Marvin Arthur Wolfman (born May 13, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American Comic Book writer who was one of the major creative forces in the medium, especially during the The Bronze Age of Comic Books.
Starting in the fandom in the 1960s, Wolfman was hired in 1968 for DC Comics along with his longtime friend Len Wein and worked on various series, including the original version of the Teen Titans.
Along the way, Wolfman indirectly enabled writers to be properly credited in the company's publications. In the horror comic House of Secrets, there was a pun where the series' host, Abel, introduced Wolfman's story as something he heard from a wandering Wolfman. The Comics Code Authority flagged it as mentioning a werewolf, which was specifically forbidden. The editor explained that the writer's actual surname was Wolfman and the CCA relented as long as Wolfman's name was clearly credited as the writer. DC complied, and when the editorship was inundated with complaints by other writers about Wolfman getting a credit, it became standard policy.
Wolfman moved to Marvel Comics where he worked on various series such as the highly acclaimed The Tomb of Dracula which introduced the character, Blade, and also created the classic Daredevil villain, Bullseye.
Eventually, Wolfman felt Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter's heavy-handed management style was becoming so annoying that he accepted the offer of publisher of Jenette Kahn to come back to DC. There he created some of his greatest work like New Teen Titans with artist George Pérez, which proved a revitalising success so great that DC had the team do the same to the entire DC Universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths which gave the company's superhero line a modernization.
After that career high point, Wolfman has worked between DC, Disney and Marvel's publishing lines and in other medium such as in Western Animation such as Batman: The Animated Series. ("Feat of Clay"), as well as several Marvel Productions cartoons including G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Transformers, Jem and Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series. Other TV credits include Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Beast Machines, Street Fighter, Monster Force, Godzilla: The Series, and serving as the co-creator of both Pocket Dragon Adventures and Sym-Bionic Titan.
Like many of the major comic book creators, Wolfman has challenged Marvel in court for the rights over Blade and other characters he created which proved unsuccessful. Because of this he would not work for Marvel again until 2017. Here's👁 Image
a link to an interview on the lawsuit and Wolfman's thoughts on the matter. He notably has no grudge against Marvel, feeling that they were honest about how they saw the situation even if he disagreed with them.
Works by Marv Wolfman with their own trope pages include:
- Adventures of Superman
- Batman: Arkham Knight
- Blade
- Convergence — the New Teen Titans and Adventures of Superman tie-ins
- Crisis on Infinite Earths
- DC Retroactive: Superman (wrote "The '80s" issue)
- DC Universe Online (co-writer of the game; also co-wrote the tie-in comic book)
- New Teen Titans
- Nova (invented the character)
- Spider-Man
- Supergirl
- Superman:
- Team Titans
- The Tomb of Dracula