Man, I need to catch up on all the other things I have in queue to write about, otherwise my site will just be a Nerdy Obituary blog.
However, I can’t let the passing of comic book writer, editor and creator Len Wein sit too long. Alongside Roy Thomas and Marv Wolfman, Len was one of the first fans to land a job working at the big two. He started off with DC in the late Sixties and then defected to Marvel by the Seventies where Len created Wolverine who first appeared in The Incredible Hulk. His most famous contribution to comic books followed later, turning around an always struggling title Marvel thought about cancelling after 90-plus issues (a third of which were reprints of the first 60ish)…The X-Men. The lineup changes weren’t embraced wholeheartedly for another couple years (Wolverine used to get hate mail) but Giant-Sized X-Men made the franchise the industry’s most popular title throughout the Eighties.
Len had a falling out with Marvel afterwards and returned to DC where he stayed for the remainder of his life. Not sure when he exactly created Swamp Thing there yet I know he oversaw the groundbreaking The Watchmen as an editor and was involved in writing numerous other books, too many to list feasibly. I will bring up a personal favorite though, The New Teen Titans and as far as I’m concerned, he was the invisible co-writer behind Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s 1980 reboot that kept DC in the running against Marvel’s mutant domination. The lineup changes carry on today through Teen Titans Go! and sadly the upcoming Justice League flick.
Thanks Len for all the heroes, villains, organizations and destinations you created. My upbringing gobbled them up and continue to this day.