The comic book world has lost one of its most important creators. Gerry Conway, who helped create iconic characters for both Marvel and DC Comics — including the Punisher, Jason Todd, and Firestorm — and wrote memorable runs of many of the biggest characters at both companies, has died. He was 73 years old.
In an obituary posted to Marvel.com, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige wrote:
Gerry Conway brought real stakes to his writing, able to weave together sensational super heroics with the human and relatable, and in doing so created some of the most memorable stories and characters of all time. His writing has been hugely impactful across our comics, but it has also inspired so much of what we’ve done on screen, from Werewolf by Night to Daredevil to Spider-Man and Punisher. Gerry was a wonderful collaborator and friend to so many and will be dearly missed.
Born in Brooklyn in 1952, Conway was already a published comic-book author before he was out of his teenage years. At the age of 19, he replaced Stan Lee as the second writer ever of The Amazing Spider-Man. He wrote the series for several years, and contributed one of the most important stories in Spider-Man history: “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” where Spider-Man failed to save his beloved girlfriend Gwen Stacy from death at the hands of the Green Goblin. That shocking twist continued to reverberate through Spider-Man comics (and later movies) for decades to come.
READ MORE: The Weirdest Marvel Comics Ever Published
A few months later, Conway introduced the Punisher in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #129. Created with artists John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru, the Punisher — a vigilante on an endless mission of revenge against organized crime after the murder of his family by mobsters — was Conway and company’s response to the huge wave of vigilante movies of the 1970s like Death Wish.
The character soon expanded beyond occasional Amazing Spider-Man guest appearances into his own mini-series and within a few years he was one of the most popular members of the Marvel Universe, with numerous monthly comics of his own. The Punisher later starred in three different movies and numerous television series; he’s set to get his own special on Disney+ later this spring, starring Jon Bernthal.
While the Punisher is surely Conway’s most famous creation, he worked for decades at Marvel and DC (he was briefly Marvel’s editor-in-chief in the 1970s as well) and produced popular series starring about every significant property at both companies. For Marvel he worked on books like Fantastic Four, Thor, and Avengers. At DC, he wrote Detective Comics, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a beloved multiyear storyline in Justice League of America.
With artist Al Milgrom, he also co-created Firestorm, an interesting superhero who was created when a high school kid and a physicist were caught in an accident and gained the ability to merge together to create a powerful being who can alter objects’ atomic structures. Firestorm became a signature DC character of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and he eventually crossed over from comics into cartoons like the Super Friends.
Conway spent most of the early and mid 1980s at DC, then returned to Marvel; in his later years, he produced books for both companies. He also returned to Spider-Man many time sacross his long career. He wrote the first issue of the spinoff series The Spectacular Spider-Man, contributed to Web of Spider-Man, and a few years ago he wrote a well-received alternate reality book called Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson fight crime together along with their daughter Annie.
With fellow comic-book writer Roy Thomas, Conway also co-wrote the movies Fire and Ice and Conan the Destroyer starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. While he remained closely associated with comics, he also worked on many popular TV series of the 1980s and ’90s, including Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Matlock, Batman: The Animated Series, and several different Law & Order shows.
In other words, Conway was a writer’s writer and a pro’s pro. On a personal level, when I was writing a book about Spider-Man in the late 2010s, he could not have been more gracious with his time or more personable to a long-time fan who grew up loving his work. (This issue of Spectacular Spider-Man written by Conway is one of the first I can remember reading — and I read it over and over again.) He will be sorely missed, but fans will be reading his work for decades to come.
