A PERSONAL MARVEL MILESTONE

It’s no secret I’m a huge Marvel Comics fan – always have been, always will be. And ever since Marvel began its prestige Marvel Masterworks line, which reprints all the core/founding Marvel titles from 1961 onwards, it’s been a little ambition of mine to actually be a featured creator in one. I think back to the kid I was, waiting for his Mighty World of Marvel or Spider-Man Weekly to drop on the mat once a week, or pedalling around to various secondhand book stores that had the Holy Grail of actual full colour Marvel US comics available (dedicated comic shops were a good ten years off at this point), and I’m still filled with wonder that I actually got work in the comics biz at all (and, even more amazing, make a living doing it for the last 30 years or so). So anyway, long story short, I couldn’t quite figure how long I’d have to wait for the Masterworks line to catch up to the point in the late 80s and early 90s when I was writing a fair bit for Marvel US. But here we are, with the just announced volume 2 of Ms. Marvel, to which I made a tiny contribution back in the day. Ms. Marvel was cancelled with issue #23, with #24 only appearing much later, in the anthology title Marvel Super-Heroes (#10). There was even a partially written (by regular writer Chris Claremont) and drawn issue #25, which – of all things – was building up to the classic confrontation between Ms. Marvel and Rogue, which saw Ms. Marvel’s powers transferred to Rogue permanently (the aftermath of which appeared in the equally classic Avengers Annual #10). Anyway, for some reason, Claremont didn’t want (or maybe wasn’t asked, I don’t know the ins and outs) to provide new script to finish off that curtailed final bit of the saga, so Marvel Super-Heroes editor, Rob Tokar tapped me to pick up the tail end of the story (as written by Claremont) and join the dots to the climatic battle with Rogue atop the Golden Gate Bridge. This was also something of a dream job – as I was immeasurably influenced as a writer by Claremont’s epic run on X-Men, so getting to pick up this particular baton was a huge deal for me. And daunting at the same time! But, I got my head down and tided up as best I could, and the result made its way (together with the extant bit of #25) into Marvel Super-Heroes #11. And now, finally, that little bit of Furman story has found its way into Ms. Marvel Masterworks vol 2 (or vol 234 if, like me, you collect the direct market numerical variant editions). You’re going to have to wait a while to see it. It doesn’t come out until July 2016 – these books are solicited a long way in advance. But nevertheless, there it is – my name will be in a Marvel Masterworks edition — finally. For me personally, a career milestone reached!