Part One is here and Part Two is here.
Instead of meeting Daredevil in Blackwulf #8, the now canceled comic saw much of its heroic cast follow the villains to space for a final story arc where Lucian would confront his father Tantalus. Every member of the supporting cast is changed by the conflict. Some discover shocking truths about themselves. Some have their secrets or schemes exposed. Some are physically changed. Some switch allegiances. Some die. One dies a few times.
Ralph Macchio (Blackwulf creator/editor; Avengers, Thunderstrike, Daredevil editor): Touchstone, I came up with the name because she touches all realities. She’s in all of them in different incarnations. And Schizo because I just love the idea of this crazy you know, nutty joke or type character floating around with the crazy word balloons which also was a Glenn innovation. I hadn’t thought of crazy word balloons. But having her have reality made her the perfect opposite. Schizo and Touchstone having to be sisters? That was like a master stroke on Glenn’s part.
Cullen Bunn (Deadpool & the Mercs for Money writer): All the characters were interesting. There was the one character who seemed to be scattered through time and could call upon different timelines: Touchstone. That character just fascinated me and there’s just a haunting moment in that series towards the end where Touchstone gets grabbed by Tantalus. He’s just killing her over and over again throughout multiple timelines. Haunting. It’s awesome and terrible at the same time.
Ralph Macchio: It’s all about identity. It’s “Who am I?” They always say that that is the ultimate thing in literature, in philosophy, and even in science, it’s all about who we are as a race, as a civilization, as a society and all the way down to as a person, “Who am I?” That’s the question we ask throughout life and for these larger than life figures, they still want to know who they are and what it takes for them to learn who they are. The kind of trials that they have to go through to find out who they really are. If you remember at the end of the New Gods, Kirby has those last few panels where Orion goes, “I can deny it no longer to others or to myself. I am the son of Darkseid because with the heritage and the ultimate ferocity, when I clash with Darkseid and the fire pits of Apokolips, this war will be decided at that point.” Even though the series ended, Kirby, at least, had brought Orion around to understanding and knowing. He had self-knowledge and that was what we wanted Lucian to have as well, assuming the Blackwulf mantle and having that Black Legacy. We were able to kind of do what we needed to do. You know, it’s a limited series. I think it came to a satisfying conclusion.
The final issues required effort by the whole Bullpen to get out the door.
Glenn Herdling (Blackwulf writer): Angel was definitely rushed those last few issues.
Chris De Fellippo (Blackwulf intern & colorist): This is old school but let’s do this. A script came in. You would Xerox the script. You send the script out to everybody. On a copy of this script, Ralph would edit it. Then pencils would come in and then you would photocopy them at size and you would send one to the inker, one back to the penciler and one to the writer. The writer would write what he wanted. The inker’s inking the real pages. The writer’s writing on the photocopy. That all would come back. You would photocopy it again at like 65%, I can’t believe I can remember this. This would go to a letterer. He might letter on the real page or he might letter on Vellum and we would just do it in the bullpen. And then the colorist would get a copy at this size and it didn’t matter in the day back in the day. It didn’t matter. I used Dr. Martin’s Dyes. You can use their watercolor dies or markers and you could use crayons. Because what mattered was the label. And then that would go out and a color separator would match the colors.
Glenn Herdling: Every editor (except maybe Carl Potts) faced days when pages would come in and need to immediately get turned around. And yes, there were days I had to turn script pages overnight. But remember, the penciled pages would come in piecemeal, so I wouldn’t have to script the entire issue overnight.
Chris De Fellippo: But the day-to-day minutia sh*t is run by Matt Idelson, who was the assistant editor. So the day-to-day is run by Idelson. And he’s in a panic mode because things are broke and Ralph ain’t just gonna be behind. We have to do a fill-on and he’d go, “Okay we’ll get Glenn,” who was in the building. Glenn’s on staff so it helped a lot so they would have this conversation with Glenn. And they would decide, “Okay Glenn, Angel’s not gonna meet this we’re gonna give it to Bob, Frank and Joe. That’s whos’ available now. How would you pick?” You had a list of artists or there were always submission artists going around. I still remember Susan Gaffney, she was an editor, going around and going, “Hey this looks good. I used this person. They were good. You should give him a try.” Or Craig [Anderson] would walk around. Your fill-in artists might be who was free. You would know who was free or someone suggested somebody. “I’m gonna go get him.” [Ralph] would just go, “Glenn does this guy work?” Glenn will go, “Yeah.” And they would have them do fill-ins or the back end stories or pages they missed. Some of it wouldn’t even be by choice. It goes back to the bullpen, “Angel’s late.” So you knew and inkers that were on staff or Romita’s Raiders and all those kind of people and we’ll just hand them pages and they would have to come back out with it in the morning. But you didn’t sleep. I didn’t. None of us did. You would work all day, you would hope at the end of the day some editor would run around. Al Milgrom was the best at this. Al Milgrom, “I got paid today by meeting pages.” He would just be yelling in the Bullpen and you would go home and you would stay up all night, take a two hour nap and go to work the next day with your work and then work a whole day at Marvel. It was the best job. But that’s how the issues would work. Matt or Ralph or Glenn would go, “Look, I’m behind. How many pages can you get done tonight? What can you get done tonight?” That’s how those fill-in issues, the couple that he misses, I can tell you exactly what happened. They know he’s behind. Ralph, “He’s behind. We got it. And we have him skip an issue so he can get ahead and we’ll get some miles from some fill-in issue.” That’s how you do it by the seat of the pants. It was so much fun. It was just seat of the pants and what was around. And Ralph had his go-to guys.
Bill Wylie (Secret Defenders penciler): I don’t know if you know about the Romita’s Raiders program. John Romita was the art director at Marvel Comics at the time and he ran an art apprenticeship program where there’s always three positions available, each lasted one year. So fortunate new artists had the opportunity to come in. And essentially it was the Art Corrections Department. So we would get pages come in, anything from extending panels to completely redrawing panels. Sometimes completely redrawing pages. And then sometimes we got the lucky job of redrawing a complete story if their artists flaked out or messed up. So anything from small corrections to sometimes correcting full pages, so it was great. And I work directly under John Romita, which was a real honor and then his managing art director Steve Geiger. Steve was my direct boss and then John would come in from time to time to check in on us and that was really great: the legendary John Romita, working for him. And then John Romita, Jr. would come in. Mark Texeira. Ron Garney. I met John Buscema once. All the artists would just come by and then we were the really fun department. So everyone would swing by our department just to hang out so I got to know all those guys. It was a blast.
Bill Wylie: This was before anything digital so we had the stuff called patch paper and it was a white sticker paper with a really low tack so you could put the sticker paper over the artwork and redraw a panel and then when the artist got the artwork back they could just carefully remove it and it wouldn’t destroy the artwork. They didn’t have to get mad at us for changing their artwork. But you have to try to imitate their Style. so I had all these different styles come across my desk and that was really really just an unbelievable learning experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m really proud to be on that list of Romita’s Raiders from that period. It’s a pretty short list and it didn’t last that long actually, and I was just so lucky to have that opportunity. Mark McKenna, Scott Kolins, Scott Koblish, Steve Geiger, Keith Williams, Tom Morgan, Yancey Labat, and Pond Scum. I replaced Scott Kolins. He left and then the position became available and I think I replaced him. It’s not like they’re gonna kick you out after 12 months. It’s just to give someone else a chance and there were always three desks lined up. I was with Scott Koblish and Kris Renkewitz. When I first showed up it was Frank Percy. And John Kalisz who’s now a colorist.
Chris De Fellippo: I was in college. My roommate went to visit New York City. I was from New York. He wanted to take a tour of Marvel Comics. We walked in and said, “Do you get tours?” She said, “No, but we give an internship.” I said, “I’ll sign up.” It’s unpaid but I live here. It’s fine. So I moved to Jersey and lived in a trailer park because it didn’t pay. And Mary MacPherran, she’s Tom DeFalco’s secretary. Titania is named after her. She was around forever. She was Stan Lee’s and then Tom’s. Great lady. I actually talked to her all the time. Her husband, he was an inker. Anyways, I was interviewing for her and she said, “What office do you want?” I said, “X-Men,” because X-Men was the big thing at the time. And she said, “No you’re getting Fantastic Four.” The one book I don’t f*cking read of all Marvel! It’s fine. And it was Ralph’s office. But it had Captain America, my favorite character and all the others. And the X-Men office was next door and they didn’t have an intern. The lady tricked me! So I was a double intern. I worked the whole summer and then I came back and as an intern. I was busting my ass. Like, someone missed an ink, you would fix it. You had to clean. [Artist] Mark Texeira is a perfect example. He would run late. He was on Sabretooth. He would come in the office. Bob Harras would yell at Texeira literally on the phone, “Get the f*cking pages here. You’re f*cking late. What the f*ck are you doing?” So Texeria would come in and be like six o’clock at night seven at night. I should rewind: Ralph doesn’t come to work until one pm. And he stays till midnight. So your mornings were spent working before Ralph can anyways. So I’d be there that late when Texeira comes in. He’s got those stuff, but it’s not done. So he gave us all the Raiders and me and a bunch of people we had to erase all his pencils and we would start inking in parts that he missed and erase them because they weren’t done.
Wayne Murray (Blackwulf letterer): I was an art director in the advertising department and after that I got laid off and then I found another job as a letterer at the same time I found that job they offered me through another department: Spider-Man Magazine for Kids. So I was drawing Spider-Man Magazine for Kids and so I was in the office every day as a letter. And working in a team of letters in front of John’s wife, Virginia Romita office. All the letters are together. All of the paste-up people sat together. The art correction department, the Raiders, they sat together. I worked for Virginia Romita and at the same time I was working for John Romita. I would get assignments from Virginia or John Babco*ck who was the lead letterer. Nobody knows this but when I worked for Virginia Romita, I was scared of her. Yeah, she’s this little Italian lady. And she’s nice and empathetic and all those things but she’s f*cking tough. She hired me, gave me the green light, and I went in there and I wanted to do certain things. But I was always afraid to talk to her. I was always afraid to talk to her because I could see when she was tough, those times scared me. Never told anybody. I told my mother that.
Gregory Wright (Daredevil writer): I broke into getting freelance work through coloring. Back in the 80’s you could teach almost anybody to color. Mostly how coloring used to work was you colored the characters in their specific colors and then you put a background color that just made them pop. There was frequently very little artistry to a lot of the color. You could teach somebody to do that. And the comics looked boring. The color wasn’t really being used to enhance the art or tell a story. I didn’t like that because I had a cinematography background. Color mattered to me. So I started trying to light everything like it was done in the movies. I started to add highlights and shadows. I used color itself to help set a mood. Creators, both writers and artists, loved that because the lighting that artist had put in the black and white line art was being utilized properly instead of just a flat color on top of it all. Artists were getting to see their work really shine. And using the color to tell the story sometimes brought back atmosphere and mood to the art that the artist didn’t capture in black and white. Don’t get me wrong there were some nice looking color on some of the books, but much of it still had the characters colored their regular colors and ignored lighting put there by the artists. I could mimic all of the colorists being utilized at the time, as well as deliver pages really fast. There was a pretty big need for someone who could finish up a few pages on many books, So it was very easy to break in. Breaking in as a writer was a lot more difficult because you had to actually come up with a story that was decent enough for the editor to buy, and for everybody else to work on it after the fact. The color, sad to say, they didn’t care about if it was just average because they just needed to get the book out the door before it was late. If somebody can slap color on it, they were happy. I started my career coloring two and three pages of a comic every night because there was always something late. There were also two staff colorists: one was Paul Becton, who did the color in corrections, and you could usually grab him to do late pages and also George Roussos, who did the covers. At the time there weren’t a lot of other people in the office who did coloring except for me. Editors liked what I was doing because I could match the color from the other colorists and I was faster so that’s how I got a lot of work.
Chris De Fellippo: Greg was [Ralph’s] go-to. Greg always made deadlines. Great stuff. Looked f*cking gorgeous. And so if things were behind, just send it to Greg.
Gregory Wright: But then other people started realizing, “Hey, I could get some work.” So other people started doing it as well. Some of the Romita’s Raiders figured out that as artists,they could also color, and could bring something more to the colors. I wasn’t a penciller or inker, so I was just putting flat color down. Some Raiders found that they had a better shot at getting lots of work as a colorist than as a penciller or an inker… or they weren’t that great of a pencil or inker but they were actually very good colorists. So some of them kind of pioneered the more detailed rendered look.I used a lot of guys that worked in the bullpen, a lot of the letterers there became letterers of my books. Bill Oakley and Ken Lopez and Chris Eliopoulos were all staff letterers. Phil Felix. Rick Parker was in and out every day so you could give Rick stuff and it would come back fast. When it came to the Raiders, if I needed a page inked or if I needed a quick illustration. I would get one of those guys to do it. Jose Marzan,is a great example. I hooked him up with Joe Rubinstein, Joe grabbed him as an assistant and then Joe needed to leave a book I was working on and suggested that I use Jose. That was great because Jose’s style at the time was very much like Joe’s style. So it was a seamless switch. And Jose went on to much bigger things. Don Hudson, I paired him up with Bob Layton as an assistant and then Don Hudson went on to become a terrific inker. It was good to get to know all the people in the bullpen because they could help you out when you’re in a jam, both during office hours and even after hours doing freelance. Many folks in the bullpen were also hoping to break into freelance writing, penciling and inking, so they would always try to help you out in the hopes that you would remember, and when they showed you a portfolio…you’d take it more seriously.
Chris De Filippo: Go look through comics in the old days, and you’ll see a colorist called “Doc Martin.” He’ll show up in books everywhere. That’s a staff person. Dr. Martin’s Dyes. It’s literally the dyes we had in the office. So when you had a bunch of people that worked on a book or it was a staff person that couldn’t put their name on the book. They were called Doc Martin. I was one of the first guys who moved it to the computer. I still remember showing Ralph. “Look, there’s this thing called Photoshop.” I’m old. And I worked and I colored for Malibu for a number of years. And if you look it up, there’s a colorist called Electric Crayon, that’s me. So if you look at Joe Madureira’s run on X-Men, that’s me. There’s a bunch of people called Electric Crayon and I won’t get into it.
While much of this all-hands work went uncredited, Chris was named in the final issue.
Chris De Fellippo: The only reason I got credit for it is the book came in FedEx. Ralph told me, “You have to be here in the morning for FedEx.” I wasn’t on staff, I was a guy who just showed up every day. We took the pages out. I went and photocopied them. They locked me in an office and I literally colored it and Matt Idelson was the assistant here and he would come over and I go, “I’m done with this page.” He would take the page. He would run it across and somebody would label the numbers and that’s how we got the last issue out. It came in that day and had to go out that day. And there was another girl with me coloring Maria, she was an intern, she colored the last issue with me because I’m like, “Matt, I got four, I’m not gonna make this.” He called it so she colored a couple pages. Mark Powers, who used to be an editor for Spider-Man, he colored a page of the last issue because it had to go out that day. It was that far behind.
Glenn Herdling: I was getting a lot of work there for a while thinking everyone kept saying, “When are you going to go freelance?” That was one thing they always ask people, when you’re on staff at the time, if you had a couple of titles, “You’re a writer, you’re gonna go freelance. You can go freelance.” I don’t know. Blackwulf is so experimental. I’m not sure how long it’s gonna last. We planned it out for a year and then we only got 10 issues. That’s why you’ll see the last couple issues are kind of rushed but we had a fun time doing it and Namor, I got to go on stay on that for two years. That was fun. And then I did Avengers Unplugged for a while and then I was even writing a few Cables for a while.
Gregory Wright: Staffers getting work just sort of happened out of necessity at times. But usually, people on staff always had ideas for stories. We were not paid very well on staff. So, we were all always looking for some freelance work, which was aggravating to the freelance creators who did not have an inside ear on “Hey, Marvel’s looking to do X.” Because I knew that Marvel wanted to do Deathlok, and Howard Mackie knew that they wanted to do a Ghost Rider book, we were able to pitch early on. We had a bit of an advantage. Other freelance creators did pitch,editors called other creators to pitch, but we had that inside track… and it’s not really fair but it’s kind of how things went… up until Marvel decided, “Nope. Sorry. Staffers can no longer write books.” This really crushed Mark Gruenwald because he was writing Captain America and Quasar for years. Now he wasn’t allowed to write at all. But by that point they’ve been paying people better. When I was on staff, if you didn’t do freelance work you weren’t going to be able to live in New York. Plus, it was great. I think it made you a better editor to do freelance work because you know what it was like on the other side and you could understand the deadlines and stuff better. Editors loved hiring people on staff because when they’re on staff it’s much easier to get work out of them. Somebody’s living in California? I had to wait for them to wake up before I could call them up. “Yeah, I sent those pages off.” I won’t know until later. But if you’re in the office, it was easy to track someone down…“Where’s my pages?” So you were a little more reliable if you were on staff simply because you needed to be on time or they could just fire you right then, boom. “You didn’t bring me the plot. Okay, you’re fired. I’m gonna give it to this assistant editor over there.” And that would happen. There was always someone in the office who would love to take over someone else’s job on any comic.
Glenn Herdling: That was one of the good things, having me be in the office and then there you’ll hear controversies, about “Should editors hire people on staff to do their writing for them? Isn’t it bad and unfair to the creative people who aren’t in the office?” And, no but particularly on this being a new project I could go down I could just sit in Ralph’s office and, “Hey, I was thinking something” “Yeah Glenny, let me see what’s my schedule. Yeah, we can just work this out. Let’s do it right here. We’ll go to lunch.”
Bill Wylie: When I worked at my home studio, I would drop off pages a couple of times a week. And then I swing by the Raiders department just to hang out a little bit. I still knew the guys there and sometimes we’d have lunch. Sometimes you’d arrange to have lunch you’d meet at the same time and then have lunch together. It was a blast.
Wayne Murray: The climate and the bullpen was fun. It was kind of wild and crazy. But it was a really fun, cool place to work in. You see books come across your desk and original pages from Frank Miller, original pages from McFarlane, original pages from Alex Ross, those guys come through, you see Liefeld.
Chris De Fellippo: When I got hired as the internship Mary was grooming me to be on staff. They were called Mary’s Boys. I could point out Joe Madueria as a Mary’s Boy, he’s the most famous. Mark Powers is a Mary’s Boy, he used to be an editor for X-Men. Mark Bernardo who used to edit Spider-Man was a Mary’s Boy. If you started as an intern and you did well at it you were being groomed for a position and there’s a lot of artists that were too. Greg Wright was a Mary’s Boy. So she gave me Ralph’s office because Ralph didn’t come in to one. And FedEx had to be out by 10 am so she came to me and said, “Ralph’s not coming to one, you’re done for the day. Go see Mr. Romita in the office next to them.” “He’s not going to see me. That’s Mr. Romita. I’m not gonna go. No, that’s Mr. Romita.” So she pushed me in, “John, you gotta meet this kid.” So I walk in the office and tell him I’m going for illustration, blah blah. He’s like, “Let me see your portfolio.” I said, “No.” And he’s like, “Why no?” So I’m like, “First of all, you’re my hero, you’re Mr. Romita.” He’s, “Doesn’t matter.” “And two, I’m not good enough yet.” And he said, he looked at me and goes, “I’ve never liked anything I’ve ever done. Show me your portfolio.” So let that sink in. The guy who did everything never liked anything he ever did. So I was like, “Holy sh*t,” and it was like the moment that I was like, “I got it.”
Wayne Murray: Yeah, I was just a fun place to work, people were brutally honest. A lot of things sucked back then. I was trying to break into becoming a complete freelancer because I just wanted to draw comic books every day. But working for John Romita Sr. every day, I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Once in a while John Buscema would come in. And he would sit next to me and we would talk. So, talking to him and looking at him. He looks like those drawings of Odin with the beard and the nose he looked just like that to me. He looked just like that to me. Awesome. God, beautiful. These people, they’re kind of tough, some of them but there was something really beautiful about them and I felt super lucky. I felt like I could have just died right then. I have this guy sitting next to me who created all this stuff that impacted my life. And John Romita, I was almost afraid to ask those guys for an autograph or drawing or something like that, but I have some notes on the back of some of my original pages from Spider-Man Magazine that I still have. I have some notes from John Romita of him showing me stuff. And then he would sign it. Because then I would get the courage to ask him if I can have one of his drawings so he would just find something, Almost in a shyish kind of way. I had no choice because I was new as a comic book illustrator. He’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. So there was him that influenced me a lot. A couple of other people influenced me a lot but it’s nice to meet people from his generation that have an impact on your life not only as an artist but as a man, as a human being too.
Chris De Fellippo: Every day was a different day when you would walk in. Gruenwald would go to Tom, “You got 25 bucks?” “Yeah. Why?” “I’m buying pizza for everybody.” And we’d have these parties and they would roll out TVs and we would watch Little Rascals or Godzilla or The Simpsons and it would be a break in the day. And then how you just busted ass all day. Or there was a day Al Milgrom came to Ralph’s office and, “Hey Ralph. I need help. I lost my portfolio.” “Where did you have it?” “I know it’s in the building somewhere.” So we all had to go look for his portfolio they left in an office and One of the X-Men editors had gone home early and locked his office and it was in there. You didn’t look with them there and we finally had to get in. Yeah, those are my days. That’s okay. I mean that’s the kind of stuff that would happen all day. You did have I’m sorry one day you’d be sitting there and Larry Hama would just spend the whole day bullsh*tting with everybody. Or you can always walk in Romita’s office and he would teach you how to draw. The best days of my life.
Ralph Macchio: [Mark Gruenwald and I] never had an argument between us. We always were on the same page and I miss working with him. I told people I sometimes feel like McCartney without Lennon. He was a great idea man himself. He’s not there anymore. Yeah, and because I thought, if Mark was still around would he still be at Marvel, who knows? You know, what we would be doing or what he would have done had he lived and just was a real tragedy. Very much, very talented guy, Mark, in many, many ways. Life of the life of the party too. He brought a lot of the crazy stuff that we did in Marvel in the 80s and the 90s too. I mean he’s just really the spirit of the place. It itself was this big loss but we’ve got to carry on. And there were all these very creative people, I wasn’t so it’s great to be friends with them too. Through all these years, when you think about how far back we’re going, I mean, there are guys that 70s that I’m still friends with and can still communicate with now and then and it’s great. That’s tremendously lucky to still be close to so many people there.
Bill Wylie: Every time I’m thankful that I was involved. On staff and also as a freelancer, that was a great time.
Tom DeFalco (Editor-in-Chief; Thunderstrike writer): We were having a good time back in those days. We’re working very very hard. and yet enjoying ourselves. It was a kind of a magical time.
While Daredevil didn’t appear in Blackwulf, Blackwulf appeared in Daredevil #336-337 released at the same time as #7-8 in November and December 1994.
Gregory Wright: DJ Chichester and Scott McDaniel were doing an Elektra: Root of Evil miniseries. And Scott, particularly, wasn’t going to be able to do both Daredevil and Elektra: Root of Evil and do the best possible job, so Scott needed to take a little break from the book while they did Root of Evil. And for some reason, Dan didn’t want to continue his storyline without Scott. So Dan, (who’s a very good friend of mine and who actually is the reason I got a job at Epic), asked me if I would be willing to do a five-issue story arc to be a placeholder for him. This is better than an editor hiring several fill-in writers to do it. Or the editor thinking, “Hey, we like the fill-in guy better,” and booting you. He knew I would do my story arc without altering his continuity, and I could set up some events he hoped to touch on down the line. I said sure that would be fantastic and I suggested Tom Grindberg as the artist. I’d worked with Tom on a few other things. He did some Silver Sable issues and a couple other things with me and I really liked what he did. I thought he’d be a perfect artist for a Daredevil story arc because I knew immediately I wanted to do something that involved the people who lived underground. I had been wanting to do this underground underworld sort of story arc that will use everything that Dan had set up without harming his storyline. Since it was a five-issue story arc, I didn’t get to make any changes to the character or the status quo. You kind of have to pick up the baton where the writer left it and then leave that baton pretty much in the same place. The only thing that I was able to do with this was I was able to do some things to the Kingpin because I knew what Dan was planning later. I was able to plant some seeds for Dan. Although pretty close after I finished my story arc, the book got shifted from Ralph Macchio’s office into Bobbie Chase’s office and Dan was removed from the book, without any discussion and replaced with a brand new team. He did another probably six months or so on the book but under a pseudonym because he was so upset that they took him off the book like that. They just kind of took them off the book. No real explanation. They just decided to give it to J.M. DeMatteis.
Gregory Wright: I decided to bring all the characters that I liked, that I thought would fit into the story. I was able to use all the characters from SHIELD, I could use all my characters from Deathlok, I could use all my characters from Silver Sable, and I had a new character I wanted to create. So I pitched the basic storyline and Ralph had suggested I use The King of the Sewers (who was a Frank Miller character) because he felt, “Rather than just do some made up villain, let’s connect it to something from the past and that’ll be more interesting.” Ralph was really good at making any story better with suggestions that didn’t alter what a writer wanted to do. It just gave you more food for thought. Perfect. And I said, “I’ll also bring back the Devourer,” which is his character that I was forced to create for one of the annuals. I said, “I can bring him back in and maybe this story will help this character be a little more fun.” It was always fun to help other writers out by utilizing each other’s characters. And you can bring back some of your own stuff from other books. Nobody was going to tell me what I could do with any of these characters. And of course I brought Bushwacker back, because he was one of the characters I loved that Ann Nocenti created. I brought him back way too many times. Every time I wrote Daredevil, it seems like I was shoving Bushwacker into a storyline, but that was kind of fun.
Gregory Wright: But the funny thing about Blackwulf was he wasn’t part of the story originally. I was an issue into the story and I had an outline for all five issues. Ralph gets excited. “Can you put Blackwulf in the story too?” And I was like, “Dude, it’s really crowded already.” But, since it was Ralph asking… I said I would put him in. I talked to Glenn Herdling, who was the Blackwulf writer, and I liked the concept of the book. I loved Angel Medina’s artwork that he had done, and I thought I’d like to see this book succeed. I don’t know how well a little appearance helps but it wouldn’t hurt. So I talked to Glenn and we kind of came up with this idea: I was using the Luther Manning Deathlok, who is not from the current Marvel Universe, he was from an alternate universe, but he had time traveled here in the regular book and he was kind of lurking about the sewer. So I had planned on bringing him into the story, but I figured out in his timeline, Blackwulf’s father and everybody exist, but they’re different. Blackwulf’s an extremely intelligent character with the ability to gain all kinds of unattainable information. So he figured he could get some information he couldn’t get from the Luther Manning Deathlok and that’s how I managed to squeeze him into the story.
Gregory Wright: But when you read this story, it’s like he just sort of shows up. The way it was written there was supposed to be this big light show of stuff and then, “Here I am. Blackwulf.” He was supposed to have this big entrance and somehow when Tom drew it, he just kind of shows up out of nowhere. I’m like, “That wasn’t the entrance I had planned for it.” But it was a very dense, crowded book. So I didn’t get to do a lot of the stuff I wanted to do with the character. I had made a plan to do a spin-off series with the Demolisher and I had figured I could set some stuff up with Blackwulf. So maybe I can pull him into that book as well for more crossover. So, I tried to set some stuff up I wanted to do later but we never got a chance to do any of the later. Both books were canceled… sigh.
Gregory Wright: I’m sure that [Glenn] was gonna pick up from this story in Blackwulf. But that’s the thing, that’s why Ralph was hoping that an appearance here might keep the book from being canceled. We did a lot of that kind of stuff, you would try to save a book because Ralph really liked the book. I mean people liked the book This was at a time when Marvel was throwing everything at the wall. Some of it was terrible and some of it was good. But being good didn’t mean it would sell.
Gregory Wright: I had a good time on this story and Tom Grindberg was the right artist for this particular story arc. Except for Blackwulf’s first appearance. “How is he so tiny?” LOL. And again, the book was late, so it worked…but that wasn’t the right entrance. I would have had that redrawn if we’d had the time.
Lucian wasn’t the only one with a last minute guest appearance. Tantalus showed up on the first page of the last issue of Secret Defenders which was released the same day as Blackwulf #10 in January 1995.
Bill Wylie: Since I started staff, you got to know all the editors. They would swing by your desks to get an art correction. That’s what’s cool about it. It was organic. The relationships happen organically like, “Hey Bill, can you fix this? Can you do this?” And then, “Hey, can you draw this panel? Can you help us out on this?” And then pretty soon, “Hey, can you do four pages over the weekend?” As a freelancer, when I was in between assignments, I remember specifically I knew Craig [Anderson] was the Silver Surfer editor. So I worked up some Silver Surfer samples. And brought them specifically to him. You can just walk around the office and in between assignments say, “Here’s some samples, keep me in mind.” And then he gave me the one issue of Secret Defenders as a tryout and then he liked what I did and gave me the series. That was issue 16. He had already scheduled 17 to be done by someone else. And then he called me and that was a great day. He called me and said, “Hey Bill, you want to do another issue of Secret Defenders? As a matter of fact, you want to do the whole series?” I was like, “Yeah,” and then that went through 25. So that was really fun. Tom [Brevoort] was on board as writer. We did go out to lunch from time to time but it wasn’t to bounce around ideas, but I was told what’s going to be happening and I remember him kind of getting the okay from Craig on certain plot points. I wasn’t really involved in that but it was cool just to be there while they were going, “Maybe we could do this. Maybe we could do that. “We had lunch a couple of times.
Bill Wylie: What an honor to work with Tony DeZuniga as the inker, I mean, a legend from the 70s. His [collaboration with John] Buscema [on] Conan? My God. Beautiful. And all those Filipino inkers like Ernie Chan and Rudy Nebres and all those guys. What an honor for me to work with Tony! And believe me, if you saw my pencils, you’ll see how Tony made me look good. I still had a lot to learn.
Bill Wylie: Around issue 23, Craig told me, “Yeah, it’s gonna be canceled as of 25, but 25 is gonna be a double size issue. So let’s really end with a bang.” I think we did. It was a blast. How much fun can you have the old Defenders fighting the new Defenders and then [series villain] Slorioth which I designed, both versions when he was Druid and then when it grew into the big kaiju. I patterned it after those kaiju monsters. [Its tentacles] was to try to save work because instead of making more elaborate arms are appendages coming out of him. I just chose these cylindrical tubes and it’s actually easier to draw panel to panel but it looks like a lot of details. That was a time-saving technique.
Tantalus’s cameo was one of several required by the script though Wylie was not familiar with the character.
Bill Wylie: I think they gave me the references but Marvel had a library in the building under Peter Sanderson. Peter ran the library and they had pretty much every issue they ever published. I think I went to Peter and said, “Can you give me some reference on all those characters like Tantalus and Fantastic Force?” And yeah, I don’t think they actually physically gave me any reference. He just told me what they were in and then I had to go get it but it was pretty easy working on staff of Marvel. they gave you what the character they were able to show you what the characters look like.
The final page ends with Secret Defender member Dr. Druid stepping through a portal with narration promoting his continuing adventures in a new miniseries.
Bill Wylie: I didn’t really know about the other books they’re planning. I was just so busy finishing this, I just followed the script. I had my nose to the grindstone just finishing this script. As a matter of fact, when that issue came out that was when I learned that there was going to be a new Druid book. When I read it because we got the comp copies when they came out. And I thought, “Okay, that’s cool, gonna be another Druid book after this. So at least there’s a continuity, at least the character continued.” And then I remember thinking there might be a chance they could bring back some of the other Secret Defenders. It’d be cool.
Only one original character from Blackwulf had any later appearances. Godstalker appeared in Captain Marvel (volume 3 starting Genis Vell) #4-5 in early 1996.
Glenn Herdling: Didn’t [writer] Fabian [Nicieza] use them for something? Yeah, he actually contacted me about that and he wanted to know what my plans for Godstalker were. “None.”
The last issue of Blackwulf had a note hoping to find a new place for these characters but nothing came of it.
Glenn Herdling: Unfortunately, it didn’t. Even if I could have probably brought it into the Avengers, I was writing Avengers Unplugged, I was going to do it but then Avengers Unplugged and really didn’t last very long.
Cullen Bunn: I’m pretty sure in the last issue letters page or something they basically say, “We guess you just weren’t ready for a book that wasn’t connected to [the Marvel Universe] in a bigger way.” And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. People just weren’t ready.”
Glenn provided some details for where the story would have gone and how he would resolve some mysteries. For the cast left in space, “here was going to be a period that the Underground spent on Armechadon learning about the legend of the Blackwulf.” Lucian’s unseen brother Id “was just gonna be like a Hulk-type figure anything but it was really just like they had to keep him in prison because Id was just all desire, all want, all id. He was gonna be even a worse version of Tantalus.” The referenced fourth sibling “was a female. I’m not certain if I was going to make it someone we already knew or if it would have been an all-new character. Probably the latter.” A time-travel story would have explained Wraath and Mammoth as well as Touchstone and Schizo. The heroic ally Dr. Maddox would be pulled deeper into her own history as “Nirvana and Maddox had a relationship in an alternate time stream. I may have had some ideas of what that might have been at the time, but I don’t recall. And it’s something that probably would have evolved beyond my initial thoughts by the time I got to it. Khult may have been involved in Maddox’s life since his hands were in everything when it came to Deviant genetics.”
Many years later, fans turned professionals brought variations of Lucian back. A panel in Deadpool and the Mercs for Money showed an alternate universe’s Lucian. Spider-Man/Deadpool had a gang of robot duplicates with a Lucian in their ranks.
Cullen Bunn: I have pitched Blackwulf to Marvel dozens of times. It is, of all books, Blackwulf is my dream Marvel project. Before I was writing comics professionally, I had notebooks of what I would do with a continuation of Blackwulf. I mean this was the dream: I can do a book even though the book wasn’t as successful as it should have been. Marvel, still, give me a shot at this! I mean, it’ll never happen. But when I did that Mercs for Money issue, I guess he’s just in a flashback, but there’s been many times where I’ve pitched, “And during this story arc Blackwulf shows up.” I mean, I pitched in my Venom run, I was always trying to get Blackwulf into something as a run. And it always, either for the sake of time or there was some event coming up that was gonna derail things, he always got axed from the plans. I think many of them have left but they’re still people at Marvel who say, “Blackwulf, if we ever do it, that’s Cullen.” But the same people will probably hire someone else to write it when the day comes that they reinvent Blackwulf.
Glenn Herdling: You see things posting on Facebook all time. “Who’s that character next to someone? I know all the other characters. Who is that?” That’s Blackwulf. And sometimes Blackwulf is like a joke to people, like a character that obscure and no one’s ever heard of Blackwulf and I’m honored by that actually.
Tom DeFalco: It was just the job and that’s all we cared about is trying to make the best thing possible. I mean, sometimes we did good work and sometimes It didn’t turn out as well as we wanted it to but we’re always trying to do our best.
Ralph Macchio: It’s just nice to know that people enjoy the series because you know that’s the ultimate thing. We can enjoy creating these things, putting them out and all that. But if people aren’t out there, reading it and having fun, you kind of don’t feel that you’ve succeeded in your mission because ultimately, you want people to enjoy what you’ve created.
My thanks to everyone credited with contributing these books: Al Milgrom, Angel Medina, Ashley Posella, Bill Anderson, Bill Oakley, Bill Wylie, Brian Reber, Buzz, Caroline Wells, Chris DeFelippo, Chris Matthys, Craig Anderson, Cullen Bunn, Daerick Gross, Dave Sharpe, Don Hudson, Ed Benes, Fabian Nicieza, Geof Isherwood, Glenn Herdling, Gregory Wright, Heather Antos, Jack Morelli, Janice Chiang, Jeff Albrecht, Jeff Powell, Jim Hoston, Joe Andreani, Joe Pimental, Joe Sabino, John Costanza, Jordan White, Kathleen Wisneki, Keith Pollard, Kevin Sharpe, Kevin Yates, Lopez, Loretta Krol, Marie Javins, Mark Gruenwald, Matt Horak, Matt Idelson, Max Scheele, Michael Kraiger, Mike Gustovich, Mike Kanterovich, Mike Machlan, Mike Marts, Mike Rockwitz, Mike Sellers, Nick Lowe, NJQ, Pat Garrahy, Ralph Macchio, Ray Murtaugh, Richard Rankin, Robbie Thompson, Ron Frenz, Salvador Espin, Sandu Florea, Scott Koblish, Scott Marshall, Scott McDaniel, Susan Crespi, Terry Hernon, Tom Brevoort, Tom DeFalco, Tom Grindberg, Tom Palmer, Tony DeZuniga, Wayne A Murray, Wes Hartman.
And additional thanks to everyone whose contributions were uncredited, behind the scenes and battling deadlines.
The complete Blackwulf reading list is: Thunderstrike (volume 1) #4-7; Avengers (volume 1) #370-371; Marvel Age #136; Blackwulf #1-10; Daredevil (volume 1) #336-337; Secret Defenders #25; Captain Marvel (volume 3) #4-5; Civil War: Battle Damage Report; Thor & Hercules: Encyclopaedia Mythologica; Deadpool & The Mercs for Money (volume 1) #5; Spider-Man/Deadpool #33 & 36.
