John Ney Rieber

John Ney Rieber
NationalityAmerican
Area(s)Writer
Notable works
The Books of Magic
Captain America
G.I. Joe
Tomb Raider

John Ney Rieber is an American comic book writer.

Career

John Ney Rieber's first professional comics work was scripting over finished pages of his late friend and mentor Karl Edward Wagner's and artist Kent Williams' graphic novel Tell Me, Dark. Initially, Williams approached Wagner with five pages of art asking him to write a story about that. Wagner agreed and they signed a contract with DC Comics to release an 80-page hardcover graphic novel.[1]

At the beginning of the production, the book's initial editor, Karen Berger, took an extended maternity leave. The replacement editors accepted Wagner's script but as soon as Berger returned, she rejected the script and asked for re-writes; Williams also changed some narrative elements as he saw fit. A year passed, as the changes from all sides kept being made.[1] Around the same time, Rieber was working on Shadows Fall four-issue prestige mini-series for Disney Comics' failed Touchmark imprint.[2][3] He saw the struggles Wagner and Williams were going through, and offered to re-write the story using the finished pages.[4]

It's a long story and not at all very fun to talk about, but the upshot of it all was that I ended taking the art that Kent had already done and generated a completely different story around it. DC had been unhappy about what they had gotten from Karl and they had pretty much decided that if they couldn't get revisions they would not publish the book. It meant among other things that Kent would have wasted a year of his life and a lot of beautiful art, so I gave Kent my script and an option of showing it to Karen Berger, if he felt like that was something he wanted to do, and eventually it was something he wanted to do.

After Disney Comics' collapse, Art Young – Touchmark's supposed editor-in-chief – went back to DC and offered everyone he was developing projects with to continue working for DC's new Vertigo imprint.[2] Rieber and his collaborator John Van Fleet agreed, and Shadows Fall (reworked into six-issue non-"prestige" mini-series) was released from November 1994 to April 1995. Sometime between Tell Me, Dark and Shadows Fall Rieber was approached by Bergen to write an ongoing continuation of Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic mini-series; despite having every outline rejected by editorial and even once trying to quit the idea,[4] Rieber was still hired and wrote the book from issue 1 (May 1994) to 50 (July 1998), including various annuals, specials and spin-offs.

Rieber's next big project was a Captain America relaunch for the Marvel Knights imprint. The creative team (Rieber and artist John Cassaday) for the series was first announced in August, 2001.[5] Of the assignment, Rieber said he was hired "accidentally",[6] after then-MK editor Stuart Moore mentioned the book in a conversation, offered Rieber to write some samples, and liked them enough to give him the book (despite "looking for a heavy hitter <...> like Frank Miller or Greg Rucka";[6] in a 2013 interview, Rucka confirmed he wrote some samples for that launch, but was rejected in favor of Rieber.)[7]

Rieber was also supposed to write two Captain America miniseries – out-of-continuity Ice, which was announced in February 2002 by the artist Jae Lee and then integrated into the main series as the third arc,[8][9] and another one, unannounced, which was supposed to bridge the three-month gap between the previous volume and the MK one (the eventual bridging mini-series was written by Darko Macan who confirmed that it was Rieber who was going to be the original writer.)[8]

The series itself was plagued by delays and controversy from the very beginning. According to Macan (who was told so by outgoing Captain America editor Andrew Lis), Rieber had to back out of writing the bridging mini-series due to the 9/11 attacks – supposedly, to re-write whatever material he already had to reflect on the event.[8] The first arc, titled The New Deal (February to November 2002) had Captain America questioning the American government – a topic that had worldwide resonance in the press.[10][11] Rieber's original outline for the series was supposed to start with the second arc, The Extremists,[9] but he left the book halfway into the arc (three finished issues out of five).[12]

Probably the simplest way that I can describe what happened is that Joe Quesada has a very clear vision about what he wants Cap to be, and my Cap just wasn't quite what he was looking for. They liked a lot of my ideas, but some of the approaches that I had to storytelling and structuring things and the weighting of the character just wasn't meshing with his vision. In the end, I was doing lots and lots of rewriters of scripts, and it was slowing things down. We all reached a place where we realized that it might be better if someone else was doing the book. I guess that's the long way of saying that we had creative differences.

To finish both The Extremists and Ice (which by the time Rieber left had only one finished issue), Marvel hired Chuck Austen who was also rejected at the launch in favor of Rieber but still agreed to bring his plots to a close.[12]

Bibliography

DC Comics
  • Tell Me, Dark (with Kent Robert Williams, graphic novel, hc, 80 pages, 1992, ISBN 1-5638-9032-1; sc, 1992, ISBN 1-5638-9088-7)
    • The book is scripted by Rieber over pages of Williams' art, which were drawn for an earlier script written by Karl Edward Wagner.
    • For more information, see the Career section.
  • Vertigo:

Other publishers

References
  1. Sinor, Bradley. "EXCELLENCE DEMANDED, WHINERS PISS OFF: The Last Interview of Karl Edward Wagner". Karl Edward Wagner.
  2. Cronin, Brian (July 1, 2011). "Comic Book Legends Revealed #321". Comic Book Resources.
  3. Klein, Todd (September 12, 2008). "Logos That Never Were: TOUCHMARK". kleinletters.com.
  4. Andreasen, Henrik (December 1, 1995). "Interview with John Ney Rieber". Serie Journalen. Archived from the original on June 20, 2008.
  5. Weiland, Jonah (August 4, 2001). "Cassaday, Ney Rieber to take on Marvel Knights Captain America in 2002". Comic Book Resources.
  6. "Interview with John Ney Rieber". The Star-Spangled Site. Archived from the original on December 7, 2014.
  7. Bell, Josh (November 6, 2013). "Greg Rucka Brings "Lazarus" & "Veil" to Las Vegas". Comic Book Resources.
  8. Cronin, Brian (April 25, 2014). "Comic Book Legends Revealed #468". Comic Book Resources.
  9. Yarbrough, Beau (October 11, 2002). "Rieber and Hairsine Get 'Extreme' in 'Captain America': Exclusive Preview". Comic Book Resources.
  10. Medved, Michael (April 4, 2003). "Captain America, Traitor?". National Review. Archived from the original on 2014-12-05.
  11. von Törne, Lars (August 17, 2011). "Zur Hölle mit der Pistole". Der Tagesspiegel.
  12. Brady, Matt (December 19, 2002). "RIEBER OFF CAP, AUSTEN ON". Newsarama. Archived from the original on February 23, 2003.
  13. "NYCC 2018: Occult Historical Thriller "Unknown 9 Archives" Arrives this Spring". Dark Horse Comics. September 27, 2018. Archived from the original on December 21, 2018.
Preceded by
Darko Macan		 Captain America writer
2002–2003
(2003 with Chuck Austen)		 Succeeded by
Chuck Austen
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