Peter B. Gillis Big Comics Readthrough

After penning 4 What If issues plus 2 backups, PBG was told by Mark Gruenwald that they wanted to give other writers a chance. The situation changed when old friend Ralph Macchio took over as editor in 1983. He happily bought whatever great ideas Gillis threw at him, which resulted in writing credits on 7 of the final 8 What If issues.  What if Dr. Strange had Never Become Master of the Mystic Arts #40 (1983) Pencils: Butch Guice Inks: Guice / Sam Grainger An alternate spin on Gillis' previous Strange What If, this sees the mantle of sorceror supreme go to Baron Mordo, while Stephen returns to a career in medicine. Mordo pretends to be a reformed character to fool the Ancient One, but he's under the thrall of Nightmare. Eventually the good Doctor is dragged into the fight and the universe rebalances to how it was meant to be. It's interesting to an extent to see Mordo wearing the cape and his blunter approach to classic encounters. A story about Mordo redeeming himself migh

What If was a unique comic that required an endless supply of ideas and creators, plus an innate knowledge of Marvel history. No surprise then that Peter Gillis, a fount of Marvel knowledge, loved contributing to What If, effectively making the title his own by its final year. In total, he penned a quarter of the original 48 stories (including the special). Later in his Marvel career, Gillis would mostly find himself pigeonholed writing odder C-list characters, but What If was his opportunity to work with A-list heavy hitters and revisit some of his favourite childhood stories. Gillis' first two What Ifs share a common theme: Stephen Strange and Peter Parker both started out as jerks. What if they continued down that path?  What if Dr. Strange Had Been a Disciple of Dormammu? #18 (1979) Pencils: Tom Sutton Inks: Bruce Patterson Doctor Strange was Gillis' favourite comics character, so no surprise he wrote Dr S whenever the opportunity arose. Here the not so good doctor's ha

Researching this blog can lead down unexpected rabbit holes... Peter Gillis mentioned a few times a "disastrous attempt" to start a company New Media Comics, which got me intrigued. Turns out New Media Distribution set up a publishing wing in 1980, hiring Richard Howell and Carol Kalish as production managers, with Peter Gillis as editorial director, spearheading a line of quarterly comics anthologies. Gillis' role turned out to be short lived, according to the press release in NMP's own fanzine, Comics Feature #12/13 (1981): "New Media Publishing, Inc., has undergone yet another editorial shake-up. As of June 1st, Peter Gillis will leave his post as editorial director of the gestating NMP line of Graphic Magazines, and return to freelancing. His place will be taken by Richard Howell, the production manager of NMP. Gillis' change of status was an amicable agreement between him and NMP publisher Hal Schuster regarding their differing attitudes towards magazi

Iron Man Annual #5 (1982)  Co-plot: Ralph Macchio Pencils: Jerry Bingham Inks: Dan Green Don McGregor was a big influence and mentor to Peter Gillis in his early Marvel days. This likable, if overly familiar romp, is essentially a straight sequel to McGregor's classic Black Panther run, with Iron Man playing a peripheral role from the outset.  T'Challa is apparently killed and usurped by a revived Killmonger, resulting in a climatic battle for the crown over a precipice. Stop me if you've heard this one before, from the pages of Jungle Action which was later revisited in the first movie. It reads like a nostalgic highlights reel of McGregor's original. Stark gets the B plot, rescuing Rhodey who's tied up next to a bomb like in some old movie serial. Turns out the Mandarin was behind it all, for Iron Man reasons. On the whole it's fun fan fiction, with effective art. Green's inks really bring out the best in Bingham. Iron Man Annual #6 (1983) Pencils: Luke M

Continuity buddies Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, Roger Stern and Peter Gillis were intent on injecting Jack Kirby's dormant Eternals into the mainstream Marvel Universe. The Eternals were too numerous and over powered to play nice with other heroes, so between them they conjured a plan to streamline Kirby's gods over the early 80's, laying the groundwork for Gillis' eventual Eternals miniseries. What If #29-30 (1981) - Untold Tales of The Marvel Universe Pencils: Ron Wilson Inks: Joe Sinnott Gruenwald had begun this occasional back up strip to tweak continuity and wrap up loose ends. Gillis contributed this two part Inhumans story, which not only introduced them to The Eternals, but also tied up a lingering thread... Lee & Kirby's 1967 Inhumans backup strip in Thor concluded with Black Bolt in pursuit of a new home for his people. Gillis wanted to know how that story ended, so he finally got to tell his version here, which boils down to The Inhumans moving th

Marvel Premiere #54 (1980) Pencils: Gene Day Inks: Tony DeZuniga "The coming of Caleb Hammer. Created and written by Peter Gillis" goes the byline. A 1890 priest turned Pinkerton law enforcer might seem an odd choice for his first published creation, although apparently Westerns (and the lack thereof) were a frequent discussion in the Marvel offices at the time. Contrary to the rootin tootin Cockrum cover, Hammer hated guns, blaming them for the death of his wife and brother. He took outlaws down with his fists, and the occasional well aimed bullet to the shoulder. I'm a sucker for a good old school Western, and this is an enjoyable and impressively constructed one, just lacking Gillis idiosyncrasies he developed over time. The underrated Gene Day does a lovely classic European style job on pencils. A Western at the start of the 80's was a risky prospect, so sadly no surprise that Hammer never received a second outing. He did pop up briefly in 2000's Wild West

Peter Gillis contributed a few early spandex lite stories to the periphery of Marvel, so I'll round them up here. John Carter, Warlord of Mars #28 (1979) Pencils: Larry Hama Inks: Ricardo Villamonte Barring a later annual, this is the last issue of John Carter. So it would seem an odd time for a fill in, unless it was an inventory story they pulled out of a drawer to use up. Gillis would become accustomed to penning final issues over the years. It reads like an old Conan issue, where the heroes discover a hidden city full of deathtraps and savage warriors. After a while it segues into Forbidden Planet, with oversized underground technology and secret knowledge that winds up remaining buried, thanks to the impatience of the titular character. A reasonable early script, albeit largely indistinguishable from most Marvel fantasy issues of the '70's. Tomb of Dracula magazine #5 (1980) Pencils: John Buscema Inks: Bob McLeod Pavane for an Undead Princess is an extremely effectiv

One Peter Gillis bugbear as fan and writer was the Cosmic Cube, a deus ex machina too all powerful to exist. He and Mark Gruenwald hatched a plan to get rid of it, which took a few years to come to fruition... Super-Villain Team-Up #16-17 (1979-80) Pencils: Carmine Infantino, Arvell Jones Inks: Bruce Patterson Inside his first year at Marvel, Peter Gillis was handed a regular title. Unfortunately it was regular in the sense that it only came out once a year, and the sole reason for its continued existence was to thwart DC's attempts to copyright the word supervillain. Gillis wound up penning what turned out to be the final two issues of Super-Villain Team-Up , lumbered with the Red Skull and a Hate Monger pretending not to be Hitler. The plot revolves around them creating a new cosmic cube, which they vie for control of. A neat twist sees the Hate Monger thinking he's won, not realising the Skull has trapped him inside the cube. These issues are a bit of a slog and smack heavil

During his first couple of years at Marvel, Peter Gillis submitted an assortment of fill ins for Marvel's big guns, learning on the job as he went... Marvel Two-In-One #45 (1978) Pencils: Alan Kupperberg Inks: Mike Esposito A Skrull gangster from an early Fantastic Four lands in New York, impersonating the Thing. Captain Marvel makes a bemused, needless, contractually obliged appearance. Then it all ends in a rushed Scooby Doo fashion. This was presumably aiming for comedic or at least light hearted, but the end result is unremarkable, not aided by some workmanlike artwork. However the script at least shows some personality. Marvel Two-In-One #51 (1979) Pencils: Frank Miller Inks : Bob McLeod A big improvement on the previous fill-in, featuring the fun debut of Ben Grimm's poker game with Nick Fury and lesser Avengers. In the less memorable second half, they fight some faceless goons atop of SHIELD's Helicarrier. At 17 pages, there's not a great deal to the story, but i

Peter Benno Gillis was born in New York in 1952. He was a voracious reader of everything he could get his hands on, particularly gravitating towards science fiction and comic books. Bilingual from an early age, Gillis went on to study Medieval German Literature at the University of Chicago. But his heart remained in comic books. As well as an established Marvel letter writer, Gillis become a frequent contributor to the burgeoning fanzine scene, along with friends and luminaries including Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, Peter Sanderson, Richard Bruning and David Kraft.  By 1977, Gillis had returned to New York and was regularly submitting scripts to Marvel, yet getting noticed by editor in chief Archie Goodwin was proving tricky. Goodwin's assistant Jim Shooter had shown some interest in his scripts, so as soon as Shooter was promoted to the top job at the start of 1978, Gillis knocked on his door. Shooter handed him a fill in on the perennially late Captain America , which Gillis wr

Welcome. If you're here, you've presumably already heard of comics writer Peter B. Gillis . But here's a little preamble and overview of why this blog exists.  I was a huge Marvel comics fan in the 80's, snapping up every issue I could find here in the UK. I've always had a taste for the original, offbeat, and downright peculiar, which drew me to the stranger underbelly of Marvel; the space opera of Micronauts , the black magic of Doctor Strange and the Lovecraftian weirdness of New Defenders . One name that kept popping up in the credits of said comics was writer Peter B. Gillis. His stories were always so literate, humanistic, idiosyncratic and an all round cut above from your average tights book of the era. Then at the start of the 1990's, his name started disappearing from credits. By 1992, he appeared to have left comics for good. I started wondering, whatever happened to Peter B. Gillis? The proto-internet of the mid to late 90's was no help solving t