Paul Jenkins (writer)
Encyclopedia
Paul Jenkins is a British
comic book
writer
and Gary Gygax
's stepson. He has had much success crossing over into the American comic book market. Primarily working for Marvel Comics
, he has had a big part shaping the characters of the company over the past decade.
and Peter Laird
's books, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, and even negotiated their licensing deals.
Leaving Mirage, Jenkins followed Eastman to Tundra, another Eastman publishing venture. He once again took up editing duties, and also headed licensing and promotions.
Tired of editing, Jenkins pitched to several companies as a writer. It was during this process that he landed a gig for DC Comics
' Vertigo imprint. In 1994, he took over as writer of Hellblazer
, and began what would go on to be a four year long stint. His work on this title gained him attention in the American
comic industry, but has yet to be republished in trade paperback form. This makes his run the longest on the series not to be reprinted.
Paul's Marvel Comics career began in 1998, when he worked on reviving some of the companies horror-themed properties. He relaunched the psychological horror title Werewolf By Night
, writing six issues, until the title was canceled to start the anthology title Strange Tales. The rest of his remaining Werewolf By Night story was published in the first two issues.
Later in the year, he and artist Jae Lee
were responsible launching the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Marvel Knights
series Inhumans
. The limited series
ran twelve issues between November 1998 and October 1999, and earned Jenkins an Eisner Award
.
In 2000, Jenkins and Lee followed up their collaboration with another five issue Marvel Knights limited series, this time concerning The Sentry
. Although the mentally tortured hero was an original creation of Jenkins and Lee's, Marvel ran a marketing hoax claiming that the character was a long-lost Silver Age creation of Stan Lee himself, even pre-dating the Fantastic Four. After a long period of non-use, The Sentry became a member of the New Avengers (which occurred in a storyline with a cameo by Jenkins himself).
The year 2000 also included writing assignments in the regular Marvel Universe. In March, Jenkins was made the regular writer on the The Incredible Hulk. Like in much of his earlier work, Jenkins conducted a psychiatric examination of Bruce Banner, including a look at Banner's multiple Hulk personas. His 20 issue run on the Hulk ran until November 2001, and received great acclaim.
On top of the Hulk ongoing, Jenkins became the regular writer of Peter Parker: Spider-Man. Taking over the title from issue 20, in August 2000, he wrote it until its end in August 2003. Marvel placed him on the brand new The Spectacular Spider-Man
Vol.2, and Jenkins went on to write the book for most of its three year run. His artistic collaborator for most of the Spectacular run was fan-favorite Humberto Ramos
.
In 2001 he collaborated with penciller
Andy Kubert
on the 6-issue limited series Origin
which for the first time revealed Wolverine's
beginnings. The title was one of the biggest sales successes of that year for Marvel, and Jenkins has written Wolverine: The End, a story dealing with loose ends from the story, although it is not a direct sequel, as Marvel's The End stories are not canon. There is to be one more sequel to Origin.
He would also go on to write Wolverine
for Marvel, and The Darkness
for Top Cow. Another project undertaken by Jenkins for Marvel was the Mythos
series of one-shots where Jenkins, with Paolo Rivera's painted artwork, would retell the origin stories of Marvel's movie adapted characters to bridge the gap between the Movies and the comic based characters.
Recently, Jenkins wrote the Dark Horse Comics
limited series Revelations with comic book
artist
and penciller
Humberto Ramos
and Marvel's The Sentry with artist
John Romita Jr.. He has also written his own independent comic, Sidekick, published by Image Comics
.
Jenkins wrote the Civil War
tie-in Civil War: Front Line
and one of the stories, the transformation of Robbie Baldwin from Speedball to Penance, was expanded on in the limited series
Penance: Relentless. It also led to World War Hulk
: Front Line. He also took over the writing on Son of Hulk when it lost its focus on Skaar
, the series ran from #13 to 17.
Jenkins is also a prolific creator in the video game medium, having worked on several top-tier titles including the Legacy of Kain
, Twisted Metal Black and God of War
series. Most recently, Paul is credited as writer on Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, created with Radical Entertainment
and The Darkness
, created by Starbreeze Studios
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
's stepson. He has had much success crossing over into the American comic book market. Primarily working for Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, he has had a big part shaping the characters of the company over the past decade.
Life and career
Paul Jenkins earned an English degree in his native United Kingdom. After moving to the US, he joined Mirage Studios in 1988, where he worked as editor/production manager. He edited Kevin EastmanKevin Eastman
Kevin Brooks Eastman is an American comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eastman is also the current owner, editor and publisher of the magazine Heavy Metal.-Early life:Eastman was born on May 30, 1962 in Springvale, Maine...
and Peter Laird
Peter Laird
Peter Alan Laird is an American comic book writer and artist. He is best known for co-creating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with writer and artist Kevin Eastman.-Early life and career:...
's books, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists...
, and even negotiated their licensing deals.
Leaving Mirage, Jenkins followed Eastman to Tundra, another Eastman publishing venture. He once again took up editing duties, and also headed licensing and promotions.
Tired of editing, Jenkins pitched to several companies as a writer. It was during this process that he landed a gig for DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' Vertigo imprint. In 1994, he took over as writer of Hellblazer
Hellblazer
Hellblazer is a contemporary horror comic book series, originally published by DC Comics, and subsequently by the Vertigo imprint since March 1993, the month the imprint was introduced, where it remains to this day...
, and began what would go on to be a four year long stint. His work on this title gained him attention in the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comic industry, but has yet to be republished in trade paperback form. This makes his run the longest on the series not to be reprinted.
Paul's Marvel Comics career began in 1998, when he worked on reviving some of the companies horror-themed properties. He relaunched the psychological horror title Werewolf By Night
Werewolf by Night
Werewolf by Night is a fictional character, an antiheroic werewolf in the Marvel Comics universe. The Werewolf by Night first appeared in Marvel Spotlight vol...
, writing six issues, until the title was canceled to start the anthology title Strange Tales. The rest of his remaining Werewolf By Night story was published in the first two issues.
Later in the year, he and artist Jae Lee
Jae Lee
Jae Lee is an American comic book artist best known for his work on Inhumans and The Sentry, both with Paul Jenkins.-Career:Lee first rose to prominence in the industry for his work on Marvel's Namor the Sub-Mariner, Inhumans , and The Sentry, as well as his creator-owned character Hellshock at...
were responsible launching the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Marvel Knights
Marvel Knights
Marvel Knights is an imprint of Marvel Worldwide, Inc. that contains material taking place within the mainstream Marvel Universe .-Production:...
series Inhumans
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
. The limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
ran twelve issues between November 1998 and October 1999, and earned Jenkins an Eisner Award
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
.
In 2000, Jenkins and Lee followed up their collaboration with another five issue Marvel Knights limited series, this time concerning The Sentry
Sentry (Robert Reynolds)
The Sentry is a fictional character in the . The character first appears in The Sentry #1 and was created by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, with uncredited conceptual contributions by Rick Veitch.-Creation:...
. Although the mentally tortured hero was an original creation of Jenkins and Lee's, Marvel ran a marketing hoax claiming that the character was a long-lost Silver Age creation of Stan Lee himself, even pre-dating the Fantastic Four. After a long period of non-use, The Sentry became a member of the New Avengers (which occurred in a storyline with a cameo by Jenkins himself).
The year 2000 also included writing assignments in the regular Marvel Universe. In March, Jenkins was made the regular writer on the The Incredible Hulk. Like in much of his earlier work, Jenkins conducted a psychiatric examination of Bruce Banner, including a look at Banner's multiple Hulk personas. His 20 issue run on the Hulk ran until November 2001, and received great acclaim.
On top of the Hulk ongoing, Jenkins became the regular writer of Peter Parker: Spider-Man. Taking over the title from issue 20, in August 2000, he wrote it until its end in August 2003. Marvel placed him on the brand new The Spectacular Spider-Man
The Spectacular Spider-Man
The Spectacular Spider-Man is the name of several comic books and one magazine series starring Marvel Comics' Spider-Man.The character's main series, The Amazing Spider-Man, was extremely successful, and Marvel felt the character could support more than one title. This led the company in 1968 to...
Vol.2, and Jenkins went on to write the book for most of its three year run. His artistic collaborator for most of the Spectacular run was fan-favorite Humberto Ramos
Humberto Ramos
Humberto Ramos is a Mexican comic book penciller, best known for his work on American comic books such as Impulse, The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man and his creator-owned series Crimson.-Career:...
.
In 2001 he collaborated with penciller
Penciller
A penciller is an artist who works in the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms.The penciller is the first step in rendering the story in visual form and may require several steps of feedback with the writer. These artists are concerned with layout to showcase...
Andy Kubert
Andy Kubert
Andrew "Andy" Kubert is an American comic book artist, son of Joe Kubert, and brother of Adam Kubert, both of whom are also artists...
on the 6-issue limited series Origin
Origin (comics)
Origin is a six-issue comic book limited series published by Marvel Comics from November 2001 to March 2002, written by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada and Paul Jenkins, and illustrated by Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove ....
which for the first time revealed Wolverine's
Wolverine (comics)
Wolverine is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Born as James Howlett and commonly known as Logan, Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, three retracting bone claws on each hand and a healing...
beginnings. The title was one of the biggest sales successes of that year for Marvel, and Jenkins has written Wolverine: The End, a story dealing with loose ends from the story, although it is not a direct sequel, as Marvel's The End stories are not canon. There is to be one more sequel to Origin.
He would also go on to write Wolverine
Wolverine (comics)
Wolverine is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Born as James Howlett and commonly known as Logan, Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, three retracting bone claws on each hand and a healing...
for Marvel, and The Darkness
The Darkness (comics)
The Darkness is a series of ongoing American comic books created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis, and David Wohl and produced by Top Cow Productions. The comic first appeared in 1996 and enjoyed an initial period of relative success during the Top Cow/Image Comics boom of the late 1990s. However,...
for Top Cow. Another project undertaken by Jenkins for Marvel was the Mythos
Mythos (Marvel Comics)
Mythos is a six-issue series of one-shot Marvel comic books written by Paul Jenkins and fully painted by Paolo Rivera, each issue is based on the origin story of a particular character or group within Marvel's collective universe....
series of one-shots where Jenkins, with Paolo Rivera's painted artwork, would retell the origin stories of Marvel's movie adapted characters to bridge the gap between the Movies and the comic based characters.
Recently, Jenkins wrote the Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
limited series Revelations with comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and penciller
Penciller
A penciller is an artist who works in the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms.The penciller is the first step in rendering the story in visual form and may require several steps of feedback with the writer. These artists are concerned with layout to showcase...
Humberto Ramos
Humberto Ramos
Humberto Ramos is a Mexican comic book penciller, best known for his work on American comic books such as Impulse, The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man and his creator-owned series Crimson.-Career:...
and Marvel's The Sentry with artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
John Romita Jr.. He has also written his own independent comic, Sidekick, published by Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...
.
Jenkins wrote the Civil War
Civil War (comics)
Civil War is a 2006-2007 Marvel Comics crossover storyline built around a self-titled seven-issue limited series written by Mark Millar and penciled by Steve McNiven, which ran through various other titles published by Marvel at the time...
tie-in Civil War: Front Line
Civil War: Front Line
Civil War: Front Line is an 11-issue, limited series tie-in to Marvel Comics's Civil War event which started in August 2006.Part of the story is told from the perspective of two reporters embedded in the opposite camps of the war...
and one of the stories, the transformation of Robbie Baldwin from Speedball to Penance, was expanded on in the limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
Penance: Relentless. It also led to World War Hulk
World War Hulk
"World War Hulk" is a comic book crossover storyline that ran through a self titled limited series and various other titles published by Marvel Comics in 2007, featuring the Hulk....
: Front Line. He also took over the writing on Son of Hulk when it lost its focus on Skaar
Skaar
Skaar is a fictional comic book character appearing in books published by Marvel Comics, usually as a supporting character to Hulk. He is the son of the Hulk and the extraterrestrial Caiera, who conceived him during the "Planet Hulk" storyline...
, the series ran from #13 to 17.
Jenkins is also a prolific creator in the video game medium, having worked on several top-tier titles including the Legacy of Kain
Legacy of Kain
Legacy of Kain is a series of action-adventure video games developed initially by Silicon Knights in association with Crystal Dynamics. After a legal battle, Crystal Dynamics continued the series without Silicon Knights and Eidos Interactive became the publisher...
, Twisted Metal Black and God of War
God of War (video game)
God of War is an action adventure video game for the PlayStation 2 first released by Sony Computer Entertainment's Santa Monica division in March 2005...
series. Most recently, Paul is credited as writer on Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, created with Radical Entertainment
Radical Entertainment
Radical Entertainment is a video game developer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1991 and previously developed games for game publishers such as THQ, Microsoft and Fox Interactive. It is now an entirely owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard after being acquired by...
and The Darkness
The Darkness (video game)
The Darkness is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by 2K Games for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It was released on June 25, 2007 in North America and on June 20, 2007 in Europe. The video game is based on the comic book of the same title...
, created by Starbreeze Studios
Starbreeze Studios
Starbreeze Studios is a video game development studio founded by members of the demo group Triton, based in Uppsala, Sweden.-History:The company was founded in 1998, under the name O3 Games. In 2000, O3 Games merged with the smaller company Starbreeze Studios which was then based in Härnösand, Sweden...
.