Chapter 13. Steve, The Hulk, the Human Torch, and the Long Wait

As a freelancer, I created and wrote The Ray mini-series for DC Comics [#1–6, Feb.–July 1992] in 1991. This run came to the attention of Marvel editor Danny Fingeroth, and he invited me to lunch and wanted me to pitch a new character idea for that year’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual. That summer, Marvel’s plan was to introduce a new character in all of their summer annuals.

I came up with Annex, who appeared in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #27 [1993], drawn by Tom Lyle and Scott Hanna. Annex was the only new hero of that summer who had a chance to continue. He appeared in a solo tale in Spider-Man Unlimited #3 [Nov. 1993] and earned his own mini-series [#1–4, Aug.–Nov. 1994]). Simultaneously, I successfully pitched a three-issue Spider-Man mini-series, Spider-Man: Web of Doom [#1–3, Aug.–Oct. 1994], drawn by Scott Kollins in the first issue, and then Anthony Williams in the remaining two, all inked by Sam DelaRosa. There were two memorable incidents involving this mini-series. The first was that right after I had written the first issue, editor Mark Powers called to inform me that I had to change the villain! I had originally pitted Spider-Man against the Vulture, but he was being used in a different title during the same month. So I had to go with the Beetle instead. With Marvel’s tight crossover continuity, such last-minute changes were common.

The second incident happened one Thursday morning during my weekly trek into New York City to teach my classes at the School of Visual Arts. I was going to go by Marvel’s offices that morning to drop off my dialogue

107 didn’t directly discuss this upcoming team-up story with Steve.

For my fill-in team-up issue, I wanted to use the Wizard as the villain, since he’d started out as a Human Torch villain in Johnny Storm’s solo outings in Strange Tales. The editor okayed the match and I got to work on the plot.

I wrote this story “Marvel style.” At DC, all my writing had been full scripts, describing all the action and dialogue for each page, panel by panel. Marvel handled the scripting process differently, in that the writer would submit a plot outline which would be given to the artist. From this, the artist would “break down” the story into the paneled pages. Copies of the finished penciled pages would then go back to the writer for dialogue.

I wasn’t really that used to this method, but I knew Steve was, so I was comfortable typing out the page-by-page plot. In record time, Steve handed in his finished 21 pages of pencil art, and copies were transferred back to me.

It actually took me a couple of tries before the editor accepted my dialogue script, as my first efforts were a bit too timid for the “Marvel style” of the time

A few weeks later, I received a check from Marvel for my efforts. That was the last I heard of the story… for over seventeen years!

For whatever the reason, the story was shelved somewhere in Marvel’s storage and seemingly forgotten about. Some theories emerged as to why it wasn’t used, the most prominent one being that the events of other comic books at the time did not match the characterization of the Human Torch and Hulk in my fill-in. As I mentioned, such was the tight Marvel continuity between titles. Every so often, over the years, I asked Steve about this story to see if he had any idea what happened to it. He just smiled and said, “Marvel has dozens of my stories they never published!”

Then, in 2011, it was announced that our “lost” story was finally going to see print under the title Incredible Hulk & the Human Torch: From the Marvel Vault #1 [Aug. 2011]!

The story was going to be inked and re-dialogued by Karl Kesel, who had done a large body of inking and writing work for both DC and Marvel since the ’80s.

On the book’s intro page, Kesel said, “Working on the story itself was always fun,