Roger McKenzie, writer of Captain America, Daredevil and other titles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, passed away last Friday at the age of 75 while under hospice care, according to a post on his Facebook page.
The post says that McKenzie has been fighting “He’d been dealing with end-stage heart failure and kidney disease for the past several months,” the post reads. “He was certain that he still had some stories to tell in the time he had left, and struggled mightily to write one last script.”
McKenzie was born Nov. 8, 1950, and would begin his career in comics in the mid-1970s, writing horror stories for Warren Publishing’s Vampirella, Creepy and Eerie. He also worked for DC Comics, where he wrote stories for titles including House of Mystery, Weird Western Tales, where he co-created the character Cinnamon, and Weird War Tales, where he first teamed with artist Frank Miller.
In the late 1970s, McKenzie began working for Marvel, and took over Daredevil with issue #151 in 1978. Coming from a background in horror comics, he brought a darker sensibility to the Man Without Fear, turning the series toward psychological horror and increasingly grim stories. His run also introduced Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich, who eventually deduced Daredevil’s secret identity.
McKenzie was joined by Miller on the series with issue #158. Miller would eventually take over as writer as well, beginning the legendary run that transformed Daredevil into one of Marvel’s most acclaimed characters. But McKenzie’s contribution is sometimes overlooked in retrospect: his increasingly dark stories helped establish the tone that Miller would take even further.
But McKenzie’s Marvel work extended beyond Daredevil. He wrote Captain America, Ghost Rider, Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica adaptation, Marvel Fanfare, Marvel Team-Up and other series. With artist Don Perlin, he developed the idea of Captain America running for president, which Marvel initially rejected before it was eventually used by Roger Stern and John Byrne in Captain America #250.
“Marvel mourns Roger McKenzie’s passing,” the company said in a statement on social media. “A gifted writer, his work on Daredevil helped introduce the darker tone that defined the character for years. He’s had a lasting impact on Marvel’s storytelling, from Daredevil to Cap and beyond. Our condolences to his family and friends.”
McKenzie also spent a lot of his career working outside the major publishers. In the early 1980s, he wrote the comic strip Star Hawks and guest-wrote the Tarzan comic strip when Archie Goodwin wasn’t available. He wrote one of Comico’s early titles, Next Man, which lasted five issues, as well as three issues of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom for Gold Key.
He also co-founded and served as managing editor of independent publisher Pied Piper Comics during the company’s short tenure from 1986 to 1988. Pied Piper briefly published several titles that migrated from (and eventually to) other publishers, like the early Ron Lim-drawn comic Ex-Mutants. McKenzie co-wrote the first issue of Kamikaze Cat for Pied Piper, but a second issue was never published.
Near the end of the 1980s, McKenzie wrote the indie comic Sun Runners, teaming with artist Pat Broderick on the title. It was published by several publishers during its lifetime, including Pacific and Eclipse. He noted in the introduction for the first issue that he had been considering leaving comics altogether, and revealed he had left New York to return to Kentucky, where he was “scanning the help wanted ads with growing intensity.” The title moved from Pacific to Eclipse to Sirius Comics to Amazing Comics, for a total of about 10 issues.
Somewhere around 1987 or 1988, with Sun Runners over and Pied Piper shut down, McKenzie disappeared from the comics industry for several decades. “Roger and comic books parted ways in the late 1980s,” his friend and fellow creator Paul Kupperberg wrote in his remembrance of McKenzie. “I don’t know where he went or what he was up to during his absence, but then in 2014, there he was again. Facebook, that great reuniter of lost friends (not to mention high school acquaintances you find you don’t like any more now than you did in high school) brought us back into contact and Roger back into comic books.”
Around 2015, McKenzie returned to comics as executive editor of Charlton Neo, a revival of Charlton Comics using characters that hadn’t been bought by DC in the 1980s, alongside Mort Todd and Kupperberg. McKenzie had work in two of the company’s anthology titles, Charlton Arrow and Charlton Wild Frontier. The publisher lasted until 2018. He also wrote the Spookman weekly strip with artist Sandy Carruthers.
“The Internet reports the passing of another player at my old poker table, Roger McKenzie,” wrote Paul Levitz. “It’s been many decades since we sat across from each other, but I can still hear his distinctive laugh and warm drawl. Roger worked briefly on staff with me at DC, and wrote comics for pretty much any place that published them during his lifetime. Some of those early stories were for me back when I was a young editor. His collaborations with Frank Miller on Daredevil were a part of Frank’s journey to becoming the writer as well as artist on the series, and making it a groundbreaking triumph.
“Roger made the room in any room lighter, at least back in the day, and his Facebook posts showed that same warm wit until the end. Travel well into your next chapter, and thanks for the tales and the good moods. My sympathies to Tami and all who loved him or his work.”