Peter B. Gillis obit

Longtime Marvel Comics Writer Peter B. Gillis Passes Away

 

He was not on the list.

Peter Benno Gillis, an acclaimed longtime Marvel Comics writer in the 1970s and 1980s, best known for creating the series, Strikefore: Morituri, with artist Brent Anderson, has passed away at the age of 71, according to his brother, Rob Gillis, on social media, who wrote:

Expected but unexpected. Expired.

Many of you know my brother Peter has been struggling almost the the last two years with health issues. Getting better, getting much worse, getting much better, getting far worse. Yesterday he went from being "on the road back home" in the morning to a quick decline and passed away around 2am this morning in the presence of some close friends who drove to Albany to be with him.

There is more I could write and eventually will do so but right now that's the way it is

Peter B. Gillis was a graduate student in the late 1970s studying medival German literature, when he found himself trapped in, as he described to Kurt Anthong Krug, “the Beckett-like plains of All But Dissertation.” He decided to take a leave of absence from his graduate studies, telling Krug, "I didn’t exactly quit; I just started devoting less time to the damn thesis and more time to funny books." He began pitching scripts to Marvel, and eventually, he was hired to write Captain America #224 in 1978...

He began to write for a variety of Marvel titles over the next couple of years, like The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, Thor, and John Carter Warlord of Mars. He became well known for writing some striking What If...? issues during this period, too.

Gillis briefly served as the Editorial Director at New Media Publishing, one of the early independent comic book distributors in the comic book direct market, in 1980, leaving in 1981.

In 1983, Gillis helped launch the Warp comic book series (based on the popular Warp science fiction stageplays) for First Comics...

The cover of Warp #1

In 1984, Gillis did a particularly notable issue of What If...? #44 (by Gillis, Sal Buscema and Dave Simons), which saw Captain America revived in present day (after the 1950s Captain America having taken control of the country, turning it into a twisted version of Nazi Germany), and forced to free America, leading to a brilliant speech...

Cap gives an awesome speech

"Listen to me -- all of you out there! You were told by this man -- your hero -- that America is the greatest country in the world!

He told you that Americans were the greatest people -- that America could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly! He went on about how precious America was -- how you needed to make sure it remained great! And he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great price that is America!

Well, I say America is nothing!! Without its ideals -- its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash!

A nation is nothing! A flag is a piece of cloth! I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different than them! When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn American into nothing!

And the only reason you're not less then nothing -- -- is that it's still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!"

Cap doesn't know exactly what to do next, but the crowd is ready for him, and they embrace his idealism, and it is clear that this dark reality will soon be back on the right track...

Everyone sings a patriotic song

Right around that point time, Gillis finally started to get regular gigs, rather than fill-in books on different series, and he took over Defenders for the last few years of the series...

and wrote Doctor Strange for a number of years (in his regular series, and in the shared series, Strange Tales), as well....

and Micronauts...

In 1985, he helped launch Shatter, the first computer-drawn comic book series for First...

In 1986, Gillis and Brent Anderson launched Strikeforce: Morituri, a series set in a world where aliens have invaded, and scientists have found a way to give people superpowers to help fight back against the aliens, but the process that gave them their powers will kill them all within a year, so the cast had constant turnover...

Gillis eventually got out of comics, and had his own graphics production company. He had been dealing with health issues a lot recently, to the point where he posted on social media a couple of months ago, simply:

…and still not dead.

Some very exciting adventures, including operations

More to come—of me, at least.

In an excellent interview with Peter Sanderson in Comics Interview, Gillis brilliantly explained his approach to writing comic books:

What I try to do is take my characters and stretch them, reveal as much as I can about them, and take those insights, and bring them out. I want the characters to be more fully themselves than they were before. Very often I will do a story that revolves around an image, and the image has to be striking and emblematic of the strip I'm doing. For my first published story, which turned out to be CAPTAIN AMERICA #224, all of a sudden I came up with the image of Captain America floating in the East River, being picked up, going into a bathroom, taking off his mask, and discovering that there was a face he didn't recognize under the mask. That was the image. I then had to build a story around that. The ultimate identity crisis. I will get a center like that and work around it. Sometimes, though not as often, it will be an intellectual idea. But I always want to do a story that has a center, that can either be a message that I want to say, or simply an image that stuck with me, and I want to convey it so it will stick with the reader, or sometimes just a feeling. What I try to do is to make the story memorable. And it should be a STORY. It should convey a single impression, whether it be intellectual, visual, or just the ambiance of the book. There should be something each issue that should make people remember it, and have it lodge in them.

CBR offers our condolences to Gillis' friends and family.