In April 1994, Marvel Comics published the first issue of Blackwulf which promised “The Next Generation of Hero” “From a Daringly DIfferent Domain of the Marvel Universe!” The creators hoped to blend the appeal of their competition’s new universes with a uniquely Marvel setting. The first issue came after a soft launch of guest appearances and promotional articles. Despite this, the title would last only ten issues, ending as the US comic book market was entering a downturn. Blackwulf became a vague memory for many, a proud accomplishment for its creators and an unappreciated treasure for its dedicated fans. To commemorate Blackwulf’s 30th anniversary, I spoke with many of those involved about the people and company that made it, what did and didn’t reach the page and its legacy.

In the interest of space, those I spoke with are identified by their contributions to Blackwulf which are but a small part of their careers. I thank them for their work which entertained me then and now and their willingness to talk to me. – Adam Farrar

Glenn Herdling (Blackwulf writer): I started as an assistant editor for Jim Salicrup on the Spider-Man titles. The first credit I got was in the same issue that [artist] Todd McFarlane first started on Amazing Spider-Man. It was funny with Todd, we offered him his own title because he wanted to spread his wings. He wanted to be a writer and artist and so he was looking elsewhere and that’s when Jim Salicrup said, “Why are you looking elsewhere?” and “We can do something for you,” and that’s when we started with the whole new Spider-Man title. But then Todd called me, “Glenn, I don’t know what to write. So can you help me out?” And I had a story where Kraven’s lover Calypso comes back so I said, “Listen Todd, I don’t know this will ever go anywhere right? It’s nice as a backup thing. But if you want to run with it, go ahead.” He ran with it and he did a great job with it. 

Todd McFarlane and several other top artists left Marvel Comics in 1992 to found the publisher Image Comics where they would own and direct their creations.

Mike Sterling (comics retailer since 1988, Sterling Silver Comics): Both Image and Marvel sold about the same at first, once we realized what a Huge Thing Image was. Eventually sales began to settle down, and Image took a comfortable second place after Marvel’s juggernauts like X-Men and Spider-Man. DC was in third place, buoyed mostly by New Teen Titans and Batman, with that brief exception of the Death/Return of Superman titles giving them a huge boost.

Ralph Macchio (Blackwulf creator/editor; Avengers, Thunderstrike, Daredevil editor): I remember then that there were a lot of new characters coming out from Image. I remember that they had Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood and you had Cyberforce and all. And it seemed people weren’t just creating a whole bunch of new characters. 

Glenn Herdling: It really was Ralph’s brainstorm. He liked what Image was doing and he just wanted to do something in the Marvel Universe that was still in the continuity but apart from it as well.

Ralph Macchio: I thought we do something here, that would sort of tie in. That we just sort of show that we’re coming up with brand new characters. Not not just introducing characters that were part of the Fantastic Four mythology like the Inhumans but something brand new. 

Glenn Herdling: That’s another reason why Ralph picked me, he goes, “You’re connected with this, what’s going on.” Cause I was reading all their stuff too. And Todd was talking to me about it long before it ever launched and everything. So, I understood what they were trying to do and, again, their universes, they kind of converge but they took place in the same universe but not really.

Tom DeFalco (Editor-in-Chief; Thunderstrike writer): I was focused on two different things. I was focused on what we’re going to do six months a year from now. and I focused on the future. A lot of the comic books that came out, I had my crew [Mark Gruenwald] “Gruenny,” Carl [Potts], [Bob] Budiansky. They were the guys reading the books on a monthly basis and supervising the editors on a monthly basis. I said, “Six months, a year, what are we doing? Next year, how are we building this line? What is our future?” When I became Editor in Chief, I decided to do something that had never been done at Marvel. I came up with the three-year plan which laid out, “We’re gonna do this in the first year and we’ll introduce these new concepts. In the second year, we’re gonna expand on these concepts. And the third year, we’re going to expand over here and introduce new things.” When I went to the president of the company, I laid out this three-year plan and he said, “This is very ambitious. Is it going to work?” “I don’t know. We’re going to try it.”

Ralph Macchio: I just had ideas for characters circulating around my head and every day as I began to kind of conceive of these characters, once I sort of settled on Blackwulf being the conflicted son and Tantalus being the powerful opposing force. Then the other characters, [Tantalus is] going to have his own group that’s going to be the Peacekeepers and I can see, it’s a bunch of characters in there. And then you have the rebel group, the Underground which we, I created a bunch of characters for. And then of course Pelops and Lucian eventually joins them as Blackwulf.

Ralph would ground his new concepts with The Eternals created by Jack Kirby and not originally part of the Marvel Universe but which were connected later. Now a foundational aspect of Marvel’s Earth history, ancient space gods named the Celestials divided the human race into humans, the Eternals and the Deviants. Inspiration also came from The New Gods, a similar Kirby work for DC Comics of a godly war against fascism.

Ralph Macchio: I have been a huge fan of Kirby’s New Gods and I love the Eternals. I edited The Eternals for a long period of time wherever it had a subsequent series after Jack’s initial run. I just loved all that huge mythological stuff and all the things that he had created. Of course, Thor was, you know, probably my favorite character at Marvel and the whole mythology. He has guardian mythology behind, you know, Thor. So I just began to conceive with these characters. I kind of took cues from the New Gods. Obviously, Blackwulf is a conflicted character; he’s got the Black Legacy and he takes arms against his father, very much what Orion did against Darkseid. And Tantalus is this kind of Darkseid-type figure in that he’s huge, overwhelming, rules with an iron fist and all. On Apokolips, Darkseid was so overwhelming that there were four or five interesting, to me, characters. But the Apokolips people were just so beaten down that they never really were that interesting until Kirby came back to do the Hunger Dogs when they were rebelling against him, that’s when something actually came from them as people. But in the Eternals, it set up the Deviants as really, a very interesting group of characters. So that was one way I kind of preferred these Eternals to the New Gods in that sense. 

Glenn Herdling: The Eternals were Kirby doing his own thing. Does it take place in the Marvel Universe? I don’t know or is it his own little pocket Universe whatever and so again, that’s what we were trying to do with Blackwulf, too. We’re trying to say, yeah, it’s part of the Marvel universe, but you may not see it right away.

Ralph Macchio: You can take existing concepts. Get them greater depth and purpose, hopefully, or you can just come up with something original. And really, true originality is very difficult to come by. Even Kirby, as original as he was, I remember he actually took the visual of the Demon from [Prince Valiant by] Hal Foster; he took the face off a mask. Exactly that face. And he wasn’t trying to hide or cover it up or anything. You just took it from there. Inspiration comes from wherever you can take existing things and twist them into something new or find new depths to them as concepts or you can try to take something from scratch

Ralph Macchio: The genetic impurity of the Deviant race was always something. If you go back to Kirby’s original series, you see characters in there when they had Purity Time where the real genetically unstable Deviants were taken away. They hated their heritage. They wanted to be something other than genetically unstable. At the same time, they were ambitious enough and powerful enough to conquer the surface world. Kirby showed that in his flashback sequences in the early issues. But when you saw some of the characters later on, when Thena had gone down to Lemuria and she wound up with Kro, the one who he was like a long lived, and he said, “The curse that afflicts our race is something that we want to overcome.” Because what basically got me was they believe that the Deviants were the changing race is what they were called in the series that Neil Gaiman did. They still have pride, they still have something. And that’s a universal feeling that a lot of people have. 

Ralph Macchio: That’s why I always found them fascinating. The Eternals had everything. They could sit on Mount Olympia and they could just kind of hang out and they’re relaxing and all that other stuff. And yet it was the Deviants who really with the ambitious ones. They were the ones that had something going at their center. And I think that was a problem with the Eternals movie. I was looking forward to it but a problem I had with the movie was that the Deviants were kind of like monsters, right? But if they had examined them as a race that were in opposition to the Eternals. I think that movie would have had more of a resonance, And would have allowed me the mythology to expand

Glenn Herdling: And what made that great was the fact, we think of these races, and even in this day and age we think of a culture or something like that and we pin them as all evil or as all the good guys or the bad guys and let’s face it. There are good guys and bad guys in all cultures and all races and everything. And so the Deviants are all evil so that’s the one thing that I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe got wrong was the Deviants; they portray them as these creatures and that’s not who the Deviants are. They have personalities. So Ralph said, “What if we had some heroic Deviants?” Really cool, right?

Tom DeFalco: Most of the time, somebody would pitch an idea to an editor and say, “How about we do this?” And then if they got the editor excited, enthusiastic, the editor would come to me. And it wasn’t just me. It would be me and Mark Gruenwald. We’d sit down with them and ask the key thing is, ultimately, what is this series about? I’ll give you a few examples. Spider-Man is all about responsibility. Iron Man is all about better living through technology. Captain America is about the spirit of America, the can-do spirit, I will find the way to overcome whatever problem I’m dealing with. The Punisher using military procedures against mobsters. So, everything has a Theme theory that sort of stuff at this stage again. I don’t remember what Blackwulf’s was but we discussed that and the basic core characters. And if intriguing enough, we went with it. Now, Blackwulf was tied to the Celestials and the Deviants and all that other stuff. I look back at it now and I think it might have been just too complicated. we might have needed to simplify that a lot more. 

Ralph Macchio: It’s a book about trying to find your identity which is really the basis for just about everything in life, it’s finding out who you are. Somebody once said, all knowledge is self-knowledge. Lucian wants to be, he wants to know who he is, and he feels that the best way to do that is to rebel against his father, and that’s kind of rebelling against His nature in the sense because he has the black legacy coursing through him, which the way, you know, Orion was tasted because he was the son of Darkseid, so he had that that legacy in him, but at the same time, He also had been the adopted son of High Father and he on new genesis. Became a warrior for the good guys, and Blackwulf makes that decision as well. He makes a decision to move away from his father Tantalus and to take up the torch, when his brother had died, Pelops.

Cullen Bunn (Deadpool & the Mercs for Money writer): It’s not a book that you get to talk about a whole lot. I think it’s a very underappreciated book. I can’t say that I remember necessarily a lot of details, but I was looking up some stuff before this call and I was still seeing comments online about it and reviews online and I was like, “Man, people still, to this day, they just don’t get that book.” And I think that’s actually really sad.

Tom DeFalco: This is something that I know few people can believe, Ralph and I had established our working relationship long before I became Editor in Chief. 

Ralph Macchio: Tom and I were and continue to be very, very good friends. Me, him and Mark Gruenwald, we were just like this. And it was just great working for Tom as editor in chief. When I worked with Tom, it wasn’t just that he was the boss, he was also a friend, and we had gotten together a lot of times as buddies outside the office, too. And when Tom was working on two books for me, Fantastic Four and Thor, I never got the feeling when I would edit his work that I was going to have to be very careful with what I did because it was the boss. 

Tom DeFalco: I was working on Thor a year or two before I became Editor in Chief. I’m really bad at dates and that sort of stuff; the only guy who’s got a worse memory than me was Stan Lee. We had worked out how we were going to do things. Ron Frenz and I first approached Ralph to pitch for Daredevil. But he needed a couple of fill-ins for Thor so we did some fill-ins. Then he offered Thor and I remember saying to him, “Ralph, we don’t do cosmic.” He said, “Just the two fill-ins?” I said, “I could do a fill-in on any book in the line but that don’t mean I can write it on a monthly basis.” And then ultimately Ron and I were on Thor then Thunderstrike. And like I said, a lot of the editors that I had worked with previously to being Editor in Chief, I worked with them again after I was Editor in Chief because the relationship had already been established. I know people are gonna find this hard to believe but I never had to nor did it ever occur to me to pull rank on guys. “Hey, I’m your boss.” Right? I know that other editor-in-chiefs did pull right. But that was never my style or anything, I was taught that years earlier when I worked for Denny O’Neill. He had a sign on his wall that said “the job is boss.” Anything that improved the job, that’s what we were supposed to do. 

Ralph Macchio: When I worked with Tom and Ron on Thor and Fantastic Four, of course, Paul Ryan was the [Fantastic Four] artist then. I saw them strictly as my creatives, Tom was the writer. And when I edited it, I didn’ spare the blue pencil any more than I did with any other writer that I was working with. It was never the feeling that, he said I’m the chief and can cause you a lot of trouble. Tom relished the input that I gave him on the books and and Ron, and he and Paul Ryan were so incredibly creative because that whatever little bit that I could add or maybe shift a few things, one way or the other to do my job as an editor. I was always grateful for the fact that Tom felt that it helped improve what was already very good. I mean Tom knew, Tom and Ron and Tom and Paul, they knew where they were going with those books. 

Tom DeFalco: So when an editor had a better idea than I did, I went with his idea. If I thought my idea was better, I tried to convince him that my idea was better and if you didn’t like that, then I’d come up with another idea. 

Ralph Macchio: Tom is a terrific editor, chief, highly successful too, because Tom not only understood things from the point of view of the creators, because he’d been a freelancer for quite a bit of his life but he also understood the business end of things. And that was something that wasn’t easy to come by. He knew what it was like from the businessman’s point of view too. And what the comic book business was all about. He used to say, “It’s a business where you string nickels together to make dollars.” I learned many, many things about the business from both the creative and the entrepreneurial end from Tom. So I can’t say enough good things about him.

Tom DeFalco: Back in those days, our editors were overworked because they were supposed to be doing five titles and every editor kept coming up with new projects and they get seven, eight we, wait a minute. We got it. We’re going to take some away from you, I don’t want people working till midnight and we hire new staff in those days. The company was constantly expanding. Everything was booming. Even our failures were making money. So, strange thing to say, but producing books that we considered failures, but they’re still making money that DC or anybody else would have been thrilled to make. So, all depending on if we had a creative team that was really anxious to do something and we said, “Good creative team, good concept and the editor wants to do it. Let’s take a shot.” And we were taking as many shots as we could. And also things that we knew would work. We were experimenting with different things. We have the Star Comics and we’re trying Yuppies From Hell and all sorts of things and different kinds because back in the day, my vision was Marvel should be a real publishing company. I mean we’re publishing our periodicals. But when I was there, Marvel occasionally published a trade paperback. Very occasionally, I think they published two or three. And I said, “Let’s publish more. I want to publish at least a trade paperback a month,” which was considered revolutionary at that stage. And then, due to a budget problem, the company needed money and so I came up with the idea for the Marvel Masterworks so we’re gonna have hard cover books, which I think they sold for 25, 30 bucks, which was a tremendous amount of money in those days. Not so much these days. And I said, “We’re gonna build the stepladder. We’re gonna have more expensive comic books, magazines and just keep spreading out.” And we were trying all sorts of different things, different magazines, different formats. I guess it was a very exciting time. We were in an expansion mode and things were working out for us.

To produce the book, Ralph reached out to writer Glenn Herdling and artist Angel Medina.

Ralph Macchio: I always liked editing more than writing. First of all, I don’t really have the kind of long-ranged talent that would allow me to write years and years worth of a book. I never saw myself writing two or three books a month. I didn’t like the solitary nature of it. I like being with people. I like going into the office. I like hanging out with the guys in the bullpen and fellow editors. Going out to lunch. Having freelancers come in and discussing storylines and all. I stayed because it was a job that I liked. I never proved tired of working with creative people, but being the guy behind the scenes. I also got my chance to write; I wrote my comics, Solomon Kane, Black Widow. My number one thing was I like editing. I liked it more than writing and I was more than happy like with Blackwulf. People could say, “well how come you didn’t write Blackwulf books?” Well once I created the characters and basic idea of where to go, I’m so happy to turn it over to somebody who’s a more talented writer than I am. Like Glenn Herdling, I was fine. I was more than happy to stay behind the scenes and just sit there and watch them do great stuff.

Cullen Bunn: Yeah, [Glenn] took it like he owned it.

Glenn Herdling: I think [Ralph] kind of had his dream team set up and I think Angel and I came in pretty much at the same time.

Ralph Macchio: I can’t give enough credit to Glenn Herdling who just took it to all kinds of places that I hadn’t thought of. Glenn and I are also very good buddies and have been. We get together because we both live here, only a few towns away in New Jersey. Glenn was on staff when I was on staff too for a long period of time, and we brought him in on a number of things and the opportunity to work with him on this, he drew up so much to it. Rereading the books now, I became aware once again of how much he added to the series and how much characterization. He brought to these concepts that I may have conceived but he really carried them through with some really great work.

Glenn Herdling: Ralph and I just kind of talked, I had been working on a few Daredevils for him at the time, a few Avengers for him at the time and so he liked what I was capable of. He liked how I honored the continuity but I was never a slave to the continuity. I’d always push it a little bit but I still always honored it because I had written a lot of the [Official Handbook of the] Marvel Universe entries at that time and everything. So it was all there. I knew what was going on in the universe and I knew the history of the universe so it was all there and then when Ralph said he wanted to do something where it was about the Deviants, and I was like, “Yeah.”

Ralph Macchio: Angel Medina, whose work I always liked, I was so fortunate. He was my first choice for this book. I didn’t want anybody but Angel and, thankfully, on for all the books. Aside for one issue, which was very nicely handled by Keith Pollard, another guy that I’ve worked with extensively. Angel stayed on from beginning to end and I think we brought the series to a very satisfying conclusion. But had those two guys not been on it. I don’t know where it would have, where would have gone but my hat’s off to both of them because Angel visually conceived of exactly what I was thinking of with every one of the characters, it wasn’t one of them that I looked at and I wasn’t happy with. And again, looking back through these issues, I had been unaware of some things, that his initial drawings for Khult, the mystical guy, was what he was thinking of for Tantalus. But then again, Glenn and I kind of agreed that he didn’t quite have that sort of Darkseid, Doom look to him. He wanted something that had some more physical presence in power and then when he came up with look for Tantalus, there’s just we knew we had the guy, you know? And that and that was it. And so Angel, you know, when he introduces all the characters, he gives them prominence to get a half-page shot or a full-page shot or whatever. Course dating all around, you know, the figures all. So just a wonderful experience to see what these guys were doing every issue and you know, where they would be taking these characters, it was a very, very satisfying series and I’m sorry they couldn’t continue. 

Chris De Fellippo (Blackwulf intern & colorist): I started as an intern, I remember this shit vividly, and I was 20 years old at the time. Ralph had this drawer with art that was his secret drawer, and it was locked. He pulled out the drawer three times to me. One was Daredevil: Man Without Fear because they had been done years before. It just wasn’t colored and parts weren’t inked and it got shelved. And if you look at the credits, it’s the first thing I edited. He gave me the book but it was done. The other was this Thing book that never saw the light of day to this day. Four things. There was a cover to a SHIELD thing that looked like a James Bond book that never saw the light of day and I think Steranko did. It was fucking gorgeous. It’s and I was like, “Please, Ralph. This has got to come out.” He’s like, “No, never gonna come out.” And the other one in the drawer was Blackwulf. Angel had drawn all the characters and he had worked with Glenn and written all this stuff. And I’m a kid, my whole dream’s to work at Marvel. Like this guy Ralph is showing me shit that hasn’t come out yet. And Carl Potts walked in. And Ralph was explaining what the book was. “Yeah. It’s my new book. Glenn’s a great writer. I think there’s gonna be Glenn’s big break. I think Angel’s gonna be the next big artist. So I made this book for them.” And Carl Potts came in and he was like, “You can’t have credit for it.” And he’s like, “What?” He’s like, “You can’t get royalties and you can’t get credit for it because you’re on staff and that’s not how it works.” And Carl walked out of the office and Ralph goes, “I’m trying to help new guys and I got this idea. What the fuck?” I was like, “I love you Ralph.” I remember it and then I left because my internship came back and Blackwulf was on issue one when I came back to staff after a year of college so it took them a year.

Glenn Herdling: It ideally takes eight months between story concepts to ship date. To develop an entire series takes even longer. So we were just getting the Blackwulf ball rolling when Ralph asked me to write a lead-in for Avengers (which is why the shadowed figures look nothing like their final design). So Ralph probably presented the initial concept to Tom DeFalclo in late 1992. 

Ralph Macchio: Once we were all happy with the visuals, I approached Tom with it all and that’s when he said, “I really like this.”

Before Blackwulf would be released, it would be promoted in three other Marvel comics. The first produced were Avengers #370-371 which were released in November and December 1993. These comics written by Glenn and drawn by Geof Isherwood and Mike Gustovich saw the Avengers get involved in the schemes of existing Deviant characters. All this was monitored by two new characters “Lord T” and “Lord K” meant to be Tantalus and his advisor Khult, though they did not resemble their eventual designs. Lucian would make a cameo on a computer screen identified as “Blackwulf.” 

Glenn Herdling: People, even writers, get behind, so you just have to have him catch up. I did the same thing with Daredevil too. I guess I was Ralph’s go-to fill-in? Mark loved what I had done with the Avengers annual that I wrote that introduced the Bloodwraith. And he does love that because there was this whole character, Sean Dolan, that had been introduced in the Black Knight’s life and the whole thing about Victoria that was just left [unresolved], right? So, I went in there I said, “I’m going to create a new character around the Squire, Sean Dolan,” and boom, it becomes in his whole thing and bring in Victoria and I resolved that whole thing and Mark loved it and loved what I did and that’s why they said, I’ll put you into some of these fill-in issues where I can actually resolve certain plot lines but [Avengers writer and X-Men editor] Bob [Harras] was never big on resolving plot lines that were there. He just wanted to go off and do his own space.

Issues #4-7 of the Thor-spinoff Thunderstrike would entangle the titular hero with a Deviant named Pandara, a reference to Kirby’s original conceit that the Eternals were the inspiration for many myths. From November 1993 to February 1994, the story would expand and Thunderstrike would come into contact with most of the eventual cast of Blackwulf.

Ralph Macchio: We first introduced some of the characters in Thunderstrike. This was Tom’s way of getting them on stage because Tom is very enthusiastic about the series. Had we not had his nod of approval, the book never would have seen the light of day but we did. And Tom’s generous, because I was editing Thunderstrike at the time, working with him and Ron Frenz, and he says, “Let’s introduce those characters here.” He goes, “We’ll set the whole thing up for you before the book comes out.” I thought that was really nice and, certainly, it didn’t hurt. We were happy to have Tom on our side in that regard too. 

Tom DeFalco: I liked to give the readers a chance. To see something and maybe they’ll be interested in it. Comic book retailers are a cowardly and superstitious lot. They’re afraid of everything. They’re afraid of new titles, too. It was kind of a con job to get them to order the first issue. At this stage, I don’t remember if that con job worked. But we did that con job a number of times.

Mike Sterling: In general, you ordered lots of issues, because if it didn’t sell new on the rack, it would sell as a back issue. Especially if it’s an ongoing series, you want to have plenty of the first few issues available for the latecomers. Naturally, as series intended as ongoings quickly fell to the wayside, thus killing any future back issue sales, that strategy had to be altered. And needless to say, nowadays with series stopping and restarting on a regular basis, you want to order to sell out, or nearly so, on the new racks, as back issue sales get cut short on every series with each new relaunch.

Tom DeFalco: I looked at my Thunderstrike thing, I introduced some of the concepts and some of the people but I really did not introduce Blackwulf well. And that might have been because I didn’t understand Blackwulf that much which is a failure on my part. Because yeah, I look back and that’s not a great introduction of Blackwulf.

Mike Sterling: Sometimes they’d do okay…maybe selling well with the first issue or two as folks tried them out, but then falling behind the standard Big Name titles from those publishers. Overall I think customers were more willing to try out new titles and concepts from Marvel and DC at the time than they are now.

The third book to promote the series was Marvel Age #136 an in-house fanzine designed to promote upcoming projects. This March 1994 release included an article revealing character designs and descriptions along with some of the production history but purposefully avoided mention of the Deviants.

The first issue of Blackwulf establishes the central conflict of an alien Deviant named Tantalus trying to take over Earth but facing resistance from the masked hero “Blackwulf.” When Peolops, one of Tantalus’s sons, is exposed as Blackwulf and killed, his brother Lucian takes up the Blackwulf identity to continue the fight. 

Cullen Bunn: They just did crazy things. They went in crazy directions. They had interesting characters. The whole backstory with Lucian and Pelops was awesome. Lucian was a bad guy that has to become a hero. Just that set up alone was awesome.

Glenn Herdling: I wanted to actually kill off the original Blackwulf at the end of the second issue. I thought that really would have thrown people. So people get really surprised, and they’re like, “Why’d you kill them off in the second issue?” But Tom DeFalco twisted our hands and said, “No, you’ve got to do it in the first issue. You gotta let everyone know where this is going.”

Tom DeFalco: I always thought a first issue should establish the rules of the series. This series is about the second brother. I didn’t see the purpose in holding that off. Because many times , guys would come in to me and say, “Here’s the deal: we’re gonna introduce this but he doesn’t get the costume to the fifth issue. He doesn’t get the powers to the fourth issue. He doesn’t get this… We’re gonna wait because it’s never been done before.” And I used to say, “There’s a reason why it’s never been done because it’s a stupid idea. If you’re going to give him powers and you’re going to give them his origin story do it right away. Give me enough in the first issue that if it is not an origin story, give me a compelling reason why somebody should read this issue and say, ‘Holy shit. This is great. I got to pick up the second issue.’” If there’s no compelling reason other than that to buy the second issue, they won’t. How many times have you bought a first issue of something and say, “Yeah, I don’t have to read the second issue.” And that’s what I was always trying to drill into people’s head that you never get a chance to make a first impression. Make a great first impression really grab your readers by the throat in your first issue and if you can’t grab them by floating your first issue. 

Gregory Wright (Daredevil writer): DeFalco always said every issue should be treated like it’s somebody’s first issue. Especially a first issue.They should be able to say, “This is who this character is, and what they’re all about,” I try to follow that because it’s just smart. Because I’ve read comics where I thought “what is going on?” and then I realized I don’t care… and then I’m done. I don’t read the comic anymore. But the best comics do follow that kind of rule where you make sure the reader is going to understand what the hell’s going on. And you’ve got to grab their interest within a couple of pages. If I’m in the comic book shop…I don’t know if you did the same thing…I picked up almost every comic and looked at it…and if within a couple pages, if I was bored, I put it right back down. Or if the cover didn’t grab me, I never even pulled it off the shelf. So, I don’t understand all these covers artists do with characters just standing there. I like an interesting cover.

Ralph Macchio: Tom has got great story instincts. Because we’d already had the first page drawn, that was completely different because we were going in different directions. One of the things that I learned from working with comics is that you don’t save all the good stuff to the end. Tom pointed out that a lot of what goes on when people are writing comics is, particularly now the last 15 or 20 years, they hold things back or they think in terms of the trade paperback rather than the individual issues and Tom likes to do complete stories. Sometimes in one issue, we thought that was a great idea or even two stories in one issue because he goes, “The readers, getting a full dose of getting a beginning, a middle and an end.” But he did his share of long stories and Fantastic Four and Thor because hey that’s the way the business was back then. Tom commonly said, “If you’re going to do something, get the reader something to come back for every issue. Don’t say ‘Okay, we’re setting up now, we’re setting up, we’re setting up,’ and then in the fifth issue, then you give them everything.” Because when you think about how much it costs, the comic, you want to give people everything that they can handle. Every single issue. So don’t save all the great stuff to the end. Give them great stuff all the way through. And so, I think Tom’s instincts were right to set us up with the death of this character right away because that was shocking and very unexpected.

Tom DeFalco: You have no guarantee there’ll be a second, third, fourth or whatever. I still think that every comic should have a beginning, middle and end of sorts. Even if the story continues there’s got to be a beginning, middle and end.

Glenn wrote his issues Marvel Style compared to a full script. This outline style gives artists more control in the pacing but requires dialog and narration to be written later in the production process.

Glenn Herdling: I love the Marvel style to this day. It just gives the artist so much more leeway. And that’s what we wanted to do with Angel. We wanted Angel. And Angel’s visuals are just fantastic. And so I just like writing something and then seeing how the artist interprets it and then I go and then sometimes that motivates me to change a line of dialogue or something that I was thinking. 

Bill Wylie (Secret Defenders penciler): I was just given a script but it was the plot first Marvel method typescript versus the DC full-script. It wasn’t the full strip method. It was the Marvel method which was a lot more fun because I remember on a couple of pages. It was just like, “Give me two pages of a fight scene with Luke Cage and Deadpool fighting all these monsters.” Much better.

The book had a large supporting cast, primarily in two opposing teams: the evil Peacekeepers (Bristle, Schizo, Wraath, Lady Trident) and the heroic Underground (Mammoth, Sparrow, Toxin, Wildwind, Touchstone).

Glenn Herdling: It was a lot of characters. I wanted to just make every character. And we call the series Blackwulf but it really was a team book.

Tom DeFalco: Yeah, when we might have just overwhelmed the readers on that. But you want to have a big team book. You got it, introduce characters slowly and make sure you really introduce them.

Cullen Bunn: I’m pretty sure that when Blackwulf came out I was working at a comic shop. I was managing a comic book store. So I saw it and I took it on myself. I was gonna read every book that came out so that I could talk to my customers about it. So I was thinking about this and Blackwulf came out, I grew up loving superhero books. I loved them since I was a very young kid. Blackwulf came out at a time when I think superhero books were pure trash for the most part. Absolutely there were outliers. There were. Anyone can say, “That wasn’t such a bad time because this book came out.” Sure, but it came out amidst a thousand other terrible books. And Blackwulf came out. It’s during that time and I picked that book up and immediately: this is something completely different from what I’m reading. It was one of my two favorite books for a long time because of that and both of those books were superhero books that were doing something completely different. and I just remember reading it. I was like, “Wow. Here’s a book where Spider-Man’s not popping up on page three through some sort of forced crossover. Here’s the book where these are new characters.” The characters had Intensely interesting backstories that they weren’t telling me and that was probably the thing that locked me into Blackwulf because there were hints, there were hints and allegations throughout that book of things to come that I was ready for and I was ready to wait a hundred issues if I had to get them. First hints of stories that were not being told yet and that to me is the essence of world building. There was so much magnificent world building going on in those 20-, 22-page issues. That just isn’t done in hero comics anymore. It wasn’t done. It’s still not being done now.

Glenn Herdling: We really had plans to expand this and we’re gonna create this own universe within the Marvel Universe. We had Armeccadon and all these other places where the Deviants come from. We talk about the Deviants of the human race, but there were Deviants of the Skrull race, there were Deviants of other races. So how do they all fit together and things like that? That’s where we were gonna explore that whole Deviants anthology.

Cullen Bunn: So there’s the character Mammoth, not necessarily a character who would ever be one of my favorite characters in another superhero book. I thought he was interesting in Blackwulf and it was cool the way they portrayed him and everything but what really made him interesting was there’s a villain named Wraath and whenever they would fight they would feel some sort of backlash between each other and Wraath would always say things like, “You must be weary of Blackwulf” and without them ever telling me what it was. I had a massive storyline for those two that just unfolded in my head. I knew who Wraath was. I know who those characters were, how they were connected and it was so beautifully done. That they were laying these hints out and what I would call a very Claremontian but Chris Claremont was a master of laying out hints in an issue of X-Men that wouldn’t pay off for 24 issues. And I could feel that happening. I could also feel because of the era that this book was never going to make it because back then I was like, if I love a book it’s gonna get canceled and it made what ten, eleven issues.

Wraath and Mammoth were not intended to be related but Angel Medina had designed Wraath with a robotic arm and a mask. That inspired Glenn to link them.

Glenn Herdling: There’s another thing so when you see the artist’s design you’re like “Hey, wait a minute, they could be…” 

The comic employed additional techniques to bring characters to life.

Glenn Herdling: We wanted to get everything about her just to be Schizo. Everything about her just to be completely wonky. When you’re looking at her word balloons, that’s what I really wanted to come across and I think they did a good job with that.

In the second issue, the characters head to New Mexico and make the first reference to the Roswell crash in Marvel comics, attributing it to the Skrulls, a race of shapeshifting aliens.

Glenn Herdling: I was hoping that. I said, “Someone must have said it was some other Marvel alien that was at Roswell.” And I asked Peter Sanderson, he was our Marvel archivist at the time. I said, “Have any other aliens been referred to that could have been the one that landed here?” And he was, “I don’t think so.” That’s amazing that no one’s done that yet, right?

Marvel’s Roswell would be later explored in New Warriors #61 and Lost Generation #4 also with Skrulls. While Roswell was new to Marvel, the Skrulls followed up on two very specific and obscure bits of continuity from Rom #50 and Silver Surfer #5.

Glenn Herdling: We wanted to get more into the DNA of the Deviants. And we introduced, for the first time, the non-Deviant Skrull. The Deviant Skrulls are the shape-changing versions who we know and there were no more normal Skrulls anymore, it was just the Deviants that took over. And the government seizes the Skrulls, they were the original Area 51 aliens, and they realized, “My God, this whole race was wiped out by this Deviant version of the gene. Holy crap, we’ve got that here on Earth. We’ve got to start doing something about this.”

Ralph Macchio: I really like that stuff because that fills out the mythology. The two Skrulls that were in the army base, the research institute thing. That was good because the Skrulls, as we learned later on in Marvel history, the Skrulls actually are the Deviant race of that particular race. That’s why they’re shapeshifters because they have the unstable gene. We always wanted to tie everything in, especially Mark. That’s why we did the “Tales of the Eternals” and all that, we wanted to tie everything together, it all had to come together. We were always about bringing things in and making them all fit because we just were comic book geeks and Marvel, it all had to work and come together. Couldn’t be anomalous at all. We’ll have to speak with the mythology.

Tomorrow, in part two: The series needs help getting out the door and established characters make appearances unless Marvel office rules say no.