Len Wein: 1948-2017
Len Wein, the Eisner Hall Of Fame comics writer best known for creating the New X-Men, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Mockingbird, Swamp Thing, Human Target, Lucius Fox, and editor know for editing New Teen Titans, Batman, Flash, Who’s Who in the DC Universe, and Watchmen, died Saturday. He was 69.
Over his nearly fifty years in comics, he wrote thousands of comics stories and edited hundreds more for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and Disney Comics, where he served as Editor-In-Chief. He also wrote numerous animated episodes for Action Man, Avengers: United We Stand, ReBoot, ExoSquad, and Batman: The Animated Series, among many others.
I last saw Len at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, where we both represented the pros for the fan-pro Trivia Challenge.
He is survived by his wife, Christine Valada. My heart goes out to her, all his friends (he had hundreds), all his fans (he had tens of thousands), and the people his work touched (millions).
Man, that’s a body of work to be proud of. Such a loss :(
So many credits and ideas to his resume. He wrote Star Trek for Gold Key, he put together the Freedom Fighters for DC, he had a hand in creating Nova before Marvel ever published him, I even heard from somewhere that he not only wrote Hot Wheels, he may have drawn issues of that series. Few people embodied the Bronze Age of Comics as did he.
Len was the second person that I met (after Karen Berger) on that day in 1983 when I first walked into the DC office at 666 Fifth Avenue. While Karen was talking to me about things, Len came by. Karen introduced me. I knew the name was familiar, I knew that I “knew” him, but couldn’t place him. But I fudged–told him what an honor it was to meet him, how much I loved his work–he was gracious and friendly, and remained that way always! (After I got home and went through my comics collection, I was so embarrassed and wanted to kick myself.) Much later, I told him that story of first meeting him. He really got a kick out of it, laughed his head off. He invited me to my first comics poker party. And Len was the first editor after Karen to offer me a chance to write something outside Karen’s books–it was a TALE OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS story. He was, simply put, amazing.
I am deeply grieved.