jim’s every word and incorporating his wisdom into my work. I had a very simple rule in those days: The editor is always right. I wanted to learn, wanted to grow, and I certainly wasn’t going to argue with someone who knew far more than me about the medium. As Paul Levitz once told me, “You can’t break the rules until you’ve learned the rules”—and if I was going to make comics a career that lasted, I had to learn them all.

Jim kept throwing me interesting side-gigs, too: I wrote plots for French Spider-Man stories, crafted detailed biographies of all the Marvel characters for…well, it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what the purpose was. I also spent a couple of weeks in Stan Lee’s office—Stan was in California—watching an animated television series and writing up notes on the lead character, a Spider-Man rip-off, to aid Marvel in a lawsuit. (And if you don’t think being paid to hang out in Stan Lee’s office and watch cartoons was a dream job, what are you doing reading this in the first place?) Shooter eventually offered me a freelance contract—steady work, solid page rate (for the times), royalties—shifting my career into high gear.

Jim’s greatest strength was that he had a clear vision of what Marvel should be, how a story should be told, and he pursued it wholeheartedly. I didn't always agree with that vision (and he didn’t always agree with mine!), but I always respected it. His impact on Marvel Comics, and the comic book business as a whole, was massive.

A final story: Once, around 1983 or ‘84, I was in the Marvel office, and I’d brought my son, Cody, who was three or four at the time, along with me. We were in, I think, Mark Gruenwald’s office, when Shooter entered, all six foot seven of him. Jim greeted Cody warmly and my son slowly looked up—and up and up and up—at what, to him, was the largest human he’d ever beheld, a giant straight out of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and burst into tears. Jim instantly retreated: He didn’t want to be responsible for traumatizing a child. But Cody, of course, was right: Jim Shooter was a giant of our industry and I am forever grateful to him for bringing me aboard the Marvel ship.

Wherever in the multiverse you are, Jim: safe travels. And thank you.

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

BACK TO THE '90s

The classic 1994 Spider-Man animated series is back in comic book form! Here's the scoop via ign.com:

"Spider-Man '94 is a four-issue limited series that picks up where the show's infamous cliffhanger ending left off in 1998. The series brings Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson back to New York and promises to pit the wall-crawler against two iconic villains who will be making their debuts in this animated universe. The series is written by long-time Spidey veteran (and a writer on the original animated series) J.M. DeMatteis, with art by Jim Towe (Spider-Verse vs. Venomverse) and covers by Nick Bradshaw, Ron Lim, and John Tyler Christopher." (I should also mention that the fantastic color work is by Jim Campbell.)

You can read the whole story here. Spider-Man '94 will be out in September!

And while I have your attention: I only share a newsletter a few times a year and I just unleashed the latest. You can read it (and subscribe) by clicking this link.
(By the way: the Vonnegut quote in the newsletter came from Eliot Rosewater, not Kilgore Trout. There was clearly a glitch in the mental matrix when I wrote it. (And if you've never read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater—do it now.))

DEFENSELESS

It's recently been announced that the long-running Marvel Masterworks line has been put on hiatus. This won't impact the upcoming Captain America and Ghost Rider Masterworks that collect work of mine, but it does cancel the next Defenders Masterworks that was slated to come out in January.  I wrote an introduction for that volume and, rather than see it go to waste, I'm sharing it here. Enjoy!

And so we move into the second year of my Defenders run with the the great Don Perlin. As I mentioned in my introduction to the previous Masterworks, Don was a veteran of the business—he’d had a long career that stretched back to the late 1940s, including a stint working with trailblazer Will Eisner—while I was still a wide-eyed newbie, nervously walking a career tightrope: anxious to make it across to success, terrified I’d fall and plunge into comic book oblivion. With his lengthy track record, Don could have pulled rank on me, he had every right to, but instead he welcomed me to the Defenders family with open arms, treating me as a creative equal: as warm and enthusiastic a collaborator as I could have hoped for. Most important, Don—who passed away in 2024—was an incredibly nice man, which made working with him a consistent pleasure. In our first year, Don and I were getting to know each other, both professionally and personally, but, by year two, our collaboration really locked in and, in my opinion, we did some of our best work together

The primary focus of that first year was what came to be known as “The Six-Fingered Hand Saga,” a sprawling supernatural epic that, to my delight, is still held in high regard. I enjoyed injecting occult elements into Defenders. It gave the book a unique flavor that made it stand out from the rest of the Marvel line and opened the door to stories that could explore the more spiritual and metaphysical aspects of life, the universe, and everything. But with that epic under our belts, where could we go next? It was time, I decided (looking back, I can’t say if that decision was conscious or intuitive), to dig deeper into our characters, to put spotlights not just on the Defenders as a whole, but on the individuals who made up the team. When you’ve got multiple heroes, villains, and cosmic plot lines fighting for space, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of those individuals. I’ve found that the best way to rectify that is by putting on the brakes, eschewing the epics for a bit, and focusing on single-issue stories: one-offs that allow the creators to drill deeper into the characters’ psyches and tell a complete, satisfying tale with a definitive beginning, middle, and end. 

 

The first spotlight issue in this volume—Defenders #102’s “The Haunting of Christiansboro”—focuses on the Gargoyle. Looking back, I find it interesting that, not yet 30 when these stories were written, I chose to create a character who was an old man, pushing eighty (which seemed absolutely ancient to me at the time. I wonder if I was unconsciously exploring my own feelings about growing older. Sitting here all these decades later, it seems I was.) The average superhero was youthful, vibrant—but Isaac Christians had lived a long, tumultuous, wearying life; and yet he retained a vibrant spirit, a sweetness of soul, that refused to surrender to the darkness. The “Christiansboro” story allowed us to take a deep dive into Isaac’s backstory—and laid the groundwork for 1985’s Gargoyle mini-series (which I hope will grace a future Masterworks volume). Don—whose design for the character was visually reminiscent of Jack Kirby’s Demon, which, in turn, was inspired by a Hal Foster image from the Prince Valiant comic strip—turned in genuinely eerie, evocative work, enhanced by the gorgeous inks of the legendary Joe Sinnott.

Next up is “Yesterday never Dies”—which turns the spotlight over to Devil Slayer. One of the advantages of working on Defenders was that it had a history of mining the more obscure characters in the Marvel Universe—and they don’t get any more obscure than Eric Simon Payne. The beauty of that for a writer is that he’s free to make the character his own, without interference from The Powers That Be. If we were using major characters like Spider-Man or Wolverine in the book, we’d be in the editorial crosshairs, but no one was going to march into Defenders editor Al Milgrom’s office complaining about the way we portrayed Devil Slayer, because no one cared. “Yesterday” deals with Payne’s tortured past—as well as his relationship with 60s burnout Ira “Sunshine” Gross (clearly a progenitor of “Sunflower,” the mother figure in my creator-owned series Moonshadow. And would you believe me if I told you I just realized that?), who embodied the last gasp of naïve hippie idealism in the face of the cynicism and avarice of the 1980s. The story also brings in two Avengers: Wonder Man and my favorite of the original X-Men, the Beast— the latter of whom would, the following year, prove extremely important to the book.

The Beast is back for “Rising”—Hank McCoy’s arc building on a story I began in Avengers #209—but the heart and soul of the tale is another obscure character I adored: Daimon Hellstrom. Defenders was a book that flew under the radar—not only were our characters from the fringes of the MU, but our sales, while never warranting cancellation, were on the low side—and the aforementioned Powers That Be weren’t paying the same attention to us that they would have paid to the Big Guns. How else to explain a Christmas tale that features the crucifixion of Satan’s son and a scene where the devil reveals that he and God are one and the same? Take a look at Daimon’s face—expertly detailed by Perlin and Sinnott—as that shocking, illuminating truth sets in: a truth that changes his character—if not forever (it’s comics, after all), then certainly for the remainder of our run.

Next up is a crossover that began in Captain America—a book I was writing at the time, illustrated by the killer art team of Mike Zeck and John Beatty—and then leapt into Defenders, bringing together story threads I’d been nursing in both titles. The second part is most notable for the unexpected death of Nighthawk (unexpected not just to the readers, but to me. Sometimes when I’m writing things simply happen, the story and characters upending my carefully laid plans: Kyle Richmond’s demise was one of those things), which, in turn, led to “On Death and Dying” in Defenders #107—the title taken from the classic work by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. That story begins with Valkyrie’s murder, and having the team reeling from the loss of two members allowed me to once again put the brakes on and explore the characters’ thoughts and feelings as they discuss mortality, the afterlife, grief, hope, and the inevitable ending, and perhaps new beginning, that waits for all of us. (I remember a review at the time saying Defenders was like superhero group therapy. It wasn’t meant as a compliment—they clearly thought the book was way too talky, too invested in psychology and emotion over action—but that’s how I took it.)

Valkyrie didn’t stay dead for long as Defenders #108 launched a two-part story, co-written by Master of Marvel Continuity Mark Gruenwald, that explored, and clarified, Brunnhilde’s tangled back story. Collaborating with Mark, either as my editor (as he was on Captain America) or a writing partner, was always a joy. All of us who work in this business love comics, but I don’t think I ever encountered anyone who loved them more than Mark. All these years later his death—in 1996, at the shockingly young age of 43—still breaks my heart.

 

We return to spotlight issues with “Hunger—not just a favorite story in this volume, but a favorite out of my entire Defenders run. A sequel to “Yesterday Never Dies,” “Hunger” is a study in existential angst, crushing despair, and the search for meaning in a universe that seems sorely lacking in that quality—with the ghost of “Sunshine” Gross providing a kind of Greek chorus. The truth is Eric Simon Payne isn’t remotely likable—he’s done despicable things in his life—but he is relatable, a truly Dostoyevskian, tormented soul, and we find ourselves caring about him despite those despicable things.

I often look back at stories I wrote early in my career and cringe a little, sometimes more than a little, knowing how much better I could do now, but “Hunger” remains one that I’m truly proud of. It was a challenging piece of work and Don Perlin (enhanced by long-time Marvel inker Mike Esposito) rose to the occasion, bringing powerful emotions, and a truly haunting quality, to the tale.

Defenders #111 focuses on Hellcat. No Marvel character has ever journeyed quite so far as Patsy Walker, who started out in the 1940s as the star of teen-humor books, eventually making the surprising leap to the mainstream Marvel Universe, where she became a member of the Avengers named Hellcat. In the course of our Six-Fingered Hand storyline, we’d transformed Patsy into a literal hellcat—and perhaps the daughter of Satan himself (and the sister of the man she loved, Daimon Hellstrom). “Fathers and Daughters” put all the questions swirling around Patsy’s origins to rest and (provoked by a request from editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, who wanted it made clear that Marvel’s Satan and the biblical Satan weren’t the same being) also allowed me to explore, and explain, the mythology of Marvel’s Hell-Lords. In the end, Patsy has to face down the most dangerous devil of all, her personal devil. That she does this adds to her evolution as a character—and clears the path for Patsy’s reunion with her true father.

 

Next we have two epics that are crowded, some might say overcrowded, with heroes and villains: an Avengers Annual—masterfully illustrated by Al Milgrom—which pits our Defenders against the then-current Avengers line-up, and a three-part Defenders-Squadron Supreme crossover. The annual brings back an old Defenders foe, the bizarre alien entity called Nebulon, who sets both teams against each other. Defenders #112—#114 ran through the entire summer of 1982 and featured the Defenders and the Squadron, as well as the return of Fantastic Four villain Overmind, and Null, the Living Darkness—last seen in Defenders #102. Mark Gruenwald, who was prepping his groundbreaking Squadron Supreme mini-series, generously allowed me to use three new Squadron members he’d created—Arcanna, Nuke, and Power Princess—and even provided designs for their costumes. The final chapter of our trilogy was co-plotted by Don, who pulled out all the visual stops, as the Defenders and the Squadron literally join forces to defeat Null.

I’ll be honest: These massive crossover events have never been my forte. I struggle with them, afraid I’ll drown beneath the weight of all those characters. Did I succeed or fail with this one? I’ll leave the final judgement to you.

 

Speaking of final: The last story in this volume is another all-time favorite. “A Very Wrong Turn” is a tribute to one of the greatest minds of the 20^th century: writer/artist/absolute legend Theodore Geisel—aka Dr. Seuss. One of my earliest, and warmest, memories is walking, hand in hand with my parents, to the Avenue J library in Brooklyn, sitting down in the children’s section and discovering Geisel’s wondrous worlds. His books had an impact on me that echoes through my work, and life, to this day. In 1982, my son Cody was two years old and we were constantly reading Seuss’s work. Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, inspired by those readings, if we could do a story set in a Seuss-like universe? That was yet another joy of Defenders, which had a history of smashing norms, thanks in no small part to the iconoclastic work of Steve Gerber: I was free to always change things up and move in whatever oddball direction the whims and winds took me. (It helped tremendously that I had an editor who allowed me to do that. Milgrom gave me all the creative room I needed, but was always there to offer guidance and save me from racing, like Wily Coyote, off the edge of the creative cliff.) 

I mailed Don a stack of Seuss books and he did an extraordinary job of capturing Geisel’s playful, mind-bendingly imaginative style. (One of the things I truly respected about Don was that he wasn’t the kind of artist who stopped evolving. I watched him, over our more than three-year stint on the book, continually challenging himself to expand his artistic reach. “A Very Wrong Turn” is proof of that.) I don’t recall what the readers thought of our journey into Seussiana—if that’s not a word, it should be—but Don and I loved it, and I still hold this story close to my heart.

Truth is, I hold all these stories, the successes and the failures, close to my heart. My years on Defenders allowed me to experiment, play, build up creative muscles, and take the first tentative steps toward finding my individual voice as a writer. I couldn’t have written Moonshadow, Kraven’s Last Hunt, or any of the work that followed had I not had the freedom Defenders allowed me. And for that I am forever grateful.

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

SURF'S UP

Brian Wilson—the genius behind the Beach Boys greatest work—has died.

Back in 2010, I was driving along—on the way to pick my daughter up at school—when the 1966 Beach Boys single “God Only Knows” came on the radio: it was as if I’d never heard it before. The richness of the production, the plaintive, multi-layered vocals, the sheer heart—and heartbreak—of the piece: absolute magic. I’d always enjoyed the Beach Boys (you’d be hard-pressed to find a better pop song than “Good Vibrations,” and I'm especially fond of two other Wilson classics: the Beach Boys' "'Til I Die" and the solo track "Love and Mercy"), but I was never a major devotee, as I know many people are. But that song. That song... I was twelve when “God Only Knows” came out. It took me forty-four years to get it—but, wow, did I ever.

Safe travels, Mr. Wilson. May you surf the cosmos and find all the love and mercy your soul desires.

UNLIMITED

Had a great chat about adapting Alan Moore's "For The Man Who Has Everything"—and lots of other things—with Justice League Unlimited's Wonder Woman herself, Susan Eisenberg, and her charming co-host James Enstall of the Justice League Revisited podcast and you can listen here.

THE DOCTOR IS (FINALLY!) IN

This week sees the release of a massive collection from DC that (finally!) reprints my Dr. Fate run with Keith Giffen, Shawn McManus, and several other artistic titans. I wrote an introduction for the book and you can read it below. Enjoy!

(Note: In the printed version I somehow thanked John Ostrander, who didn't contribute to this series (I think I was remembering a story John wrote during my Spectre run), instead of Joe Staton, who did an extraordinary job filling in for Shawn: a major glitch in my mental matrix.  Joe, if you're out there, I'm sorry!) 

The 1980s were an exhilarating decade for comic books. With DC launching groundbreaking series like Frank Miller’s Ronin and Mike Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000, Marvel kicking off the creator-centric Epic line, independent publishers offering unheard of rights and royalties (and the Big Two following in their wake), the possibilities were suddenly endless. And it wasn’t just the new wave of creator-owned books shaking things up: This was the era of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, when writers and artists could shove a stick of dynamite into the mouths of even the most staid and stable superheroes and blow them to bits. (In the best way possible, of course!) I look back astonished that, in a few short years, in collaboration with some of the most brilliant talents in the business, I was writing Moonshadow and Blood: a tale for Epic, Kraven’s Last Hunt for mainstream Marvel, and, for DC, Justice League International and the book we’re here to discuss: Dr. Fate. These were comics in a broad variety of genres and styles and each one, in its way, was profoundly personal. 

 

None more so than Fate.

 

I’d spent the first part of the 80s working exclusively for Marvel; then, in 1986 or so (it’s been a while, so forgive me if the dates are a little off), I went back to DC, where my career began at the tail end of the previous decade. One of the first books I pitched to Dick Giordano, DC’s managing editor in those days, was a mini-series rebooting and reimagining Fate.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that familiar with the character—I initially saw him as DC’s answer to Doctor Strange (even if the truth was the other way around)—but I’ve always loved the supernatural corners of the Marvel and DC universes, where the eerie and the metaphysical merged, creating opportunities to tell the kinds of stories you simply can’t with the spandex brigade. Dr. Fate was one the company’s oldest characters—he debuted in 1940, just a year after Batman—but he’d never been a shining star in the DCU firmament. That meant the character was ripe for reinvention.

 

Sometimes the approval process is an astonishingly quick one, other times you have to jump through your share of hoops to get there and, if memory serves, I went through multiple drafts of my pitch before Dick finally approved it. But my patience was rewarded: I was soon working with one of the greatest editors in the history of comics, the late Denny O’Neil (I’d worked with him before at Marvel and my respect for Mr. O’Neil was off the charts) and an artist I was familiar with but had never met: Keith Giffen. (I could write a lengthy essay about my decades-long collaboration with Keith, who passed away in 2023. I’ve called him the Jack Kirby of my generation of comic book creators—but comparisons like that don’t do justice to either man, so let’s just say Keith was a genre unto himself.)

I remember going out to lunch with Denny and Keith, thinking my story was locked in place and we’d just be having a general discussion. Before the lunch was over there were dozens of fantastic new ideas flying across the table; so many that I was a little dazed and dizzy when I headed home. But ideas, however strong, don’t always add up to a compelling story, and I wrestled, for some time, with all the elements we’d laid out before I came up with a story that clicked.

 

That mini—brought to brilliant visual life by Keith (who was always adding wonderfully insane touches along the way: Kent Nelson with a gaping mouth in his belly? Pure Giffen)—was well-received, but, once it was over, I moved on to other projects. A few years later, with the character popping up in Justice League, I got the Fate bug again and pitched my old friend, and another one of the industry’s greatest talents, Karen Berger, on a Fate ongoing. The original idea was to give the book a JLI flavor, mystical adventures with a knowing wink, but the series soon grew far beyond that. The story, as the best stories always do, took on a life of its own, so much so that I think the readers were a little confused: Is this a superhero book? A supernatural one? A comedy? A metaphysical treatise? A psychological deep-dive? A course in comparative religion? Why is there lowbrow toilet humor side by side with discussions about the nature of God? What is this? 

 

I didn’t know, I still don’t, and that’s what makes this Dr. Fate run so special to me. Remember what I said about the 80s and the lack of guardrails? Karen B and the superb editor who followed her, Art Young, gave me the freedom to take an established DC character and make him my own: I couldn’t have had more freedom if Fate had been a creator-owned book.

I came across a quote, years ago—I’ve been trying to track down the source ever since, to no avail—that said (and I’m broadly paraphrasing): Write each story as if it’s the last one you’ll ever write. Pour every passion, every obsession, every thought and feeling, all that you are, into it. That’s what I did with Dr. Fate: My entire perspective on life, the universe, and everything infused each page—and I’m so grateful that Karen and Art let me do it in my own odd and idiosyncratic way.

 

And I’m extraordinarily grateful to the artist who illustrated the bulk of these stories: the brilliant Shawn McManus. Aside from being one of the nicest human beings you could ever encounter, Shawn is a consummate visual storyteller. Whatever I asked of him, he delivered, from the subtlest to the silliest, from the quietly emotional to the grandly cosmic. (“Hey, Shawn, wanna draw the death and rebirth of Creation?” “Sure!”) He was, and remains, one of my all-time favorite collaborators. (A tip of the hat, as well, to master inkers Dave Hunt, who inked the mini-series, and Mark McKenna, who worked on the first six issues of the monthly, as well as Jim Fern, Joe Staton, Val Semeiks, and Tom Sutton, who all made vital contributions to our saga.)

 

When you spend years with characters, you come to know them better than your own dearest friends—they become real to you—which is why I’m grateful, as well, to our oddball cast: Eric and Linda Strauss, whose unique spiritual bond was born of twin-soul karma, thousands of lifetimes reincarnating together…the wise and, yes, sometimes demented Nabu…the always-beleaguered Jack Small…and the big-hearted demon with the impenetrable accent, Petey. 

At the time, our Dr. Fate series seemed to fly under the radar, but, over the years, I’ve been delighted to encounter many readers who took the stories into their hearts, had their minds opened, their view of the universe enhanced a little, by these admittedly-eccentric comic book stories. And there’s one question these people have asked over and over and over: “When will your Dr. Fate run be collected?”

 

Guess what? I’ve finally got an answer: Now. 

©copyright 2025 J.M. DeMatteis

ON THE HIGH WIRE

A quick one to point you to this interview I just did with Joel Meadows of Tripwire Magazine—talking about the new edition of Moonshadow and the joys of working with the brilliant Jon J Muth.  Enjoy!