Mike Grell

Mike Grell (born September 13, 1947) is an American comic book writer and artist, known for his work on books such as Green Lantern/Green Arrow, The Warlord, and Jon Sable Freelance.

Grell studied at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, the Chicago Academy of Fine Art, and took the Famous Artists School correspondence course in cartooning.

To avoid getting drafted into Army service during the Vietnam War, he enlisted for four years in the U.S. Air Force, including a stint as illustrator in Saigon.

After the Air Force, Grell enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Art, and also worked as a freelance graphics artist.

He redesigned the character's costume, away from the costume Neal Adams had designed in 1969, and recast Green Arrow as an "urban hunter" going up against non-super-powered, real world villains such as serial killers, terrorists, street gangs, American mobsters and Japanese Yakuza.

He did away with Green Arrow's arsenal of "trick arrows" and instead rearmed him with penetrating broadheads with which he actually killed his opponents.

The Longbow Hunters showed the first instance in which Green Arrow ever deliberately killed someone.

Grell entered the comics industry as an assistant to Dale Messick on the Brenda Starr comic strip in 1972.

In 1973 Grell moved to New York City, and began his long relationship with DC Comics.

At DC, Grell worked on characters such as Aquaman, Batman, Green Arrow, and the Phantom Stranger in arcs or single-issue stories.

Grell inked a Cockrum penciled story ("Lost: A Million Miles from Home!") in issue #202 and became the penciler of the book with issue No. 203 (August 1974) which featured the death of Invisible Kid.

These stories were written by Cary Bates with later issues by Jim Shooter.

He and Elliot S. Maggin launched the Batman Family title in 1975 and Grell would work with Dennis O'Neil on the revival of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series the following year.

The character first appeared in 1st Issue Special No. 8 (Nov. 1975) and was soon given his own ongoing title (The Warlord #1, Jan/Feb 1976).

In this series, Air Force pilot Travis Morgan crash-lands in the prehistoric "hidden world" of Skartaris (a setting highly influenced by Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar).

For years thereafter, Morgan engages in adventures dressed only in a winged helmet, wristbands, boots, and breechclout, and armed with a sword and a .44 Auto Mag.

For a time between 1976 and 1978, Grell was writing and penciling one series, Warlord, and providing pencil art on two others, Green Lantern and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

His regular first assignment at DC was on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, a high-profile assignment for an artist with no prior experience illustrating a monthly comic book.

Grell says he got that job because he was walking in the editor's door to ask for work, literally, as the previous artist, Dave Cockrum, was walking out the door, having just quit.

Grell drew All-New Collectors' Edition #C-55 (1978), a treasury-sized special written by Paul Levitz in which longtime Legion members Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad were married.

A writer as well as artist, Grell cemented his status as a fan-favorite with his best-known creation, The Warlord.

Grell wrote himself and editor Jack C. Harris into the metafictional conclusion of the story in The Warlord #35 (July 1980).

Other artists took over pencil duties, while Sharon Grell, as revealed in the letter column of a later issue, took over writing.

Through the 1980s Grell developed creator-owned titles such Jon Sable Freelance and Starslayer.

Jon Sable Freelance was published by the now-defunct First Comics.

Starslayer, a space-born science fiction series, started at Pacific Comics, but shifted to First after Pacific went out of business.

The titular character of Jon Sable Freelance was a former Olympic athlete, later an African big-game hunter, who became a mercenary.

At a convention in the late 1980s, Grell stated that his idea for Sable was "something like a cross between James Bond and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer".

Grell wrote and drew the Tarzan comic strip from July 19, 1981, to February 27, 1983 (except for one strip, February 13, 1983, by Thomas Yeates).

First appearing with a cover date of June 1983, Jon Sable was a precursor to what would eventually be called, by some, "the Dark Age of Comics", when even long-established super-heroes would become increasingly grim and violent.

The character was heavily influenced by Ian Fleming's James Bond novels as well as drawing on pulp fiction crime stories.

Many of the stories of Sable's hunting exploits in Africa were influenced by Peter Hathaway Capstick's novels.

In 1987, Mike Grell wrote and drew the three-issue prestige format limited series Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters.

The popularity of Longbow Hunters led to an assignment writing – and occasionally drawing – an ongoing Green Arrow series for 80 issues from 1988 to 1993.

During this run, Grell avoided references to the fantastical elements of the DC Universe (e.g., in a guest appearance by Green Lantern the character is out of costume and does not use his powers).

Notably, believing "Green Arrow" was "a stupid name", in no Mike Grell Green Arrow story (with the exception of Longbow Hunters #1) is the character ever referred to as Green Arrow anywhere other than on the cover.

Grell would write a retelling of Green Arrow's origin and first case in Secret Origins vol. 2 #38 (March 1989).

He was the co-writer/cover artist for Green Arrow Annual (1991), drew the cover art for Annual #5 (1992), and wrote Annual #6 (1993).

Sable was adapted into a short-lived television series and the character's origin tale, "A Storm Over Eden", from the comic book, was expanded and novelized by Grell under the title Sable, which was published in 2000 by Tor Books.

These strips were rerun in newspapers in 2004 – 2005.