11. Don McGregor

Did he habitually use ten words where one would have sufficed? Maybe. Was his prose pretentious and over-wrought? Sometimes. OK, many times. Did he ... well, you get the idea. But after all these years, I find I admire McGregor for his weaknesses almost as much as for his strengths as a comics writer. I admire his ambition, misplaced though it may have been at times, trying to bring a Dostoevsky-like insight into the nuances of human nature to what were meant to be entertaining adventure or superhero stories - because who says human nature, relationships, psychology isn't entertaining?

McGregor wasn't Dostoevsky, he wasn't even Raymond Chandler - but I can tell you that as a young reader when I saw his name in the credits, I didn,t think, "Oh no, I have to wade through all this excess wrting and purple prose", I thought, "Don McGregor, he writes good comics. I don't always understand what he's getting at, but I like it." Actually, my thoughts probably didn't attain even that minimal level of articulation: it was more a spontaneous feeling that I consistently enjoyed his stories.

I admit that it helped a lot that - I suppose through random good luck, in some cases - he often worked with artists whose work I loved: Bill Graham on the Panther, Craig Russell on Killraven, Gene Colan on Nathaniel Dusk, Paul Gulacy on Sabre and in a couple of memorable Warren mag stories (can't remember if it was Creepy, Eerie, or both) - though on the last two he deserves credit himself because he chose to work with those artists.

I also admit that as far as American superhero comics go, I thnk the pendulum has swung much too far in the opposite direction from McGregor's wordy, elaborate captions to what I think is a misguided effort to emulate film and tv and let the images and dialogue do all the work. Judicious use of text can help pace a comics story and enable the reader to savour the artwork as well as the prose. But that's a discussion for another time and place. McGregor's writing, mannered and verbose as it was, never got in the way of the story for me: on the contrary, it enhanced my enjoyment and I was always interested when I saw his name in the credits.