Bill Mantlo

William Timothy Mantlo[1] (born November 9, 1951)[2] is an American comic book writer, primarily at Marvel Comics. He is best known for his work on two licensed toy properties whose adventures occurred in the Marvel Universe: Micronauts and Rom, as well as co-creating the characters Rocket Raccoon and Cloak and Dagger. An attorney who worked as a public defender, Mantlo was the victim of a hit-and-run accident in 1992 and has been in institutional care ever since.

Bill Mantlo
Promotional image of Mantlo from the 1978 Marvel Comics Calendar
BornWilliam Timothy Mantlo
(1951-11-09) November 9, 1951
Brooklyn, New York
NationalityAmerican
Area(s)Writer
Notable works
Rocket Raccoon
Cloak and Dagger
Rom: Spaceknight
The Micronauts
Incredible Hulk
AwardsEagle Award, 1979
Spouse(s)Karen Pocock

Early life

Bill Mantlo was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the oldest of three sons of William W. and Nancy Mantlo.[1] Growing up as a comics fan, Mantlo attended Manhattan's High School of Art & Design.[1] In college at the Cooper Union School of Art,[3] he focused on painting and photography. Following his graduation, Mantlo held various civil service positions and worked as a portrait photographer.

Career

Comics

A connection with a college friend in 1974 led Mantlo to a job as an assistant to Marvel Comics production manager John Verpoorten. Mantlo's first credits were as a colorist,[3] on several comics cover-dated from October 1974 to April 1975.[4] Soon afterword, Mantlo wrote a fill-in script for a Sons of the Tiger story in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, which led to a permanent writing position on that title.[5] While scripting Deadly Hands, Mantlo and artist George Pérez created White Tiger, comics' first superhero of Hispanic descent.[3][6]

Around this time, Marvel's then editor-in-chief Marv Wolfman instituted a policy to avoid the many missed deadlines plaguing the company. The policy was to have fill-in stories at the ready, should a title be in danger of missing its deadline. Mantlo quickly became the "fill-in king", creating stories under very tight deadlines, many of which did find their way into print.[5] By the mid to late 1970s he had written issues of nearly every Marvel title.

Later, he became a regular writer at Marvel, notably for the licensed properties Micronauts[7] and Rom,[8] also known as Rom: Spaceknight. Mantlo recalled how one Christmas, he examined some action figures from Mego Corporation's Micronauts line, given to his son Adam. He said he began to envision the characters "as small, microscopic even, inhabiting an other-verse apart from, but conjunctive with ours," and specified that,

Space Glider seemed to suggest a Reed Richards nobility, an aspect of command, of dignity. Acroyear, faceless, his armor gleaming, a fantastic sword clenched in his coldly metallic hand, seemed to hearken back to a warrior Mr. Spock. For some reason Galactic Warrior seemed insect-like — I can almost hear clicks and whistles and strange scraping interjected into his speech. But Time Traveler — there was a mystery there, glimmerings of cosmic vastness, intimations of knowledge and space and time all having been broken down and reassembled to produce something entirely new, unexplainable, different.[9]

Mantlo convinced then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter to obtain the comics license for these toys; Shooter then hired Mantlo to script their series.[9] Mantlo and artist Michael Golden created the Micronauts' backstory of history, mythology, personalities, and an alphabet.[10] Micronauts, along with Moon Knight and Ka-Zar the Savage, became one of Marvel's first ongoing series to be distributed exclusively to comic book stores beginning with issue #38 (Feb. 1982).[11]

Mantlo's first run on The Spectacular Spider-Man featured frequent appearances by the White Tiger.[6] He used the series to wrap up unresolved plot elements from The Champions series[12] and wrote a multiple-issue storyline that included the first work by artist Frank Miller on the Daredevil character.[13] Mantlo concluded his first run on the series with a crossover with the Fantastic Four #218 (May 1980).[14] Mantlo, Mark Gruenwald, and Steven Grant co-wrote Marvel Treasury Edition #25 (1980) which featured a new story starring Spider-Man vs. the Hulk set at the 1980 Winter Olympics.[15]

While writing The Champions he collaborated with artist Bob Hall, who said in 2013, "Bill was a peach — very helpful to me as I got started [in the comics profession] ... I think we were both as enthusiastic as we could get about this particular comic, but more because we were working at Marvel than because of the book itself."[16]

Mantlo began writing The Incredible Hulk with issue #245 (March 1980). His five-year run on the series was noted for his depiction of the Hulk as highly emotional and humanized, rather than bestial and savage.[17] Among the adversaries he created for the series were the U-Foes[18] and the Soviet Super-Soldiers.[19] Summarizing his early years with the Hulk, Mantlo remarked, "I did retreads of old Hulk stories to try and find a new direction, and just kept doing more and more repetition of what had already happened. Then [editor] Al Milgrom said, ‘Well, don’t accept this. If you want to make changes, make them. Take some risks.’ That’s when we decided to give Hulk Bruce Banner’s intelligence. From that point on I felt as if I had finally had a direction and control over the character. So I guess I took a year and half or maybe two years to get to the point."[17] Mantlo and artist Ed Hannigan co-created the superhero pair Cloak and Dagger[20] in The Spectacular Spider-Man #64 (March 1982). Mantlo, Gruenwald, and Grant reunited to co-write Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions,[21] the first limited series published by Marvel Comics. Other work by Mantlo includes runs as the regular writer on Iron Man and Alpha Flight.[4]

Public defender

By the mid-1980s, he was enrolled in law school. Though he continued writing for Marvel, his workload began to decrease due to disputes with management.[22] He wrote briefly for DC Comics in 1988, scripting the Invasion! miniseries.[23] By this time he had passed the bar exam, and in 1987 began working as a Legal Aid Society public defender in The Bronx.[24][25]

Personal life

Mantlo was married to Karen Mantlo (née Pocock),[5] for some years a letterer in the comics industry. They have a son, Adam,[3] and a daughter, Corinna (born 1980).[26]

On July 17, 1992, Mantlo was struck by a car while rollerblading.[27] The driver of the car fled the scene and was never identified.[28] Mantlo suffered severe head trauma. According to his biographer, cartoonist David Yurkovich, in 2006, "For a while Bill was comatose. Although no longer in a coma, the brain damage he suffered in the accident is irreparable. His activities of daily living are severely curtailed and he resides in a healthcare facility where he receives full-time care."[28] As Mantlo's brother and guardian Michael described the injury: "Bill is, and has been, trapped in a world of confusion and despair since his accident. The cognitive deficits he suffered have left him unable to reason or understand his situation, and he struggles daily to maintain any control over his own mind. For someone with his intellect and imagination, this was the absolute worst type of injury that could ever have happened to him.

Awards

Micronauts won the 1979 Eagle Award for Favourite New Comic Title.[29]

In 2014, Mantlo received the Bill Finger Award.[30]

Selected bibliography

Marvel Comics

Other publishers
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See also

Notes
  1. Issue #7 credits Mantlo as the writer of the "Cloak & Dagger" story but the issue was in fact wholly written by "Dr. Strange" writer Peter B. Gillis. The letters pages in later issues corrected this error.

References
  1. Seitz, Lee K. (January 13, 2000). "Bill Mantlo". Rom Spaceknight Revisited! (fan site). Archived from the original on May 17, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
  2. Comics Buyer's Guide #1636 (December 2007); page 135
  3. "Micromails: Meet the Micro-Makers: Bill Mantlo," Micronauts #7 (Marvel Comics, July 1979).
  4. Bill Mantlo at the Grand Comics Database
  5. "Interview with Bill Mantlo (via InnerspaceOnline.com)". BEM: The Comics News Fanzine (24). July 1979. Archived from the original on February 11, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
  6. Manning, Matthew K.; Gilbert, Laura, ed. (2012). "1970s". Spider-Man Chronicle Celebrating 50 Years of Web-Slinging. London, United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. p. 96. ISBN 978-0756692360. Hector Ayala, aka the White Tiger, had already made history as Marvel Comics' first Hispanic super hero. In [Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #9's] tale, by writer Bill Mantlo and penciler Sal Buscema, he would join Spider-Man's cast of recurring characters in both his identities.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  7. Sanderson, Peter; Gilbert, Laura, ed. (2008). "1970s". Marvel Chronicle A Year by Year History. London, United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. p. 180. ISBN 978-0756641238. The Micronauts comics series, dating from January 1979, was based on toys made by the Japanese company Takara and distributed in the United States by the Mego Corporation.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  8. Sanderson "1970s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 191: "Prolific writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema created a Marvel comics series and a whole mythology around Parker Brothers' toy 'ROM'."
  9. "The Micronauts: Gil Kane Thinks Small (via InnerspaceOnline.com)". Amazing Heroes. Stamford, Connecticut: Fantagraphics Books (7). December 1981. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2009.
  10. Lantz, James Heath (October 2014). "Inner-Space Opera: A Look at Marvel's Micronauts Comics". Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (76): 41–54.
  11. Catron, Michael (July 1981). "Micronauts to be sold exclusively though comics shops". Amazing Heroes. Stamford, Connecticut: Fantagraphics Books (2): 22–23.
  12. Manning "1970s" in Gilbert (2012), p. 101: "Bill Mantlo was the regular scribe of both Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man and The Champions...The Champions had recently been cancelled, and Mantlo decided to tie up a few of the title's loose ends in his other comic."
  13. Saffel, Steve (2007). "A Not-So-Spectacular Experiment". Spider-Man the Icon: The Life and Times of a Pop Culture Phenomenon. Titan Books. p. 73. ISBN 978-1-84576-324-4. Frank Miller was the guest penciler for The Spectacular Spider-Man #27, February 1979, written by Bill Mantlo. [The issue's] splash page was the first time Miller's [rendition of] Daredevil appeared in a Marvel story.
  14. Manning "1980s" in Gilbert (2012), p. 113: "In the conclusion to a tale that had begun in the pages of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #42 (May), writer [Bill] Mantlo and artist John Byrne had the latest incarnation of the Frightful Four face off against their Fantastic counterparts.
  15. Manning "1980s" in Gilbert (2012), p. 113: "Spider-Man's fights with the Incredible Hulk were always popular with the fans, so Marvel decided to pitch the wall-crawler against the Hulk when the Mole Man and his gang of villains crashed the festivities of the prestigious Winter Olympics."
  16. Walker, Karen (July 2013). "'We'll Keep on Fighting 'Til the End': The Story of the Champions". Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (65): 20–23.
  17. Shayer, Jason (February 2014). "Hulk Smash More!: The Incredible Hulk in the 1980s". Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (70): 50–63.
  18. DeFalco, Tom "1980s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 199: "Inspired by the 1979 Graham Parker song 'Waiting for the UFOs', the creation of the U-Foes was truly a team effort. Writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema produced the first U-Foes story, but editor Al Milgrom helped design the costumes and Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter suggested some of the names."
  19. DeFalco "1980s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 201: "The Soviet Super-Soldiers, the Russian equivalent of the Avengers, were a team of super-powered individuals assembled by the Soviet government in this issue by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema."
  20. DeFalco "1980s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 207: "Cloak and Dagger's first appearance was written by Bill Mantlo and illustrated by Ed Hannigan. A socially conscious writer, Mantlo used the characters to address the problems of teenage runaways and the dangers of illegal drugs."
  21. DeFalco "1980s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 208: "Plotted by Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, and Bill Mantlo, and penciled by John Romita, Jr., Contest of Champions eventually saw print in June 1982."
  22. Kelly, Dave (January 1, 1989). "Mantlo Wants Cloak and Dagger Back! Bill Mantlo's Fall From Grace". Amazing Heroes. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books (156): 48–50.
  23. Manning, Matthew K.; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1980s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. London, United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. Crossing over into dozens of titles, DC released the three-issue extra-length volumes of Invasion! by writers Keith Giffen and Bill Mantlo, with pencils by Giffen, Bart Sears, and Todd McFarlane.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  24. Mantlo, Bill (January 19, 1990). "To the Editor: Grand Juries Can Defend Rights of the Accused". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 10, 2012. Retrieved February 15, 2009.
  25. Johnson, Dan (May 2006). "Marvel's Toy Story: Rom's Sal Buscema and Micronauts' Jackson Guice: A 'Pro2Pro' Interview". Back Issue!. Raleigh, North Carolina: TwoMorrows Publishing (16).
  26. Shooter, Jim. "Bullpen Bulletins", Iron Man #148 (July 1981) and other Marvel Comics titles published that month.
  27. Coffin, Bill (November 7, 2011). "Tragic Tale". National Underwriter Life & Health. Archived from the original on January 3, 2012. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
  28. Hatcher, Greg (October 27, 2006). "Friday with David Yurkovich". Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on September 11, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
  29. "Eagle Awards 1979". Eagle Awards. Archived from the original on April 4, 2012.
  30. "Finger Award - Robert Kanigher, Bill Mantlo, Jack Mendelsohn to Receive 2014 Bill Finger Award". San Diego Comic-Con International. 2014. Archived from the original on March 29, 2014.
Preceded by
Gerry Conway		 Thor writer
1975		 Succeeded by
Len Wein
Preceded by
Roger Slifer and Len Wein		 Iron Man writer
1976		 Succeeded by
Archie Goodwin
Preceded by
Gerry Conway		 Iron Man writer
1977–1978
(with Gerry Conway in early 1977)		 Succeeded by
Bob Layton and David Michelinie
Preceded by
Steve Gerber		 Howard the Duck writer
1979–1981		 Succeeded by
Steven Grant
Preceded by
n/a		 Micronauts writer
1979–1984		 Succeeded by
Peter B. Gillis
Preceded by
Steven Grant		 The Incredible Hulk writer
1980–1985		 Succeeded by
John Byrne
Preceded by
John Byrne		 Alpha Flight writer
1985–1988		 Succeeded by
James D. Hudnall
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