Marv Wolfman

About

Biography

Filmography

Biography

With a name like Marv Wolfman, this New York native had no choice but to become a youngster obsessed with horror, comic books and all things creepy. That he grew up to become a beloved comic book scriptwriter is proof that sometimes one's name is one's destiny. In fact, an in-joke about Wolfman's name eventually led to all comic book artists and writers getting story credits. When a horror comic's introduction cheekily described one of Marv's stories as a "Wolfman's tale," the Comics Code Authority (which had banned mentions of werewolves during the comic book crackdown of the 1950s) insisted that Marv Wolfman be directly credited as the story's author, which then led to all writers and artists getting credited in comic books.

Marvin Arthur Wolfman was born in Brooklyn just after the end of World War II. As part of the first wave of baby boomers, the police officer's son became a fan of both comic books and horror fiction. While still in his teens, Wolfman began publishing a DIY horror fanzine called Stories of Suspense. This low-circulation effort retroactively earned a certain infamy because its second issue, from 1965, included a short story called "In A Half-World of Terror" by a very young fledgling horror writer from Maine named Stephen King. Wolfman was hired by DC Comics as a freelance script writer in 1968, where he worked primarily on the title Teen Titans. During an eight-year stint at DC's competitor Marvel, he co-created the vampire-hunter character Blade and worked extensively on John Carter: Warlord of Mars, Spider-Woman and eventually The Amazing Spider-Man, where he wrote the story arc in which Peter Parker first proposes marriage to Mary Jane Watson.

Returning to DC in the 1980s, Wolfman was instrumental in the company's successful re-launch, helping to revitalize the company's standout characters Green Lantern, Batman and Superman. This took place in part through 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths series and its follow-up companion History of the DC Universe, which between them placed all of the DC characters into a single, simplified universe. Though Wolfman never stopped writing and editing comics, he moved into television during the 1980s by writing scripts for various animated series, including several shows in the "Transformers" franchise and such Generation X touchstones as "Jem" (Syndicated 1985-88) and "Garbage Pail Kids" (Syndicated 1987). After losing a 1998 lawsuit against Marvel Comics in which he claimed he owned the copyright to the character Blade (then being played on film by Wesley Snipes), Wolfman continued working with DC on the titles Nightwing and Night Force. During this era, he also made a side trip into publishing, writing the paperback novelization of the film "Superman Returns" (2006).