I loved playing around with a character I’d been reading about since the late ’60s. I can still remember my 12-year-old self biking to the candy store in 1967 to buy a copy of Marvel Superheroes #12, which contained his origin story. Would I ever have predicted then that I’d be writing his adventures myself someday, plus working a future staff job at Marvel Comics? Nah!
Unfortunately, I had to follow the tremendously popular writer/artist Jim Starlin, who at the time was considered to have already done a perfect stretch on Captain Marvel. So I was in a no-win situation. Believe me, there were days at the beginning of my brief run on the title when I didn’t have fun opening the mail.
Captain Marvel was my first comic-book series, and it was a true learning experience—but since it was only seven issues long, it was basically over before I could figure out what I was doing and get the training wheels off.