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 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").
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
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:
- Batman: Arkham Knight
- Blade
- 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
- Spider-Man
- Supergirl
- Superman:
- Team Titans
- The Tomb of Dracula
