BCC 2019 Brings Mackie, Marz, McLeod, Michelinie, Ordway, Royer, Schreck, Wiacek

Howard Mackie first gained attention as a writer in 1990, launching a new Ghost Rider title for Marvel, co-creating Danny Ketch as the new host of the Ghost Rider. He wrote Ghost Rider / Wolverine / Punisher: Hearts of Darkness and Ghost Rider / Wolverine / Punisher: The Dark Design, and took over writing duties on Web of Spider-Man. He would remain on various Spider-Man titles through the Clone Saga. In January 1999, Mackie became writer on relaunches of Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spider-Man series. Mackie wrote for the X-Men line, including X-Factor and Mutant X. He also wrote several mini-series featuring Gambit, Wolverine, and Rogue. Mackie co-wrote the six-issue Spider-Man: Clone Saga miniseries, based on Mackie’s original notes for the 1990s crossover. At DC Comics, Mackie wrote The Ravagers as part of the “Second Wave” of The New 52. Of late, you can find Howard working for Zenescope Entertainment, writing titles such as Grimm Tales of Terror, Jasmine: Crown of Kings, and Robyn Hood: Outlaw.

Ron Marz has been writing comics for more than two decades, starting his career with a lengthy run on Silver Surfer for Marvel. Since then, he has worked for virtually every major publisher and compiled a long list of credits, including stints on Green Lantern for DC, Star Wars and Conan for Dark Horse, Witchblade for Top Cow, and as a staff writer for CrossGen Comics. Among Marz’s recent work is the rejuvenation of the Top Cow publishing line, including his historic run on Witchblade and the launch of the acclaimed event series Artifacts. He also currently writes the Skylanders series for IDW, John Carter: Warlord of Mars for Dynamite Entertainment, and The Protectors from Athlitacomics, working with NFL player Israel Idonije to develop and launch the concept.

Marz’s creator-owned series include the all-ages tale Dragon Prince at Top Cow, the historical adventure Samurai: Heaven and Earth, the science-fiction story Pantheon City at Dark Horse, and the vampire tale Shinku at Image. Marz and acclaimed artist Stjepan Sejic also have teamed for Ravine, a series of creator-owned fantasy graphic novels from Top Cow/Image. In addition to his comics credits, Marz has worked in the video-game industry on a number of Activison titles, including the Skylanders franchise, and writes a regular column for Comic Book Resources, the #1 comics-related website.

Bob McLeod is best known for co-creating and illustrating The New Mutants for Marvel Comics. He began his career with Marvel’s Crazy magazine, penciling and inking movie and TV satires and the Teen Hulk strip. He has pencilled or inked all the major characters for Marvel and DC, including Spider-Man (most notably Kraven’s Last Hunt),

The X-Men, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, GI Joe, Star Wars, The Hulk, Conan, and many more. Bob also wrote and illustrated a children’s alphabet book, Superhero ABC, published by HarperCollins, which received starred reviews. He edited and wrote articles for Twomorrows’ Rough Stuff magazine and taught art at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design for many years. He’s currently doing occasional variant covers for Marvel and commissions for his fans, along with occasional freelance jobs and personal projects. His web site is www.bobmcleod.com

David Michelinie (appearing Saturday and Sunday only, courtesy of The Living Corpse) has been a professional writer for over 45 years. He has written more than 600 comic book stories (Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, etc.) in which he created or co-created numerous characters (Venom, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Scott Lang) that have been featured in major motion pictures.

His comic book efforts have spanned genres from westerns to war to horror to super-hero. In addition to comics work, David has published two novels, has had short stories published in anthologies (Werewolves: Dark Moon Rising) and periodicals (Spider-Man Magazine), and has written scripts for the Nicktoons animated series, Iron Man Armored Adventures. His comic book biography of Mother Teresa won the Catholic Book Award for Best Children’s Book, and his work on the acclaimed Iron Man “Demon In A Bottle” saga was awarded a Certificate Of Merit from a prestigious anti-alcoholism foundation. His most recent work has been in the field of independent comics, and includes The Living Corpse: The Hexx Files.

After an initial foray into fanzines, Jerry Ordway found work at DC Comics as a result of a talent se

arch at the 1980 Chicago Comicon, starting on anthology titles such as Mystery in Space and Weird War Tales. An artist in his own right, he is renowned for his inking work at DC Comics, including the industry-changing Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, and Countdown, as well as runs on Superman, Wonder Woman, and JLA, as well as writing and painting The Power of Shazam! OGN and writing the monthly series that followed.

Drawn to Southern California, spring 1965, by the lure of a career in Comic Art, Mike Royer spent his first 14 years in comic books, comic strips, and TV animation. Beginning as Russ Manning’s assistant on Magnus, Robot Fighter and Tarzan comic books and then inking and pencilling for Western Publishing (Gold Key). His drawing asignments were on Tarzan, Space Ghost, coloring books, puzzles, and more for Western, and doing layout on network animation series like Spider-Man. At Gold Key, he wrote/adapted and drew Speed Buggy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, Tarzan, and Magnus, and designed and executed covers for Hanna-Barbera TV Adventure Heroes, etc. Mike contributed to James Warren’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines, and began drawing the comic panel Crusin’ record album covers (over 2 dozen to date), many of which he’s scripted. For East Coast firms, he is best known to comic fans for his decade as letterer/inker for legendary Jack Kirby at National and then Marvel. From late spring 1979, Mike spent the next 14 years on staff with the Walt Disney Company in the creative department of their Consumer Product/Licensing division, addressing the areas of book publishing, comic books and strips, and all forms of theme park and licensed merchandise as a character artist/product designer, performing as idea man, concept and final line artist, and sometime inker. At Disney, Mike designed and art directed the Dick Tracy and 3-D Rocketeer comic book Music Company read-alongs. He created the “new look” that launched the massive Winnie the Pooh licensing program in late 1993. Featured in a 43-minute video (How To Draw Pooh) sent to over 40 licensees, Mike takes no small amount of pride in the fact that Pooh soon (and still) outsold Mickey Mouse worldwide. In June 1993, Mike left his staff position to spend the next 7 years full-time free lancing for The Disney Store’s creative group, becoming their “Main Pooh Man” and creating 3-D products utilizing Disney characters. Since the spring of 2000, Mike has functioned as an Art service, doing pencil work on a wide variety of projects, including creating character Orthographic Turns and environment “floor plans” for computer game animators, Digimon products, on screen icons for Fox Family Channel and Fox Kids Network, Reader Rabbit work books, Rescue Heroes toy packaging, and more. Spring 2001 found Mike and Laurie, his lovely wife and concept collaborater, returning to his birth state, Oregon, settling in Medford, and in the process returned to his career roots. And in the last few years, he’s found time to ink such luminaries as Steve Rude and Eric Larsen, to name a couple. Mike continues to create Disney character art for limited edition collector pin sets and does “recreations”. He strongly believes that his passion, attention to detail and accuracy, and his commitment to integrity will keep him at the board for a long time to come.

Bob Wiacek has worked with many great talents such as Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, John and Sal Buscema, Walter Simonson, Frank Miller, Barry Windsor-Smith, George Perez, Jerry Ordway, Paul Smith, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Don Heck, Ron Garney, June Brigman, Colleen Doran, plus many others. He has inked Mike Grell on The Legion of Super Heroes #220 and Al Milgrom on Marvel Presents #7-The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel. From that time on, he has inked every major title for Marvel, including The X-Men, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, She-Hulk, Man-Thing, Star Wars, Silver Surfer, and Fantastic Four just to name a few. At DC, he worked on Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Brave and the Bold, The Ray, Batman Family, Justice Society, Shazam, and Challengers of the Unknown, which is a small sampling as well.

As far as independent publishers, he did work for Dark Horse, Image, Relium Media, Archie, and Valiant, where he worked on Archer and Armstrong, Bloodshot, and Solar. He has inked noteworthy issues in titles including Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, Star Wars, Iron Man, Batman, and Bloodshot. On the Iron Man 2020 project, he co-plotted with Walter Simonson and penciled and inked the book (with an able assist from Will Rosado). Of late, Wiacek has helped out inking All New Wolverine and a JLA General Mills comic, which was available in different cereal boxes. He has also inked Badger #1 for First Comics, Stars End #2 from Insane Comics, pencilled and inked the cover to ZaZa the Mystic, and will be working on an Indie project soon with Ron Wilson and Arvell Jones. Outside of comics, he starred in a commercial with rap group G-Unit in 2003, and has a small part in the independent film Manos: The Rise of Torgo, for which he did the poster.