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Marvin A. "Marv" Wolfman (born May 13, 1946) is an award-winning American comic book writer. He is best known for lengthy runs on The Tomb of Dracula, creating Blade for Marvel Comics, and The New Teen Titans for DC Comics.
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Wolfman attended New York's High School of Art and Design, hoping to become a cartoonist. He was active in fandom before he broke into professional comics at DC in 1968. Wolfman was one of the first to publish Stephen King, with "In A Half-World of Terror" (in Wolfman's horror fanzine Stories of Suspense #2, 1965).
In 1972, Wolfman moved to Marvel Comics a protégé of then-editor Roy Thomas. When Thomas stepped down, Wolfman eventually took over as editor, initially in charge of the black and white magazines then finally the color line of comics.
In regards to the black and white magazines, Wolfman commented in an 1981 interview that "Marvel never gave their full commitment to it, that was the problem. No one wanted to commit themselves to the staff." He also revealed that "We used to farm the books out to Harry Chester Studios [sic] and whatever they pasted up, they pasted up. I formed the first production staff, hired the first layout people, paste-up people."
One innovation which Wolfman instituted was the "warehouse story." When writers and artists missed deadlines, it cost Marvel a great deal of money to delay the release of a scheduled issue, and using reprints to tread water was not as appealing to readers. So, Wolfman had various creative teams produce complete stories for various titles, which were then stored for possible later use if a book went off schedule, allowing the editor to keep the book on track with an entirely original story that would not alienate readers.
Because Marvel was producing an ever-expanding line of comics, Wolfman found it difficult to both supervise their titles and still write comics. He opted to step down as editor-in-chief in order to spend more time writing.
While at Marvel Wolfman wrote lengthy runs of The Amazing Spider-Man (where he co-created the Black Cat); Fantastic Four; and Doctor Strange. He created Nova in that character's eponymous first issue. In 1978, Wolfman and artist Alan Kupperberg took over the Howard the Duck syndicated newspaper comic strip.
His best-received work was The Tomb of Dracula, a fledgling horror comic which in his six years as writer Wolfman turned into a rich, complex piece of high gothic, well matched with the moody shade-and-light pencilling of Gene Colan.
In 1980, Wolfman returned to DC after a dispute with Marvel. Teaming with penciller George Pérez, Wolfman relaunched DC's Teen Titans in a special preview in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980). The New Teen Titans added the Wolfman-Pérez creations Raven, Starfire and Cyborg to the old team's Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Beast Boy (renamed Changeling). The series became DC's first new hit in years.
Other projects by Wolfman for DC during the early 1980s included collaborating with artist Gil Kane on a run on the Superman feature in Action Comics; a revival of Dial H for Hero with Carmine Infantino; launching Night Force a supernatural series drawn by Gene Colan; and a nearly two year run on Green Lantern with Joe Staton. During their collaboration on Green Lantern, Wolfman and Staton created the Omega Men in Green Lantern #141 (June 1981).
After Pérez left The New Teen Titans in 1985, Wolfman continued for many years with other collaborators — including pencillers José Luis García-López, Eduardo Barreto and Tom Grummett. In December 1986, Wolfman was informed by Marvel writer Chris Claremont that a DC executive had approached Claremont at a holiday party and offered him the position of writer on The New Teen Titans. Claremont immediately declined the offer and told Wolfman that apparently the publisher was looking to replace him on the title. When Wolfman confronted DC executives about this, he was told it was "just a joke", although Claremont reiterated that he took it to be a credible and official offer.
In 1985, Wolfman and Pérez launched Crisis on Infinite Earths, a 12-issue limited series celebrating DC's 50th anniversary. Featuring a cast of thousands and a timeline that ranged from the beginning of the universe to the end of time, it killed scores of characters, integrated a number of heroes from other companies to DC continuity, and re-wrote 50 years of DC universe history in order to streamline it.
Wolfman was also involved in the DC Comics relaunch of the Superman line, reinventing nemesis Lex Luthor and initially scripting the Adventures of Superman title.
Wolfman got into a public dispute with DC over a proposed ratings system, which led to his being relieved of his editorial duties by the company. DC offered to reinstate Wolfman as an editor provided he apologize for making his criticism of the ratings system public, rather than keeping them internal to the company, but he declined to do so.
Wolfman had a brief run on Batman, creating Robin III Tim Drake and writing an anniversary adaptation of the first ever Batman story, which was printed along with two other adaptations and the original. He continued as Teen Titans writer until the title's last issue. However, in the 1990s Wolfman's writing for comics decreased as he turned to animation and television, though he wrote the mid-1990s DC series The Man Called A-X.
A decade later, Wolfman began writing in comics again, scripting Defex, the flagship title of Devil's Due Productions' Aftermath line. He also wrote an "Infinite Crisis" issue of DC's "Secret Files", and consulted with writer Geoff Johns on several issues of The Teen Titans. Wolfman also wrote a novel based on Crisis on Infinite Earths, but rather than following the original plot, he created a new story starring the Barry Allen Flash that takes place during the original Crisis story. Wolfman wrote the novelization of the film Superman Returns, and worked on a direct-to-video animated movie, Condor, for Stan Lee's Pow Entertainment.
In 2006, Wolfman was editorial director of Impact Comics (no relation to the DC Comics imprint), publisher of educational manga-style comics for high school students. That same year, starting with issue #125, Wolfman began writing DC's Nightwing series. Initially scheduled for a four-issue run, Wolfman's run was expanded to a baker's dozen issues, and finished with #137. During the course of his run, Wolfman introduced a new Vigilante character. Following Wolfman's departure from the pages of Nightwing, Vigilante was spun off into his own short-lived title, which Wolfman wrote. He wrote a miniseries starring the Teen Titan Raven, a character he and Perez co-created during their run on The New Teen Titans, helping to revamp and update the character. He is working with Pérez on a direct-to-DVD movie adaptation of the popular "Judas Contract" storyline from their tenure on Teen Titans. In 2011, he and Pérez completed the New Teen Titans: Games graphic novel, which they had begun working on in the late 1980s.
In 1998, on the eve of the impending release of the Blade motion picture, Wolfman sued Marvel Comics over ownership of the Blade character, a lawsuit he eventually lost in 2000. According to The Comics Journal, "Wolfman had argued that he had not been bound by any work-for-hire contract at the time he had created the characters in 1972 and that Marvel's subsequent use of the characters had been contingent on his approval. The court ruled, however, that Marvel's later use of the characters was sufficiently different from Wolfman's initial creations to protect it from Wolfman's claim of copyright ownership."
Wolfman is married to Noel Watkins. Wolfman was previously married to Michele Wolfman, for many years a colorist in the comics industry. They have a daughter, Jessica Morgan.
Wolfman, on the panel "Marvel Comics: The Method and the Madness" at the 1974 New York Comic Art Convention, told the audience that when he first began working for DC, he received DC's first writing credit on their mystery magazines. In those days Gerry Conway wrote pages between the actual stories which had the book's hosts tell you what was coming up. In one, knowing Marv wrote the next story, Conway wrote that the following story was told to him by a "wandering Wolfman." The comics code, which did not permit the mention of werewolves or wolfmen, demanded it be removed. DC informed the code authority that the Wolfman in question was Marv's real name, so the code insisted that he be given a credit to show the Wolfman in question was a real person and not a monster. Once Wolfman was given a credit, the other writers demanded them too. Shortly, credits were given to all writers and artists.
Марв Вольфман
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