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Don McGregor
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Don McGregor
Donald Francis McGregor (born June 15, 1945) is an American comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics; he is the author of one of the first graphic novels.
Don McGregor was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he worked myriad jobs as a young adult, including as a security guard, at a bank, at a movie theater, and "for my grandfather's company, [which] printed, among other things, the patches the astronauts wore on their flights to the moon." He additionally served as a supply sergeant in a military police unit of the Rhode Island Army National Guard. His first work in print was in the letters-to-the-editor columns of various Marvel Comics titles and for The Providence Journal, where his work included reviews of books by authors including Evan Hunter, "who influenced me greatly as a writer."
McGregor entered the comics industry with stories in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics anthology magazines. His first purchased script, "When Wakes The Dreamer", did not see print until Eerie #45 (Feb. 1973), long after his first published script, the 12-page cover story "The Fade-Away Walk" in Creepy #40 (July 1971), credited as Donald F. McGregor, with art by Tom Sutton. Through 1975, he wrote more than a dozen stories for those magazines and its sister title Vampirella, drawn by artists including Richard Corben and Reed Crandall. Of "When Wakes the Dreamer", he explained decades later, "[W]hat held it up was that [artist and Warren art director] Billy Graham was going to draw it and he'd done a spectacular opening page for it, but for one reason or another, it just didn't happen. ... I don't think we ever found the finished art for Billy's version of another early story of mine, 'The Vampiress Stalks the Castle This Night.'" That story eventually appeared in Vampirella #21 (Dec. 1972), with art by Felix Mas. After a stint with Marvel, McGregor returned to write another 18 stories for those Warren titles as well as The Rook between 1979 and 1983, with artists including Paul Gulacy, Alfredo Alcala, and Val Mayerik.
McGregor became a proofreader for Marvel Comics in late 1972, earning $125 a week, before establishing himself as a Marvel editor and writer. His first stories for the company were co-writing, with Gardner Fox, the six-page supernatural story "The Man with Two Faces" in Journey into Mystery vol. 2, #4 (April 1973; credited as "Donald F. McGregor"); and, solo, the six-page "A Tomb by Any Other Name", with art by Syd Shores, in Chamber of Chills #5 (July 1973).
He recalled in 2010,
I came to Marvel Comics because I loved Marvel Comics. As the line burgeoned, one of my jobs was to read all the reprint titles. One of the titles was Jungle Action, a collection of jungle genre comics from the 1950s, mostly detailing white men and women saving Africans or being threatened by them. I voiced a lament that I thought it was a shame that in 1973 Marvel was printing these stories, and couldn't we have a black African hero. ... Now, it was one of those unwritten rules that if you worked in editorial you would be given things to write, to supplement that $125 a week. It was at such a meeting that I learned I would be given [the recently launched feature] 'Killraven' (in Amazing Adventures) and Jungle Action, with the [existing African superhero the] Black Panther ... to write.
With those two features, which became among comics' most acclaimed, McGregor soon established himself as one of a 1970s wave of Marvel writers, including Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber and Doug Moench, who took often minor characters and helped create a writerly Renaissance. Former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas said in 2007,
[T]here was a lot of invention and experimentation going on during that period ... Steve [Gerber] and Don turned out be [writers] who advanced the field. ... I don't think Don's work sold terribly well, but I always thought he was doing some interesting things, and I thought, 'Well, the kind of stuff we put him on was the kind of stuff that we didn't expect to become great sellers anyway ... So let him experiment with it and see what happens'. And he certainly did a lot of interesting things with it.
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Don McGregor
Donald Francis McGregor (born June 15, 1945) is an American comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics; he is the author of one of the first graphic novels.
Don McGregor was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he worked myriad jobs as a young adult, including as a security guard, at a bank, at a movie theater, and "for my grandfather's company, [which] printed, among other things, the patches the astronauts wore on their flights to the moon." He additionally served as a supply sergeant in a military police unit of the Rhode Island Army National Guard. His first work in print was in the letters-to-the-editor columns of various Marvel Comics titles and for The Providence Journal, where his work included reviews of books by authors including Evan Hunter, "who influenced me greatly as a writer."
McGregor entered the comics industry with stories in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics anthology magazines. His first purchased script, "When Wakes The Dreamer", did not see print until Eerie #45 (Feb. 1973), long after his first published script, the 12-page cover story "The Fade-Away Walk" in Creepy #40 (July 1971), credited as Donald F. McGregor, with art by Tom Sutton. Through 1975, he wrote more than a dozen stories for those magazines and its sister title Vampirella, drawn by artists including Richard Corben and Reed Crandall. Of "When Wakes the Dreamer", he explained decades later, "[W]hat held it up was that [artist and Warren art director] Billy Graham was going to draw it and he'd done a spectacular opening page for it, but for one reason or another, it just didn't happen. ... I don't think we ever found the finished art for Billy's version of another early story of mine, 'The Vampiress Stalks the Castle This Night.'" That story eventually appeared in Vampirella #21 (Dec. 1972), with art by Felix Mas. After a stint with Marvel, McGregor returned to write another 18 stories for those Warren titles as well as The Rook between 1979 and 1983, with artists including Paul Gulacy, Alfredo Alcala, and Val Mayerik.
McGregor became a proofreader for Marvel Comics in late 1972, earning $125 a week, before establishing himself as a Marvel editor and writer. His first stories for the company were co-writing, with Gardner Fox, the six-page supernatural story "The Man with Two Faces" in Journey into Mystery vol. 2, #4 (April 1973; credited as "Donald F. McGregor"); and, solo, the six-page "A Tomb by Any Other Name", with art by Syd Shores, in Chamber of Chills #5 (July 1973).
He recalled in 2010,
I came to Marvel Comics because I loved Marvel Comics. As the line burgeoned, one of my jobs was to read all the reprint titles. One of the titles was Jungle Action, a collection of jungle genre comics from the 1950s, mostly detailing white men and women saving Africans or being threatened by them. I voiced a lament that I thought it was a shame that in 1973 Marvel was printing these stories, and couldn't we have a black African hero. ... Now, it was one of those unwritten rules that if you worked in editorial you would be given things to write, to supplement that $125 a week. It was at such a meeting that I learned I would be given [the recently launched feature] 'Killraven' (in Amazing Adventures) and Jungle Action, with the [existing African superhero the] Black Panther ... to write.
With those two features, which became among comics' most acclaimed, McGregor soon established himself as one of a 1970s wave of Marvel writers, including Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber and Doug Moench, who took often minor characters and helped create a writerly Renaissance. Former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas said in 2007,
[T]here was a lot of invention and experimentation going on during that period ... Steve [Gerber] and Don turned out be [writers] who advanced the field. ... I don't think Don's work sold terribly well, but I always thought he was doing some interesting things, and I thought, 'Well, the kind of stuff we put him on was the kind of stuff that we didn't expect to become great sellers anyway ... So let him experiment with it and see what happens'. And he certainly did a lot of interesting things with it.
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