David Michelinie is an American comic book writer who gained prominence in the late 70's at Marvel comics. His first run on Iron Man, along with inker/co-plotter Bob Layton, is the defining run on the characters and series, much like Frank Miller's first run on Daredevil is. The run dealt with alcoholic issues in the groundbreaking "Demon in a Bottle" story arc.

Michelinie and Layton later returned to this series, this time with Mark Bright doing pencils, and Jackson "Butch" Guice following Bright for a run. This run produced the Stark Wars storyline, which has now become known as simply "Armor Wars".

Michelinie wrote the Avengers for a period, with his strong scripts benefitting even more from the artwork of pencilers like John Byrne and George Perez.

Michelinie also wrote Spider-Man at Marvel for many years. He originally started off as Web of Spider-Man's writer, but was quickly shifted to the main series, Amazing Spider-Man, and went on to write it for nearly 100 issues, a run only bettered by Stan Lee himself. Michelinie was there for the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane, he created Venom and Carnage, and worked with three strong and stylized artists in Todd McFarlane, Erik Larson, and Mark Bagley, who each had long and consistant runs without many fill-ins at all.

After his Spider-Man run ended, Michelinie moved over to DC, where he worked on Superman in Action Comics for three years between 702-736, and while solid work, it didn't distinguish itself in the same way that his Marvel work. He has not had many mainstream offers from Marvel or DC since.

Michelinie returned to creating comics by teaming-up with Bob Layton and Dick Giordano to form Future Comics. The company closed down after only two and a half years in business in 2004.

In 2008, he re-teamed with Layton once again for a four-issue Iron Man: Legacy of Doom miniseries for Marvel Comics.

Interesting Trivia

In Iron Man Vol. 1 # 123, Michelinie plays with the Fourth Wall concept. Into the story, Michelinie writes Iron Man coming crashing through a skyscraper. As flies uncontrollably though a room, he flies by some of the Marvel creators outside of the Editorial Pit who say:

"Gee, Jim, I, uh, realize guest-stars help sales -- but in editorial meetings?!"

Characters Created by David

• Leslie Gesneria
• Ant-Man (Lang)
• Blizzard (Gill)
• Bethany Cabe
• Cardiac
• Carl Mach
• Carnage
• Edwin Cord
• Cal Durham
• Sentry (Elkins)
• Firepower
• Ghost
• Justin Hammer
• Cassandra Lang
• Lasher
• Mauler
• Raiders
• Scream
• Solo
• Starfire
• Sunturion
• Taskmaster
• Tri-Sentinel
• Venom
• War Machine