I'm originally from the Philadelphia area and had an unremarkable childhood full of movies and TV and pick-up softball and backyard shoot-em-ups.

And comic books.

Throw a rock in this business and you'll hit a guy who was sick a lot as child and his mom, dad, aunt, neighbor, cousin, uncle or a total stranger gave him a stack of comics to read and the future was carved in stone. So my background's no different. A sick kid and a full of comic books.

I amassed a huge collection by haunting garage sales and paper pulpers and buying out neighborhood kids' collections for pennies-a-comic. See, they outgrew them but I knew I never would. And I filled reams of looseleaf paper with stories. By thirteen I realized I would never be a comic artist like my idol, Steve Ditko. So I began to turn more toward writing comics.

I've held every kind of job you can poke a want ad at. I've driven an ice cream truck, presided over graveyard shifts at 7-11s where I met a lot of potential Batman villains. I've guarded insurance companies without the aid of a utility belt. I've been a janitor, stockboy, limo driver and mobile disc jockey. I wrote a couple of children's books. I've storyboarded a few TV commercials. I sold silk-screened t-shirts by mail.

And in all that time I kept at my first love; writing comic stories.

My first BIG break came when Larry Hama hired me to write for SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. From there I went on to work with Tim Truman on AIRBOY and from there to ALIEN LEGION with Carl Potts and Archie Goodwin. I worked on every Punisher story Don Daley could throw at me.

mitsubishi lancer

The second break came when Denny O'Neil invited me to write a ROBIN mini series. The success of that project (due to the readers' wish to see a new Robin.) led to a regular stint on DETECTIVE COMICS of eighty issues (most of them with Graham Nolan, master penciller) and the assignment of a regular Robin series and several other Bat related books as well as a long run on GREEN ARROW. Scott Peterson tapped me for NIGHTWING's first monthly. I also wrote BIRDS OF PREY, a series featuring Oracle (Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl) and Black Canary.

After a long run with DC Comics and other publishers, I have recently moved with my wife and kids (and the world's most dangerous minature Schnauzer) to accept an exclusive position to write multi-genre stories for CrossGen Comics down in the alligator state of Florida.

There's other stuff in the works so watch this site for developments.

 

Drawing of "Chuck" by Sergio Cariello