Keith Giffen

Keith Giffen, 2016

Keith Ian Giffen (born November 30, 1952 in Queens , New York City ) is an American comic book author and illustrator. He was best known as the creator of the cartoon character Lobo and as the author of popular science fiction and humor series such as Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice League of America .

Life and work

Giffen began to work as a professional comic book author and illustrator in the late 1970s. His first published work as a draftsman appeared in the black and white series The Sword and The Star written by Bill Mantlo . For Marvel Comics , Giffen drew some editions of The Defenders series .

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he began working for the leading US publisher DC-Comics , for whom Giffen was an author and / or illustrator on series such as Justice Society of America , Omega Men , Ambush Bug and All Star Comics became active. In the mid-1980s, Giffen eventually became one of the most popular authors in the US comic market through his work on the Justice League series . Giffen wrote Justice League (later Justice League International ), which he gave a decidedly humorous-satirical tone, as well as various spin-off series such as Justice League Europe and Justice League Quarterly until 1992 and made the previously ailing title one of the most commercial and artistic most successful in the DC program. His partners were co-author Jean Marc DeMatteis and draftsman Kevin Maguire . As the sole author, he was the first author of the series Trencher . Characteristic of the author Giffen are above all his biting wit, his surprising and crazy ideas and his satirical approach to writing.

While in the early years of his career as an author Giffen often only worked as the author of the plots of his stories and left the co-authors to formulate the dialogues that appear in the booklets, from the mid-1980s he increasingly took on the activity of both the plotter and the dialogue writer . Giffen's most frequent co-authors included Dematteis, Alan Grant , Robert Loren Fleming and Erik Larsen.

At the same time Giffen worked for DC on other series such as Legion of Super-Heroes and Doctor Fate and the mini-series The Heckler (1992). A special place in Giffen's work took the work on the figure of the space bully Lobo, which he created during his work on Omega Men : he first built this into some of his Justice League stories before making it the focus of independent publications and so brought one of the most successful comic series of the early 1990s to life, which is why the creation of the Lobo figure is now widely regarded as Giffen's most effective artistic work.

In the 1990s Giffen wrote and / or drew for Marvel Comics on the series Nick Fury's Howling Commandos and Annihilation , as well as for various series of the Dark Horse series New Line Heroes . There were also projects such as Woodgod , Drax the Destroyer , Reign of the Zodiac , Vext and Trencher .

Giffen also worked as a storyboard artist for cartoon series such as The Real Ghostbusters .

From 2001 Giffen worked again for DC Comics. He wrote and drew for the new edition of the series Suicide Squad , wrote another Lobo miniseries (2003) and worked on the 52-part maxiseries 52 and Countdown .

Giffen's work on Lobo

In 1982, together with the author Roger Slifer , Giffen created the figure of the extremely violent, intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo from the planet Czarnia, who is still popular to this day and who they first presented in issue # 3 of the science fiction series Omega Men , which they jointly supervised .

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Lobo figure first gained as an antiheroic "guest star" in various other DC publishing series such as Superman , Mister Miracle and Justice League International , then as one of the main characters in the team series LEGION and REBELS great popularity, and was ultimately one of the most popular characters in the publisher's program. DC finally took this into account by publishing countless one-shot specials, mini-series of the character and finally its own, from 1993 to 1998, sixty-four issues, ongoing series of the character over the course of the 1990s .

Giffen contributed to the commercial marketing of the popularity of his creation - which culminated in a downright “Lobo hype” between 1989 and 1994/1995 - as the author of several mini-series “Harder Pace” aimed at an adult audience. He wrote - together with the Scot Alan Grant - the mini-series Lobo: Miss Tibb (1990) and Lobo's Back (1992) as well as the One Shot Lobo: Paramilitary Christmas (1993) drawn by Simon Bisley , before joining DC Comics in 1993 because of its "Lobo policy" and from then on distanced itself from all Lobo publications. The reason he gave was that he would consider the start of the ongoing Lobo series to be a serious mistake, because he sees Lobo as "conceptually only suitable for self-contained stories" and a longer series as harming the character because it overusing and wearing out, consider. As a result, Giffen also broke off contact for several years with his partner Alan Grant, who, after long hesitation, had finally agreed to write the stories for the ongoing Lobo series. In 2004, six years after the ongoing series was discontinued, Giffen finally returned to Lobo and launched a new four-part miniseries true to the original concept of the character.

Award

In 2004 Giffen received the Eisner Award together with JM DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire and Joe Rubinstein for the series Formerly Known as the Justice League in the category "Best Humor Publication".