So, once again I must postpone my article about the infamous "Superboy Meets Bonnie and Clyde" story from Superboy #149...
I was shocked last Monday, when I read that comics' legendary writer/editor Len Wein had died at the age of sixty-nine.
In a close-to-fifty-year career, Len wrote countless stories, and edited countless stories as well.
Wein started at DC Comics in the late 1960s, one of the earliest of the comic book fans to break into the ranks of the comic professionals. Over the years, he left DC for Marvel, and then returned to DC years later. He also worked for Gold Key, Skywald, Comico, Eclipse Comics, Disney Comics, Dark Horse, Defiant Comics, Penny-Farthing Press, and Bongo Comics!
(And now, just for the hell of it, I'm going to reprint images of the original art from some pages Len wrote or edited. And no, fellow babies, these scans do not come from my private collection... so no use finding out where I live, just so you can steal 'em!)
Most notably, he co-created DC's Swamp Thing with artist Bernie Wrightson.
Len co-created Wolverine with Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas and John Romita, Sr., who was Marvel's art director at the time. Artist Herb Trimpe, often credited as being one of Wolverine's co-creators, said that he was merely the first artist to utilize the character in Wolvie's first three stories, published in The Incredible Hulk #180-182.
In 1975, with artist Dave Cockrum, Wein re-vamped Marvel's relatively unpopular team, the X-Men, into the so-called new X-Men in 1975's Giant-Size X-Men #1, and began the series that made them the huge hit that they've been for roughly forty years.
Among numerous other series, he edited Camelot 3000 for DC Comics...
...and DC's Watchmen as well.
And, as I implied above, that's only the tip of the proverbial iceberg!
By the way, since I never met the man, I highly recommend that you click here for a terrific (and brief) anecdote by someone who did, his friend Mark Evanier.
Thanks for your time.
