Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities RIP Len Wein

I'm seeing posts on twitter reporting comic author Len Wein has passed away.

Will update later with more info.

I had the pleasure of meeting Wein at SDCC 2015. He was a very nice man and had some great stories to tell. My thoughts go out to his friends and family.

I hate when another piece of my childhood is taken from us. R,I.P. my good man. You are always there for me.

He was responsible for some of my favourite comics growing up. Thanks for the happy memories, Len.

Wow. He made some great books. Thanks for being in my childhood, Len.

The man behind so many of the best things across decades of the comics industry. Thoughts of sympathy to his family, friends and all his many fans across the world.

Terrible news. Glad I got to meet him at SDCC in 2010. He was very humble and kind.

Tough to lose another Bronze Age great. He's not a huge favorite writer for me, but he wrote tons of good stuff. My absolute personal favorite is the classic Seven Soldiers of Victory trilogy in JLA.

I remember Wein primarily from JLA, too, though I'm sure he wrote tons of other stuff which influenced me as a writer.

RIP.

It's funny, though, I just re-read his Batman/Hulk inter-company crossover the other day, and it ages very well. It's very overlooked in comparison to the other Marvel/DC's (probably because it's such an odd, less natural team-up choice than some of the others), but he really made it work. And Jose Luis Garcia Lopez really drew the hell out of it, too, btw!

Wein just worked on so many different titles. His role as co-creator for Swamp Thing ensures that he will be respected as a major player in the industry.

I just saw this on Mark Evanier's blog. One of those deaths that take me by surprise in how much it affects me. If you had asked me to name my favorite comics writers I would never have come up with him, and even if you asked favorite bronze age writers I'm not sure if he would have made the cut. But he did write many of the books in my earliest childhood memories. I got into super-hero comics about the time Wein left Amazing Spider-Man and Wolfman came on, so there's a good chance he wrote my first Spider-Man story. He, Wolfman, Conway and Isabella kind of merge in my head as a picture of what comics were at the time I came in.

A true legend of the industry. He'll be missed and his work will live on for a long time after for others to enjoy.

For me, I've always loved his 70's runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Thor. Both were different than what came before or after, and as I've aged (having read the 20 years after they were published in the first place) I've grown to appreciate and love them even more. Those were just a fraction of the work he did throughout his career, and there is so many other great Len Wein stories.

Lively Len.

Oh, yeah--I didn't think about his run on ASM earlier, but it was really solid! It was about 30-issues long and culminates in the, imo, excellent story of the third Green Goblin. Though I prefer Conway's run overall, Len maintained things pretty nicely in his wake. Len and his successor Marv Wolfman were better suited than Denny O'Neil, who followed them.

Good to hear about Len's Thor run because I recently acquired two collections that span issues 242-266 of it. Looking forward to them!

I think you'll like them quite a bit! Both Conway and Wein's Thor runs are a little offbeat and certainly have a different feel than the much more well-known Silver Age / Kirby run and the 80's Thomas or Simonson runs. But that is part of their charm IMO, and Wein's Thor really has some great little (and big) stories in it.

Agree 100% on his Spider-Man. Love his whole run which was full of awesome 1-2 parters which culminate in one of my favorite Spidey stories of all with Bart Hamilton. ASM's first 206 issues remain what is probably the greatest string of uninterrupted high quality in a single series, with the Silver Age greats transitioning to Conway, Andru, Wein, Wolfman and others. Len was definitely a major part of that.

RIP Len Wein. Thank you for co-creating the characters that made up a huge portion of my (and my generations) childhood. Without the "All-New, All-Different" X-Men so many people would not have discovered comic book stories. I also want to thank you for your work on Batman; they better name a street after you in Gotham.

I'm trying to avoid the typical Swamp Thing/X-Men and read or reread some of Wein's other work. I'm already sampling his Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, and Green Lantern. I'd appreciate any recommendations on where to focus on his Batman work, or anything else you'd recommend to the pile. (I remember not being terribly impressed with his brief Defenders run, mostly because it was more typical super-hero than I had come to expect from the Defenders.)

"Moon of the Wolf" from Batman #255 is a Wein/Adams classic, and would be a fun place to start. His work on the Blue Beetle is worth reading.

For all it unnecessarily complicates Batman's origin, "Untold Legend of the Batman" is pretty groovy, but for my money the BEST Wein Batman arc is the Bat-Murderer arc from Detective 444-449. It's got everything, including a cool Creeper appearance. There's a digest version I had as a kid that I read the heck out of.

Thanks both. I'm not the world's biggest Batman fan, so the "best of" list that the two of you listed together might be the best way to handle it. I remember kid me liking Untold Legend a lot, although I can't remember much about it now.