Sal Buscema, R.I.P.

On January 24, Sal Buscema – famous for illustrating many hundreds of Marvel comics over five decades, including a ten-year run on The Incredible Hulk and an eight-year run on The Spectacular Spider-Man – passed away just shy of his ninetieth birthday.

We've lost a lot of great Silver Age creators in recent years. Why are we talking about Sal here? Well, as my most faithful readers know, I wrote a couple Spider-Man stories for Marvel way back in 1995. One of those stories, published in Spider-Man Unlimited #11, was drawn by Sal Buscema. He expanded my eight-page script to ten pages and, frankly, made me look like a much better writer than I was. To this day, I'm real proud of how the story came out. It's a highlight of my life.

I'll never forget, though, that after our collaboration was done, Mr. Buscema called me at home one evening – remember, I was a kid in high school living with my parents and a shared landline! – to compliment me on my story and say how much he enjoyed working on it. Sal certainly didn't need to reach out, but presumably he realized it would be meaningful to his 17-year-old collaborator. That phone call was incredibly generous of him.

Rest in peace, Sal Buscema.