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It’s Christmas Eve! I want to tell you about a Christmas gift that the wonderful folks at @Marvel Comics and @marvelunlimited gave to me. Below you will see the new Hidden Gems variant cover of Wolverine 350, by the immensely talented @arthuradamsart. It comes out next week.
It’s a special cover which only comic book shops get (support your local comic store!). But how did this cover come to be? Let me tell you about that.
First of all, I’m a total @Marvel nerd. This is my favorite jacket, bought for me by my loving wife (also a Marvel nerd) at the long forgotten Marvel Mania cafe at Universal Studios. (Captain America would bring you milkshakes on his shield!)
I’ve helped make 7 Marvel games, I think. I started out writing org-play scenarios for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG. I helped make Marvel Super Dice. I wrote a bunch of videogame dialogue for characters like Deadpool and Squirrel Girl for Marvel Heroes Online and Super Hero Squad.
In 1999 I was the lead designer and creative director for @wizards_DnD’s Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game. (Well, actually it was TSR, Inc. It’s complicated.) That’s one of my favorite games I’ve ever designed.
I got to make some great stuff. The Reed Richards Guide to Everything is the best thing I ever wrote for an RPG. It was Mr. Fantastic answering questions from kids, like “Why did dinosaurs go extinct?” (Reed: “They didn’t! They’re alive and well and living in the Savage Land.”)
I got to work with a great team on that: @slavicsek, Sue Weinlein, @stannex, Michele Carter, @seankreynolds, Penny Williams, @cindirice, and so many others. I had great help from @Marvel’s Steve Behling, Chris Dickey, and others who basically said “Whatever you want, Mike.”
What I wanted was ART. Specifically, I wanted the best covers. And I got them: Michael Golden did The Guide to Marvel Earth. George Pérez did The Fantastic Four Roster Book. Mike Zeck, Mark Bagley, all the best.
In 2000, I was planning an Age of Apocalypse sourcebook. I asked @marvel for a huge favor. See, @arthuradamsart had done one of my favorite hero-group covers for Classic X-Men number 1. It’s below. It’s REAL good.
I asked @marvel, “Could you nicely ask @arthuradamsart to redraw that cover, but with their Age of Apocalypse equivalents? One-hand Wolvie, Kitty with claws, that sort of thing.” I expected to be rejected. Instead, Art sent me this. I was floored. This would be our best cover.
Then I got floored again, but in a bad way. We’d just released the world-shattering Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, on which I was also a creative director. We were steering all our efforts to support D&D. My little Marvel game was no more. The AoA sourcebook would not come out.
Sadness. But I got over it. We made D&D the greatest game on the planet. I moved onto other designs like Axis & Allies and Betrayal at House on the Hill for Wizards, and then Pathfinder and Lords of Vegas and Apocrypha and so on. Years passed.
Decades passed.
Decades passed.
This fall, I was looking through my hard drive and was stunned to find this piece of Art art (get it?). Probably the only copy of it anywhere other than on @arthuradamsart’s hard drive. So I sent it to my comic writer buddy @jimzub and he sent it to @marvel’s @MarkFBasso.
@Marvel was blown away that I found such a treasure. Mark's colleagues put it on the Hidden Gems variant of Wolverine #350, which, as I said, comes out next week. You should get a copy, cuz it's great. And that’s my Christmas Eve story of how @Marvel gave me a Christmas present.
Oh, one more thing. That wasn’t the ONLY unprinted Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game cover I found on my hard drive. Maybe if @marvel is really nice to you, they’ll let you see more of them some day. Merry Christmas, Marvelites!
People who might like a little holiday cheer from this thread, maybe: @CBCebulski @GailSimone @lorrainecink @AgentM @LangstonBelton @kellysue @mattfraction @mforbeck