A Brief Overview

Roy Thomas was the FIRST Editor-in-Chief at Marvel--After Stan Lee stepped down from the position. Roy is a longtime comic book writer and editor. Thomas has written comics for Archie, Charlton, DC, Heroic Publishing, Marvel, and Topps over the years. Thomas currently edits the fanzine Alter Ego for Twomorrows Publishing. He was Editor for Marvel comics from 1972-1974. He wrote for several titles at Marvel, such as Avengers, Thor, Invaders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and notably Conan the Barbarian.

It was also Roy Thomas who recognized the writings of one Dennis "Denny" O' Neil (who would one day become Editor for DC/creator of Arkham Asylum/ Ra's al Ghul/John Stewart) from a newspaper article Thomas had read. Roy reached out to O' Neil and got him to pencil a script-test for The Fantastic Four. Shortly after Thomas showed the script to Stan Lee, who promptly hired O'Neil.

Character Creations--Oh My!

Roy Thomas is still an advocate for creator rights. So when working for Marvel he was well aware of his contract and therefore when he had to come up with new characters many times he would take characters that were already present in the Marvel Universe and "revamp" them ( "Revamp" get it? Because he created Morbius). Two great examples are The Black Knight and Ghost Rider!

Roy helped create dozens of hugely popular characters including the following:

3-D Man

Alkhema

Alley-Kat-Abra

All Star Squadron

Amazing Man

Amphibius

Aquarius

Arak

Atom Smasher

Banshee

Black Knight (Dane Whitman)

Bogatyri

Brainchild

Brother VooDoo

Captain Carrot

Carol Danvers

Chroma

Conan

Cyclotron

Deathbolt

Doc Samson

Fastback

Firebrand

Fury

Ghost Rider

Grim Reaper

Harlequin

Hector Hall

Hourman

Hyperion

Iron Cross

Iron Fist

Iron Munro

Jade

Jim Morita

Kevin Sydney (Changeling)

Little Cheese

Luke Cage

Man-Ape

Master Man

Mekanique

Missing Link

Mister Bones

Morbius

Mr. Bones

Ms. Marvel

Nameless One

Northwind

Nova

Obsidian

Omega

Phantom Rider

Red Sonja

Satannish

Satana

Sauron

Snowman

Spitfire

Stingray

Sunfire

Tiger Shark

Typhon

Ultron

Union Jack

Valda The Iron Maiden

Vision

Wendell Vaughn (Quasar)

Wildcat (Yolanda Montez)

Wolverine

Yankee Poodle

Young All-Stars

Zyklon

This list is just a small sampling of the popular characters Roy added to both the DC and Marvel universes

The 2nd Editor at Marvel Comics Steps Up

Roy became the first editor to take the reigns of Marvel Comics after Stan Lee. His list of creations for Marvel is a very long one.

Working for DC

While working for DC, Roy made a plea to the editor to change the company's name to combat more with Marvel Comics, his suggestion was "Dynamic Comics." The editor rejected the idea. At DC comics Thomas worked on All Star Squadron, Arak, and Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew.

Thomas' Alter Ego won the Eisner for Best Comics-Related Publication in 2007.

In 2011 Thomas was inducted into the Eisner Awards' Hall of Fame.