Marv Wolfman is a multi-award winning writer of comic books, animation, theme park shows and rides, children’s books, novels, television, internet animation and more.
Marv was Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics and Senior Editor at DC Comics where he created the acclaimed series The New Teen Titans. In 1987, Marv moved to Los Angeles where he became Comics Editor for Disney Adventures magazine.
In animation, Marv became story-editor for The Transformers, Superman and Monster Force TV shows. He and his long-time friend, Len Wein, recently sold the script for a big budget, live action super-hero movie called The Gene Pool.
What can I say about Len? He’s undoubtedly my oldest and dearest friend; we met when I was 13. We grew up together sharing common interests. We worked on each other’s fanzines. We helped form a comics group called TISOS along with a number of other pals. We broke into the business at about the same time, helped each other in our early days then proceeded to fight like bobcats over the last piece of meat from then on. We’ve had periods where we didn’t speak to each other and others that we seemed to be together all the time. We’ve been best men at each other’s weddings. We alternated at who ran which company and who worked for the other. We’ve seen each other at our heights and our lows.
Len’s friend, Ron Fradkin, called after seeing a letter I wrote printed in Mystery In Space. Ron said he lived in Levittown, Long Island and by the kind of coincidence writing schools will tell you never to commit to print, I was heading out to Levittown the very next day to spend a week with my sister and brother-in-law. Ron and his friend rode their bikes over to my sister’s house and we spent the day talking comics. When they left, Len got on his bike, started to ride away, turned to wave goodbye and promptly smashed his head into a tree branch, knocking him out. That should have been a warning.
What has Len done: If you’re reading this you probably already know. Len co-created Swamp Thing and the New X-Men, including Wolverine which he first put into The Hulk. Len also created Christopher Chance, the Human Target. Not so coincidentally, all three creations have made their way to television and the movies. Len’s run on Justice League of America and The Phantom Stranger are considered by many the definitive versions of those books. He’s also written Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Batman, Superman and many, many others. He is currently writing The Victorian for Penny Farthing Press and his new Elseworlds mini-series, Batman: Nevermore will be at your comic shops later in April. Be sure to pick it up. I’ve seen the art and it looks great.
Our parents didn’t know each other, never even met if I recall, but I’m positive that somehow, in some alternate dimension – one I probably destroyed in Crisis – that we were actually supposed to be brothers, and not just friends, which would actually explain our inextricably intertwined lives. So, as they say in Elfquest, here’s the interview with my brother in all but blood.
Marv Wolfman: How did you break into the business?
Len Wein: God, you should know this almost as well as I do. I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age seven, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. And I was hooked. When my eighth grade art teacher, Mr. Smedley, told me he thought I had actual art talent, I decided to devote all my efforts in that direction in the hope that I might someday get into the comics biz. I became an art major, took every art class my school had to offer. In college, I majored in Advertising Art and Design. And then, of course, when I was eleven, I met you through a letter you had published in Mystery in Space #75.
I was living in Levittown, New York, at the time (a town that also spawned Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith, Batman editor Bob Schreck, and Mr. Monster creator Michael T. Gilbert, by the way). You were living in Flushing, Queens, about 20 miles away. By one of those amazing coincidences that only occur in comic books or an Aaron Spelling show, you were coming out to Levittown that very weekend to visit your sister. We met, connected, and we’ve been best friends ever since.
Together, we were among those who helped found comics fandom. Both of us published fanzines that brought us to some small attention from various comics editors, Julius Schwartz not least among them. In fact, your character The Man Called Nova evolved out of one of our fanzine characters.
About one Thursday a month, both of us would cut school to take the weekly tour that DC Comics then gave of their offices, thus becoming somewhat familiar faces to the people who worked there.
In our late teens, we decided to try working together to sell something professionally. Technically, our first professional sale was a story called “The Conjurer and the Man Called Armageddon” that we both wrote and drew and which was published in an issue of Calvin Beck’s Castle of Frankenstein magazine. But since Beck essentially paid us in fish and copies of the magazine, I prefer to think our first real sale came later.
In the late ‘60s, Dick Giordano was publishing a line of action heroes at Charlton Comics. We decided to put together some samples for Dick to see if we could sell him something. By the time we finally finished our samples, Dick had moved over to DC Comics, so samples in hand we went up to the DC offices one day to see him. Professionals that we were, we had made no appointment, just showed up at the office, only to discover that Dick wasn’t even in the office that day. As we stood around, looking, as the late, great John D. MacDonald once described, like Smokey the Bear watching all the forests burn down, then-editorial director Carmine Infantino and editor Joe Orlando returned from lunch, and wondered what the hell we were doing there. When we explained we were looking for work, Carmine said, “Well, show your samples to my boy Joey here. If he likes you, you’re in.”
Joe took the samples, went back to his office, left us sitting in the lobby. A short while later, he returned. He told us the art (which I had primarily done) still needed a lot of work, but he liked the writing (which you had primarily done). If we were interested in submitting story ideas to the new House of Mystery title he was editing, he’d be interested in seeing what we had to offer.
Now I had never really thought of myself as a writer; any writing I had done was just to give myself something to draw. But never being one to count a gift horse’s molars, I went home and put together several ideas. I submitted them to Joe. He bought a (thankfully still-unpublished) little opus called “The Final Day of Nicholas Toombs” and I’ve been a writer ever since.
MW: What do you consider your most successful works, and why?
LW: Well, financially speaking, it would have to be Wolverine and the new X-Men. If I had just a penny out of every dollar that property has generated in comic books, TV series, feature films, trading cards, coloring books, toys, action figures, shampoo, soap, skateboards, bicycle helmets, candy, Pez dispensers, band-aids, and God alone only knows what else, I’d never have to work another day in my or my children’s lives.
Creatively successful is a whole other question. Swamp Thing certainly was one of those occasions where everything worked perfectly in unison. My run on the Phantom Stranger is what helped to cement my reputation. But I also really enjoyed doing Incredible Hulk, Batman, Justice League, Blue Beetle, Amazing Spider-Man, Dark Dominion… God, so many. I’ve been very lucky in that respect.
MW: Knowing what you know now, which of your more famous works would you redo if you could? Why and how?
LW: Actually, none of them. Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could then with whatever I was given to work with. I think there’s something inherently dishonest in trying to go back and mess with the past. Frankly, sometimes you’re not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I’ve written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.
Art is always in the eyes of the beholder. Only posterity has the right to point out our mistakes.
MW: Do you consider your audience when you create a story?
LW: Let me tell you a story. You’ve heard me say it a thousand times, but this is for your readers.
Years ago, when I was writing The Mighty Thor for Marvel, I pursued a story line that had Thor’s human girl friend Jane Foster with him in Asgard for one of those grand adventures. For months, my feedback in the mail went something like this: “Get rid of Jane Foster. She’s so boring. Bring back Lady Sif. Dump Jane. Etc.” Months of this. Until I finally figured I was doing something wrong, and obviously annoying my audience.
So, in the very next issue I plotted, I arranged a scene where Jane was in Lady Sif’s Asgardian quarters when she was attacked by trolls, or giants, or Amway salesmen, or something. To protect herself, Jane snatched up Sif’s sword, which had conveniently been left behind. In the course of the battle, Jane accidentally struck the hilt of the sword against a wall. In response came the customary flash of lightning and thunder, and when the light faded, Jane was gone and Lady Sif stood in her place, promptly trashing the Amway guys.
“There,” I thought to myself, “That should make them happy.”
The following month, the mail on that issue started coming in. “Get rid of Lady Sif. She’s so boring. Bring back Jane Foster. Dump Sif. Etc.” Now, normally, this wouldn’t have bothered me. It was frankly to be expected. Sif had her supporters; Jane had hers. There was only one problem.
The mail was from the same damn people!
That was the moment that I realized the only thing I owed my audience was my own judgment and my own best effort.
I write my stories for me and hope that other people will like them as well. Thus far, I’ve been fortunate in that regard.
MW: What are your goals when you sit down to write a story?
LW: Well, first to make the deadline. Or come as close to it as possible. The amount of preparation I’ve done really depends on the kind of story I’m writing.
For most of the series super-hero yarns I’ve spun along the way, I try to keep a stack of all the villain’s previous appearances (a much easier task a few decades ago) to make certain I don’t contradict or duplicate what’s been done before. I have a general sense of the story’s direction, what my ending will be, how much sub-plot I need to advance in this issue, and I go from there.
For The Victorian title I’m currently writing for Penny-Farthing Press, I usually start with the two-page single-spaced synopsis they’ve given me of this issue’s plot, and try to make sure I hit all the pertinent plot points needed to advance the story, but the general pacing is left to me.
For my new Elseworlds mini-series Batman: Nevermore, I did a whole lot of reading up on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, so I could figure out which of his classic stories I wanted to reference in the course of the series. I also kept the collected works close at hand as I wrote so I could keep referring to them and make sure I maintained Poe’s voice throughout the series.
The majority of stories I’ve written over the years came to me as I went along. I’ve always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I’ll get to the place I intend to reach by the end of the story. Generally, that’s the way it works out. Now and then, the characters take me to places I never expected to go. In many ways, those are probably my best stories.
MW: How do you recognize when a story isn’t working and what do you do to fix the problems?
LW: That’s easy. If a story isn’t working, I’m simply unable to finish it. That’s what usually tells me something is wrong. I go over the story, try to throw out what’s clearly not working, and then put the story aside. I go out for a walk, or a trip to the local coffee shop, or to a movie, and let the story stew in the back of my mind. When the problem has worked its way through my subconscious, the solution usually pops up like a piece of toast. I know that’s not much help, but that’s the way I work.
Actually Julie Schwartz once told me years ago, “If you’re sitting at the typewriter and nothing comes to you for over an hour, get up and go to the movies.” Thanks to Julie’s advice, I’ve seen a heck of a lot of films over the years.
I want to thank Len for the first part of his interview (as well as the second since I’ve already read it). Be sure to return next week to read part two. Also, don’t forget to send in your questions to me at marv@silverbulletcomicbooks.com.
