News & Updates

Writers…oh, how we love our words. The problem is that in comics it isn’t just about the words, it is also about the pictures. As a writer, sometimes I forget that the words aren’t as important as they seemed when I wrote them. When I got the gig writing PLANET OF THE APES: URSUS, it…

For the last few years I have been teaching ‘Writing for Comics’ at Portland State University (often co-teaching with my dear friend, Brian Michael Bendis). For the class mid-term the students are required to create their own web comic. After years of telling students to make a web comic, I decided to create my own,…

My first full-length comic book story was a 32-page, self-published story called FUNKYTOWN that appeared in the pages of my magazine, BadAzz Mofo. FUNKYTOWN was my homage to blaxploitation, mixed with comedy (at least my idea of comedy at the time), and a bit horror. It was the tale of a private detective named Brick…

The best part of writing NIGHTHAWK – the part that was always fun and gratifying – was the character Tilda Johnson (a.k.a. Nightshade, a.k.a. Deadly Nightshade). For decades, Tilda has been a ridiculous character – a genius robotics expert that works with werewolves, and frequently wore a leather bikini. When it came to black women…

NIGHTHAWK was my first series for Marvel, even though it did not come out first. As I was developing NIGHTHAWK, I also got the job writing POWER MAN & IRON FIST, which was given top priority. As a result, NIGHTHAWK went on the back-burner for a while, and came out after POWER MAN & IRON…

My first gig for Marvel was a short story for Secret Wars: Battleworld #2. Short stories like this are one of the ways Marvel tests out new writers. I was asked to pitch several ideas, and the one they picked was Blade the Vampire Slayer vs. Howard the Duck. This was actually an idea for…