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Personal History

Wright had always been a comic-book fan, but his main interest was moviemaking, in his opinion because both are visual media. Before moving to New York City, Wright had lived in New Castle, Pennsylvania, where he had worked as a lighting designer for short-lived local rock bands; carrying slabs of frozen meat inside a freezer; salesman of portioned food for cafeterias or hospitals, and filming video-tutorials to teach employees of a department store chain (Wright claimed to have served as writer, director, camera, editor and distributor of the tapes, and that he went uncredited). Wright then moved to New York City to attend film school, driving his parents into debt to pay for his studies.[2] One of his classmates was Dwayne McDuffie.[3] Graduating, while involved in several movie projects (writing four scripts and editing two films).[2] he found that his degree failed to ensure him a steady paycheck,[2][3] Another film graduate with similar unemployment issues, D.G. Chichester, who was also Wright's personal friend, recommended Wright to work in a minor administrative position for Epic Comics, where Chichester was already working at the time.[3] Wright decided to try it for a short time, then found that the edition process was more interesting than he had initially thought.[2]

Professional History

Having moved to New York City to study moviemaking, and failing to get a stable job in that business once he finished his studies, Wright looked for a temporary job in comic industry. He was hired by Marvel's Epic Comics, where he worked for six months[2] performing bureaucratic work. He learned from editors Margaret Clark, Jo Duffy and Archie Goodwin the value of comics for storytelling purposes.[3]

Then, editor Mark Gruenwald's assistant Howard Mackie left,[2] leaving the assistant editor position vacant, and Wright was eventually chosen to replace him.[2][3] Gruenwald was particularly enthusiastic about his work, which rubbed off on Wright. At that point, Wright decided to forfeit his contemplated cinematographic career to concentrate in comics, having understood that he could use the latter for the visual narratives he intended to use the former for.[3] Gruenwald asked Wright to introduce himself to the readers with a short autobiography for the section "Mark's Remarks" published in West Coast Avengers (Vol. 2) #18.[2] However, as assistant editors were not well paid, Wright was encouraged to find freelance work in artistic parts of the process, as it would help him in his work as editor - which he did by re-doing bad colored pages, correcting graphic details, and working with other artists to create a 22-page issue of Merc in one night. Having enjoyed this, he asked Gruenwald for further work, and Gruenwald made him color West Coast Avengers Annual #2 -which he did over a single weekend, without knowing whether Gruenwald would accept it or not. Gruenwald, happy with Wright, give him a job on Marvel Age.[3]

After writing several scripts edited by Gruenwald, but never sold as such (especially for Solo Avengers), Wright worked with Dwayne McDuffie, finally writing stories that were sold, then drawn by Alan Davis and Jackson Guice.[3]

Eventually, Wright found himself with both editor tasks and freelance work, and chose the later because it was better paid, and more satisfying, working as a writer and a colorist, sometimes for the same issue. Although he had already written many stories for Solo Avengers, along with several for New Universe and the 1990s Deathlok series (having co-created the character), his real breakthrough came when he became the writer of Daredevil Annual #5 to Daredevil Annual #10. Editor Ralph Macchio asked him for shorter back-up stories on Daredevil's supporting characters, which Wright did (on the Fatboys, Ben Urich, and the Wildboys), and Wright found those back-up stories were more popular than his main story (including Macchio's opinion). Wright thought that his ideas were more respected after that.[3]

Wright received the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Colorist in 1990 and 1996.[4]

Wright later worked for Virtual Comics, which was not a fulfilling experience, and for DC Comics, coloring Batman: The Long Halloween.[3]

Work History

Images

Trivia

  • Wright joked that the full moon contributed to him barking instead of speaking.[2]
  • The web Universo Marvel speculates that Wright based his creation Crippler in Willem Dafoe's character in the 1984 movie Streets of Fire.[5]

See Also

Links and References

References

  1. "Comics Industry Birthdays", Comics Buyer's Guide, June 10, 2005. Accessed April 18, 2011, available in the Wayback Machine here.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 West Coast Avengers (Vol. 2) #18 , "Mark's Remarks"
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 Mithra, Kuljit. "Interview with Gregory Wright," ManWithoutFear.com (March 1998), available here
  4. Gregory Wright in Wikipedia
  5. Gregory Wright in Universo Marvel.com (in Spanish)
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