Len Wein, R.I.P.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Comic book writer-editor Len Wein died this morning and it feels so odd to type those words even though I've known for a long time I would have to.

Len was a friend of mine — at times, a very good friend — for darn close to half a century. I can tell you exactly where and when we first met in person: It was in the hallway outside Julius Schwartz's office in the DC Comics offices back at 909 Third Avenue in July of 1970. So 47 years and two months…but we'd corresponded by mail (paper mail) for a year or two before that. We got along famously from the start, never quarreled and had many adventures together. I will probably spend the next week or two here remembering stories I can tell here and several I can't.

Len dying…that does not come as a shock. In those 47 years and change, I must have heard a dozen times that Len was at death's door and even before we met, there were times when his friends expected it to happen soon. I remember one day around 1975, our mutual friend Mark Hanerfeld phoned me to tell, in great seriousness, that Len was gravely ill and could not possibly make it to the end of that month. Not only did Len make it to the end of that month, he outlived Hanerfeld by a decade or two.

The last few times I saw him — the last at Comic-Con, the time before that in a hospital — he looked like it could happen any minute. I guess I'd gotten it into my head that no matter how bad it looked for Len, he'd bounce back. He always did until, this morning, he didn't.  He was 69, I believe.

He was, of course, a fine writer who was responsible for co-creating many popular characters including Swamp Thing, the Human Target, Wolverine and many of the X-Men. I was also impressed with what he did with others' characters like Batman and Superman and Spider-Man and most of the major ones. If you read any of them, you know how well he could spin a story and think of clever things no one had thought of before.  I feel like I should tell you more of the personal side of the guy…

The personal side was that he was a great guy of infinite good spirit.  The two of us could sit and talk and laugh for hours and I find it hard to imagine that he couldn't do that with anyone.  We'd talk about comics.  We'd talk about friends.  We'd talk about the world.  We'd talk about "guy" things.  For I-don't-know-how-many years, Len needed to spend several hours of an evening, several times a week on a dialysis machine.  There was a clinic not far from me and sometimes, he'd call and ask me to come by and keep him company.  If I could, I would….and I'd see the other patients there wondering why we were laughing and trying to outdo each other with hoary jokes.  Only Len could make dialysis seem fun.

He was enormously devoted to his wife Chris and vice-versa.  She took great care of him, especially when he was in need of great care.  Sometimes, you resent when a buddy gets married because now he has less time for you.  Seeing how well they functioned together, I didn't resent that one bit.  She made him real happy and I really liked Len being happy.

I'll write more about him in the next few days.  He was one of the good guys.