Jeph Loeb

Jeph Loeb (2007)

Joseph "Jeph" Loeb III (born January 29, 1958 in Stamford , Connecticut ) is an American screenplay and comic book writer and producer. His best-known works as a producer include the series Lost and Smallville , and as a writer he is best known for comics such as The Long Halloween and Superman for all Seasons .

Life

Loeb grew up in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where his stepfather was vice president of Brandeis University in Waltham. After studying at Columbia University in New York - where the directors Miloš Forman and Paul Schrader were among his lecturers - which he completed with a Bachelor of Arts in film studies, Loeb began working as a freelance screenwriter.

Loeb's breakthrough as a screenwriter came with the script for the Michael J. Fox film Teen Wolf (1985), which he wrote with Matthew Weisman . This was followed by scripts for Commando (with Arnold Schwarzenegger ), Burglar (1983, with Whoopi Goldberg ) and Teen Wolf Too (1987). Loeb's most frequent partner remained Weisman, who co-wrote many of these scripts as an equal partner.

Jeph Loeb-New York Comic con 2012

In the late 1980s, Loeb wrote the script for a Warner Brothers film about the science fiction hero Flash . In the course of the pre-production of the film, which ultimately remained unrealized, Loeb met Jenette Kahn , the president of the publishing house DC-Comics , a subsidiary of Time Warner, which concentrates on the production of comic books , who convinced him try as a comic book writer. His first published work in the field, an eight-part miniseries for the Challengers of the Unknown series , finally hit the market in 1991. Loeb's artistic partner on this project was the draftsman Tim Sale , with whom he entered into a close personal friendship and artistic partnership that has continued to this day, from which several dozen comic books have emerged.

The extensive list of joint works by Loeb and Sale from the 1990s includes, among other things, three so-called “Halloween Specials” for the comic series Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight , which are published under the titles Batman: Choices , Batman: Ghosts and Batman: Madness was released in 1993, 1994 and 1995 in November, on the occasion of the popular American holiday "Halloween". As a result of the enormous popularity of the three specials with readers, Loeb and Sale finally received the order for a particularly extensive follow-up project, if possible. The resulting twelve-part maxiseries The Long Halloween , which appeared over a period of one year from Halloween 1997 to Halloween 1998, ultimately proved to be a considerable success both commercially and artistically. The series has been reissued several times as an anthology and has also been awarded several comic prizes, such as the Eisner Award (in the "Best Miniseries" category in 1998) and the Wizard Fan Award (in the "Most Popular Miniseries" category in 1997). In addition, she drew another follow-up project, the thirteen-part maxiserie Batman: Dark Victory , which was hardly less successful.

In 1998 Loeb and Sale jointly designed the four-part miniseries Superman for all Seasons , in which, on behalf of DC, on the occasion of the sixtieth "birthday" of the famous science fiction hero Superman, they retold the story of his origins and early "heroic career". The overall extremely positive response that Superman for all Seasons drew from readers (Wizard Fan Award in the category “Most Popular Miniseries” for 1998) and critics alike led to Loeb being won over by Eddie Berganza , then head of the Superman department at DC Comics, who was hired to replace Dan Jurgens for the job of regular author of the monthly Superman main series, which was just dubbed Superman . Loeb returned to Batman in 2003 after supervising the series as lead writer for three years (# 151-183). Together with star cartoonist Jim Lee , he presented the twelve-part story "Batman: Hush", which was published in Batman # 608–619. The twelve-part series also became a notable commercial success - the "Hush" magazines had been the best-selling DC comics for more than ten years and reached # 1 on the charts of best-selling comic books published by the American industry magazine Wizard for eleven months - and marked also the starting point for the series Superman / Batman , started in 2004 , in which the two title heroes routinely have shared adventures, and which Loeb wrote for almost two years. Artists such as Ian Churchill , Pat Lee , Michael Turner and Carlos Pacheco were at his side as draftsmen . At the same time he created the six-part miniseries Catwoman: When in Rome with Sale .

The list of Loeb's other comic works in the 1990s also includes the Superman-related miniseries Loose Cannon from 1994, which deals with a new character of the same name that Loeb had introduced in 1993 in the Action Comics Annual # 5. Loeb also wrote the two one shots, Superman: Emperor Joker (2000) and Superman: Lex 2000 (2000), which flanked his Superman run , as well as issues # 0–5 for the series Supergirl , a spin-off from Superman / Batman . For Marvel Comics he wrote a year of the series Fantastic Four (# 38–50; Annual # 1), numerous issues of the series Cable (# 15, 17–39; Cable Annual 1995), Captain America (# 1–6, 12) , Iron Man (# 1-7), Wolverine (# 50-55), X-Force (# 44-61), and X-Man (# 1-9), as well as the mini-series Daredevil: Yellow (# 1-6 ), Hulk: Gray (# 1-6), Spider-Man: Blue (# 1-6), and Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America (# 1-5). Hulk: Red (# 1 Jan 2008) The Ultimates , Volume 3: Sex, Lies and DVD (# 1- # 5 2008)

In the years that followed, Loeb worked as a screenwriter for the television series Smallville , for which he has also been the supervising producer since 2002.

For the US broadcaster ABC, Loeb wrote and produced the series Lost, beginning with the second season, for several years. In 2007 he moved to NBC to work as a writer and executive co-producer for the series Heroes, created by friend and colleague Tim Kring . He brought Tim Sale on board as the designer of the comic pages that appear periodically in the series.

A personal stroke of fate befell Loeb in 2005 with the death of his son Sam, who died of serious cancer at the age of only seventeen.

Filmography (selection)

• 1987: The thieving magpie (Burglar)

Prizes and awards

The honors Loeb has received for his television work include an honorary doctorate from St. Edwards University in Austin , Texas , and, together with Tim Kring, the Jules Verne Prize for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, which he received in 2007 at the Jules Verne Festival in Paris.

Web links

• Jeph Loeb in the Internet Movie Database (English)