Fabian Nicieza

Fabian Nicieza (December 31, 1961) is an Argentine-American comic book writer and editor who is best known for his work on Marvel titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, Nomad, Cable, Deadpool and Thunderbolts, for all of which he helped create numerous characters, among them Deadpool, Domino, Shatterstar, and Silhouette.

Nicieza was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Omar and Irma Riguetti Nicieza.

He was four years old when his family moved to the United States.

Growing up in New Jersey, Nicieza learned to read and write from comic books.

He lived first in Sayreville, New Jersey and moved to Old Bridge Township, where he attended Madison Central High School, from which he graduated in 1979.

He studied at Rutgers University, interning at the ABC television network before graduating in 1983 with a degree in advertising and public relations.

His brother is Mariano Nicieza, also a comic book writer and editor.

Until 1985, Nicieza worked for the Berkley Publishing Group, starting in the production department and becoming a managing editor.

In 1985, Nicieza joined the staff at Marvel Comics, initially as a manufacturing assistant, later moving to the promotions department as an advertising manager.

During this period he began to take his first freelance work for Marvel, writing short articles for Marvel's promotional magazine Marvel Age.

Nicieza's first published comics story came with Psi-Force No. 9 (July 1987), a title in Marvel's short-lived New Universe imprint.

This led to his becoming that title's regular writer from #16 (Feb. 1988) until #32 (June 1989), the final issue.

This led to fill-in work on titles such as Classic X-Men, for which he provided backup stories, and in the Marvel Annuals' 1989 summer crossover "Atlantis Attacks".

After Tom DeFalco, then Marvel's editor-in-chief, created the superhero team the New Warriors, using existing characters, in Thor No. 412 (Dec. 1989), he selected Nicieza to write the spin-off series.

Nicieza recalled "I took the assignment for two reasons. First, I saw a lot of potential in these characters that had already been deemed useless. And secondly, I really wanted to write a monthly book."

Collaborating with pencilers Mark Bagley and later Darick Robertson, primarily, Nicieza went on to write the title for most of its first 53 issues (July 1990 – November 1994).

Years later, Nicieza said that he considers the first 25 issues of New Warriors to be the best work of his career.

Also in 1990 Nicieza began short runs on comics such as Alpha Flight (#87–101), Avengers (#317–325) and Avengers Spotlight, as well as the miniseries Nomad, which in turn led him to write the ongoing series Nomad vol. 2 in 1992.

That year, Nicieza became editor of Marvel's children's imprint, Star Comics.

Shortly afterward, he left the Marvel staff and began freelance writing for the company.

Nicieza's projects in this period included the first four issues of National Football League-approved superhero NFL SuperPro (Oct. 1991 – Feb. 1992), and, with penciler Kevin Maguire, the four-issue miniseries Adventures of Captain America (also known by its cover-logo treatment, The Adventures of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty) (Sept. 1991 – Jan. 1992), an origin-story retelling set in the 1940s.

In 1991, Nicieza joined with artist Rob Liefeld in co-plotting and writing the final three issues of the New Mutants.

In those issues Liefeld and Nicieza created the characters Deadpool and Shatterstar as well as the super team, X-Force.

Liefeld and Nicieza then produced an ongoing X-Force title.

By the end of 1992, Nicieza became regular scripter for X-Men vol. 2, beginning with No. 12 (Sept. 1992), working primarily with penciler Andy Kubert throughout his run.

For the next three years, Nicieza was among the writers and editors of one of Marvel's most popular superhero franchises during a time of such popular, multi-series crossover story arcs as "X-Cutioner's Song", "Phalanx Covenant" and "Age of Apocalypse".

During this period Nicieza wrote the first Cable miniseries as well as the first few issues of the character's subsequent ongoing series.

He also wrote the first solo Deadpool series, Deadpool: the Circle Chase in 1993.

These series expanded the characters' personalities and established key background information for both characters, all things which were later used by other writers on those characters' subsequent ongoing books.

Nicieza initially worked on the title as scripter; after the departure of Liefeld in No. 12 he became its full writer, which he remained until 1995.

However, in 1995, in a dispute with then editor-in-chief Bob Harras over the future direction of his plotlines on X-Force, Nicieza was fired from the X-titles, leaving X-Force with No. 43 and X-Men with No. 45.

He later remarked, "I never wanted to leave [X-Force], and never felt my firing was justified. ... I don't recall being given a reason [for being fired], and I also don't recall asking for one. ... Considering it was a Top 10 selling title at the time, I felt it was a wholly unjustified decision."

After 1995, Nicieza wrote short runs of Captain Marvel (vol. 2, 1995), Spider-Man: The Final Adventure (1995) and stories for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers before leaving the company in 1996.

That year Nicieza did his first work for rival publisher DC Comics, co-writing Justice League: Midsummer Nightmare with Mark Waid which relaunched the Justice League as the JLA.

He also worked for Twist and Shout Comics writing and pencilling back-up stories in X-Flies Special #1 and Dirtbag #7.

Later in 1996 Nicieza joined Acclaim Comics as senior vice-president and editor-in-chief.

He was charged with revamping the companies intellectual properties which had previously formed Valiant Comics' Valiant Universe.

Nicieza as editor oversaw the new version, dubbed "VH2", which re-imagined characters such as Solar, X-O Manowar, and Ninjak.

Nicieza himself wrote the Turok title as well as a new series, Troublemakers.

Turok met with success as a video game adaptation, and Nicieza was promoted to president and publisher of Acclaim Comics in 1997.