Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Eisner Award winner J. M. DeMatteis was a professional musician and rock music journalist before entering the comic book field. Although he's written almost all of the major DC and Marvel icons -- including critically-lauded runs on Justice League International and Spider-Man (the epic "Kraven's Last Hunt" was voted the number one story in Spider-Man's fifty year history by Comic Book Resources), DeMatteis's greatest acclaim has come for sophisticated original graphic novels like Seekers Into The Mystery, Blood: A Tale, The Last One, and Mercy. The autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams was picked by the ALA as one of the Ten Best Graphic Novels and Booklist, in a starred review, called it "as graphically distinguished and creatively novelistic a graphic novel as has ever been...a classic of the form." The groundbreaking Moonshadow was chosen (along with Brooklyn Dreams, Blood and other DeMatteis works) for inclusion in Gene Kanenberg, Jr's 2008 book 500 Essential Graphic Novels -- where it was hailed as one of the finest fantasy graphic novels ever created.
His success in the comic book medium has led DeMatteis to work in both television (writing live action and animation) and movies (creating screenplays for Fox, Disney Feature Animation, directors Carlo Carlei and Chris Columbus and producer Dean Devlin, among others).
More recently DeMatteis has had great success with the children's fantasy series Abadazad (hailed by Entertainment Weekly as ..".one of those very rare fantasy works that can enchant preteen kids and 40-year old fanboys..."), The Life and Times of Savior 28 (called "one of the finest super hero stories of the decade" by Newsarama) and the novel Imaginalis (which Publishers Weekly praised as "a sure-footed fantasy" with a "hopeful message about the power of reading and belief.")
Current projects include the all-ages fantasies The Adventures of Augusta Wind and The Edward Gloom Mysteries; writing for Cartoon Network's Teen Titans Go; his ongoing Imagination 101 workshops, which explore the practicalities and metaphysics of writing for comics, graphic novels and animation; and Creation Point, a story consultation service that offers in-depth guidance for both the professional and aspiring writer.
DeMatteis and his family live in upstate New York. His blogs can be found at www.jmdematteis.com.
