Jeph Loeb

Episode 144 | Aired January 3, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Jeph Loeb get his start writing comics?

Loeb came to comics backwards — he was already an established Hollywood screenwriter (Teen Wolf, Commando) when Warner Bros. commissioned him to write a Flash movie in the late 1980s. He couldn’t crack the story and quit the project, which led DC publisher Jenette Kahn to invite him to write comics instead. A meeting with DC executive Dick Giordano led to Challengers of the Unknown — the only book on the available list he’d heard of — and that’s where he first worked with Tim Sale.

How did Jeph Loeb approach writing differently for Tim Sale versus Jim Lee?

“I write for the artist. Who else would I write for?” Loeb tailors every script to the specific artist’s strengths. For Tim Sale, who lived in noir and heavy ink, he wrote scenes that rewarded shadow and detail. For Jim Lee, who brings stories alive in the pencil, he wrote for spectacle and scale. “I would not write the same Batman story for Ed McGuinness that I would write for Tim Sale, that I would write for Jim Lee. They’re the same character, but it’s almost like different actors are playing the part.”

Was Batman: The Long Halloween ever considered official DC continuity?

It’s complicated. DC’s Batman group initially refused to acknowledge it as canon because it ran in a separate title. Then Christopher Nolan publicly credited it as a primary influence on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and DC immediately reversed course. Loeb’s own view: he practices “continuity through omission.” As long as he doesn’t explicitly contradict something, it fits. “I take the book, wait for the hardcover, and I put it on my shelf. Long Halloween goes here, Dark Victory goes here. That’s my continuity.”

What message does Jeph Loeb have for fans about connecting with creators they admire?

Drawing on the losses of Tim Sale, Michael Turner, Carlos Pacheco, John Cassaday, and George Perez — and the death of his own son at age 17 — Loeb was direct: “If there’s something that you want to say to someone, say it. Because I will tell you, the feeling that you have when they’re gone and you didn’t is far worse than the fact that you never said it.” He urged fans to find creators at conventions and take a moment to say thank you.

Full Transcript

Kari Sanders [00:00:01]: I did my best. All right.

Jeph Loeb [00:00:05]: Hi, it’s Jeph Loeb, and you’re on Splash Pages. I’ve done things like Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman for All Seasons, and I’m currently writing the X-Men of Apocalypse with Simone Di Meo, Hush 2 with my friend Jim Lee. Who I think you’ve probably heard of. But today we’re going to talk about all kinds of things.

[Sponsor: Deadly Grounds Coffee — 00:02:43–00:04:03]

Drew Mollo [00:04:04]: Ah, hey everybody, sorry, after the new year I had a little too much fun and, I am just recovering still, so I’m sorry I can’t make the show tonight, but you know, Jeph Loeb, big fan, love your work.

Justin Cooper [00:04:19]: So yeah, Leo’s got it, and that’s hotter than Johnny Vitti’s wedding.

Jeph Loeb [00:04:27]: Uh, get out of here with that.

Kari Sanders [00:04:32]: Yes, unfortunately today we do not have Leo. However, happy 2026 everybody from Splash Pages! We are so excited. Happy Saturday. We are getting in early so that we can get you kicked off with an amazing guest. We have got ourselves booked until May. We have so many great guests coming for you to see, but today we’re going to focus on a great way to start off the year.

Jar Jar Jeremy [00:05:04]: Ditto everything you just said, Kari. Happy 2026, everybody. I’m really excited. Not to take up too much time, let’s dive in and talk to Justin and get on to Drew and bring on our guest.

Justin Cooper [00:05:20]: Yeah, I am excited to be here. I wore my Batman shirt. Normally I’m here to talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but today I am here to talk about Batman and Daredevil and Age of Apocalypse and Catwoman.

Drew Mollo [00:05:34]: Hey, everybody. Thank you again. Everybody said it. It’s a new year. And we started, we thought, off with one of the best. And he’s here. I had the absolute pleasure of getting to meet him at New York Comic-Con, where I 100% fanboyed, but not to the point where security was called. He is an absolute legend. There is no doubt in my mind that you’ve read one of his stories of some form or another. He said it in his intro: Long Halloween, Catwoman: When in Rome, Dark Victory, Haunted Knight, Superman for All Seasons, the Marvel Color Series — Hulk: Gray, Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, Captain America: White — all of that, plus so much more. Batman: Hush, the list goes on and on. So everybody, please, 2026, big spot, please welcome for the one, the only, native from Connecticut, coming to us from Pacific Standard Time, Jeph Loeb.

The Elliott S! Maggin Story

Drew Mollo [00:09:45]: So in college, you were already collecting comics since like the mid-’70s. But it was — Brandeis University, right?

Jeph Loeb [00:09:59]: I was actually not in college, I was in high school when that happened.

Drew Mollo [00:10:03]: Right, the Elliott S! Maggin story.

Jeph Loeb [00:10:06–00:16:13]: Yes, Maggin. What’s this? This is incredibly embarrassing, mostly to Elliott, but who I consider a mentor and a dear friend. So the idea is that I am maybe a teenager, right? And Elliott is maybe early, late teens, going to college. My stepfather is at the college, and someone says, do you know who Elliot Maggin is? I’m like, yes, of course. Would you like it if I invited him over for dinner right now? Secretly, the only reason why I really want to meet Elliot Maggin is because he knows Neal Adams. And all I want to do is ask him questions about Neal Adams.

By the end of dinner, he says to me, have you ever thought about writing a comic? I go, I’m a kid. Like, no. And then he told me — Elliot, for his thesis, wrote “What Can One Man Do,” which is probably one of the best Green Arrow stories ever, and it sort of set Green Arrow on that course that became Hard Traveling Heroes. And he tells me, you know, I wrote that without really knowing how to write a comic book. You should write it.

I wrote at the age of 13 or 14, I wrote this thing called — now, whatever Elliot’s story’s name was. Must There Be a Superman? And I think mine was called “Why Must There Be a Superman.” But it had the Guardians of the Galaxy and the general concept that the existence of Superman somehow kept humans from being all that they could be. And then I absolutely 100% took the end of Spider-Man #100 and made it the end of my comic.

Yeah, Elliot wrote me back. He said, listen, you can steal from movies, you can steal from plays, you can steal from novels. Do not ever, ever, ever steal from comics.

Years go by. All of a sudden “Must There Be a Superman” comes out. I wonder — I wonder if Elliot even remembers that I had sent him that script. Cut to I’m in LA, Elliot’s in LA, he calls me, we go out to lunch. Next door was a comic store called Forbidden Planet in Sherman Oaks. We go in there and he flips through the bins and he takes out that comic. He shows it to me and he goes, you know, I always thought this was like one of my best comics. And I thought he was teasing me. I thought he was putting me on. And so I said, yeah, well — I wondered why you ripped me off. Anyway, what are you talking about? And I then tell him the story. And I have, in my entire life, I have never seen anyone turn that ashen white.

We then go to lunch, and through lunch, he’s just like moving food around on the plate. He can’t eat, he can’t talk. And he goes, I just, I can’t believe I did that. Of course I remember your script. But I also remember I was in Julius Schwartz’s office and I was pitching him ideas. And then I just sort of went, and then I kind of had this idea about Superman and the Guardians and blah blah blah. And he loved it. And then I wrote it. And I was like, it’s fine, it’s great, like, you’re my mentor, I’m flattered. And he was like, no, it’s terrible, I have to do something about it.

Cut to Mark Waid asks him to write the foreword to the Kingdom Come hardcover. I get a copy of it, and if you go and read it, it’s like 4 pages long, 3 pages of which are an apology to me. It has nothing to do with Kingdom Come. He literally goes, I have to say something now about Jeff. And then he tells this story.

Teen Wolf, Commando, and the Flash Movie That Never Was

Jeph Loeb [00:16:45]: Yes. In fairness, I worked in it backwards. I started working in the movie business. I was very lucky — the first two things that I wrote were Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox, and Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes. 23 years old, thinking this is a snap. And I still go back in time and just smack myself in the head, because I spent the next 20 years — I wrote some other movies, but that’s kind of what I was doing for all that time. And then I got asked to write The Flash movie.

Guru Peters produced the Michael Keaton, Tim Burton Batman movies, right? I had a deal at Warner Brothers at the time. I got a phone call from Stan, who then put me on with John and Peter, and they had this idea which was that they wanted to do another character, and Warner Brothers would not let them do Superman. They wanted to make a Flash movie, The Fastest Man Alive. And so they bring me in and they say, so you kind of know something about comics? And I go, yeah, I kind of know something about comics. And they said, so the Flash? And I said, yeah, not my favorite character. I, you know, he runs fast. This is long before the Speed Force, long before all the things that Mark Waid, all the genius that Geoff Johns brought to the character.

Secretly, what the reason I got hired was because they wanted to make it with Michael J. Fox. So it was kind of a lighthearted, fun, but also serious kind of thing. And somehow Carmine Infantino drew of Michael J. Fox — a brown-haired kid, Carmine drew, starting in his clothing, changing, and then the ring coming out of his finger, and then he becomes the Flash. He runs off. It’s like maybe 18 inches long. And that was amazing.

And I went home and I spent the better part of 2 months trying to figure out this movie. And I did something I never did in the 20 years that I wrote movies. I quit. I went back and I said, I don’t get it. You guys didn’t pay me to write the rogues gallery. You paid me to write a story about the Flash. And I always start from who’s the guy. I’m much more interested in the character that’s inside the mask. And I just couldn’t figure out who Barry was. He was just a scientist who had lightning strike him. So yes, I’m an idiot, I admit it. So I quit.

But out of that, Jenette Kahn, who was then the publisher at DC, called me and said, look, if you’re not going to write a movie for us, would you write a comic book? And I was like, are you kidding me? This is like Santa showing up at the house on July and going, hey, I missed you. I have an American Express card and you can get anything you want.

So I then had a meeting with Dick Giordano. He said, so you want to write a comic? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, who do you want to write? And I said, I want to write Superman. And he said, yeah, we have people that write Superman. And then I said, well, what about Batman? He said no. And I said, okay, well, what about the Justice League? He said no. And I was like, okay, we’re going about this the wrong way. Why don’t you tell me what’s available? He said, well, I have a list. It’s in alphabetical order.

I swear to you, unfortunately Dick is not alive so we can’t ask him. He goes through Aquaman — no. Adam — no. Aardvark Man — no. Now when you get to the Bs, you have no idea how many Batman books there are, right? Family, Adventures, Batgirl, Batman, Batman in Detective — and I’m going to all of them and he’s going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. We get to the Cs and finally I go Challengers of the Unknown, which I’d been collecting comics since I was about 10 years old. I’d never heard of The Challengers, right? And there’s a long pause. Dick goes, well, we haven’t published it in about 10 years. Sure, you can do Challengers of the Unknown. We don’t have anybody interested in that. But I got to meet Tim Sale, so I win.

Challengers of the Unknown was the first thing I did, and I tortured poor Timmy, and why he ever asked to work with me again is one of life’s mysteries.

Tim Sale — Partnership, Process, and Loss

Drew Mollo [00:25:21]: I got to meet Tim a few times. I mean, not of course the extent that you knew him, but he was just — he was the nicest person.

Jeph Loeb [00:25:53]: Yeah, what I like to say about Timmy is, much like Superman, he taught us how to be the best that we could be. Like, all you had to do was just — and by the way, he, you know, he can get cranky. We all can. But for the most part, look, he was my hero and I adored him and he was my brother and my partner. And it’s really shitty that he had to leave us.

Justin Cooper [00:26:22]: I talked for like 15-20 minutes about just his design of Scarecrow for Dark Victory.

Jeph Loeb [00:26:33]: I’ll give you the shortcut version. There was in the 1950s a serial called The Scarecrow, which was just a ripoff of Zorro. And Tim loved that design, and he said, can we make the Scarecrow look like that? And Archie Goodwin, who’s my hero and was undeniably the best editor because he believed in the very best thing an editor could do — which is hire the best people you can and let them do their job — and Archie didn’t say a word. And so that’s how we always drew him.

I Write for the Artist

Jar Jar Jeremy [00:44:24]: Was his art — did his art ever change the direction of a story or anything like that?

Jeph Loeb [00:44:36]: There was a book that was written right at the beginning of my career, early ’90s. It’s called Comic Book Writers on Comic Book Writing. There’s interviews with 10 writers — Grant Morrison and Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore and me, schmuck. And I had done one comic. They asked this question: who do you write for? And I said, I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question. I mean, who do I write for? They said, no, we just want to know. And I said, well, I write for the artist. Who else would I write for? And he goes, interesting, nobody else answered the question that way. And I went, what? And they said, well, they usually answer they write for the fans. And I said, well, that’s a bullshit answer because you can’t write for the fans because you just can’t.

I would not tell the same Batman story for Ed McGuinness that I would write for Tim Sale, that I would write for Jim Lee. They’re the same character, but it’s almost like different actors are playing the part. And so I would not write the same movie for Michael J. Fox that I would write for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both are giant stars, both of which have a certain skill set, and you have to understand what that skill set is and how you would do it. So with Timmy, aside from the fact that he can draw anything, but Tim is a great lover of noir and a great love of a lot of ink. They used to call it inky dinky doo. And he would like send me pencils which a lot of people would look at and go, is this like a layout? And I would go, no, you don’t understand. When you work with Tim, it comes alive in the ink. When you work with Jim, it comes alive in the pencil.

What Richard Starkings and Tim and I were able to do — Tim believed that you could tell more about a person from what was on their desk than anything you could tell in the story. So if you go and flip through The Long Halloween and you look at Gordon’s desk, it’s amazing to me how much detail and thought that Tim put into that. He would think about the wallpaper. He would think about whether or not there were 3 chairs or 2 chairs. Like, that’s the stuff that made him so magical.

I would call artists I hadn’t worked with before, and I would go, I know I need your thoughts. I want you to go through the script, and if you have questions on any page or any panel, let’s talk about it, because I’ll change anything. I’m not married to anything. I just want to know that you get what’s in my head. And then when you bring it to life, it’ll be new.

The Long Halloween, Continuity, and Christopher Nolan

Kari Sanders [01:02:26–01:03:31]: This question is by Millie K — Was there ever any discussion on if The Long Halloween was meant to be canon at the time of publishing, or more of an Elseworld?

Jeph Loeb [01:03:31]: I got it. This is what happened, okay? Archie Goodwin was Archie Goodwin. What Archie Goodwin wanted to do, everyone at DC said, just get out of his way. So there was a book called Legends of the Dark Knight, which were stories that were told that — the way that Archie and I saw them — took place in between the pages of stories that you knew, right? So there were some things that you can’t deny. The stuff that created Bane was created in that book. So either it existed or it doesn’t exist. You got to get over yourself.

At the time, there was some political nonsense going on at DC. There was a time when there were little fiefdoms. The Superman group thought, well, if I tell a story in the Superman group, that means that’s true. But if they tell a Superman story in the Batman group, it’s not true. Like, they literally would have these conversations. So Long Halloween comes out, and the Bat people — I know exactly who they are — said, well, that story is not canon because it didn’t take place in Batman. It took place in something called Batman: The Long Halloween. That has its own universe.

I’m not being dismissive of anyone. I’m just telling a story. You can choose to put that in continuity somewhere. Or what I do is I take the book, wait for the hardcover, and I put it on my shelf. Long Halloween goes here, Dark Victory goes here, and When in Rome goes here, right? That’s my continuity. I don’t need to know what happened for 150 issues that Tom King wrote.

For years, people would go, it’s not continuity, don’t worry about it. I went, okay, fine. Then Christopher Nolan makes Batman Begins, right? Particularly Dark Knight. And everybody at DC goes, it’s continuity, it’s continuity. What are you kidding me? Like, how can it not be? It’s like one of the highest grossing films we’ve ever made.

And then on his own, without anybody — without me asking — Christopher Nolan, he did the foreword for The Long Halloween Absolute Edition, and he says, I couldn’t have done any of the Batman books without Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. And I’m like, this is Chris Nolan, like, you don’t have to say my name ever.

And Matt Reeves is a friend and somebody who I knew long before Batman. And when I watched The Batman, the Robert Pattinson version, like, there were whole scenes — they were like dialogue. There’s one thing to like homage me, it’s another thing to sort of adapt me.

Harrison Ford as Red Hulk

Jeph Loeb [00:37:49]: At the end of the day, Harrison Ford plays the Red Hulk. Like, that’s a mic drop moment in my life. It goes, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, right? And the Red Hulk. Like, come on. As both a film buff and a comic guy — do I wish it was a better movie and he was in it more and that it was more about fighting the Red Hulk for an hour? Yes. But, uh, I hope Avengers: Doomsday is the biggest movie ever. Marvel deserves a hit after all this time.

And if they don’t take 10 minutes out of that movie and have an alternative other world, multiverse, whatever you call it — Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man, show up and beat the hell out of Doctor Doom, or vice versa — I don’t see it, right? They’re missing a billion dollars. If you’re gonna do a multiverse story and you’re gonna bring all the original Avengers back, well, you sure as shit ought to bring Iron Man back.

Defending Batman H2SH

Jeph Loeb [00:58:12]: Yes, I’m aware, internet, there’s a lot of criticism out there. But I will also tell you — you’ve read 5 issues of a 12-part story, and all you’re doing is comparing it to something that we wrote and drew 25 years ago. This is a different story. I’m sorry, it’s not the same story. I know that’s what you really want. But just look at the beauty of what Jim is drawing. And look at the fact that he has a full-time job as the publisher of DC Comics. And he has 9 kids. And he’s the greatest dad in the world. So like, the fact that any of that is going on and we have 5 issues, most of the sets done, is astonishing to me.

When the story’s done, all those people a year ago were like ‘Well, what’s this? I got some Batman.’ All those people are gonna go, ‘Oh, oh, there was a plan. Oh, okay.’

I was proud because there was a list of worst stories of 2025, and we made the list, which I’m very proud of. But I was really proud of the fact that we were number 3, and number 2 was, why does Tom King still work? And I thought, okay, if you don’t think that Tom King can write and you think Hush 2 stinks, I’m proud to be on this list.

Rob Liefeld and The Last Halloween

Justin Cooper [00:42:13]: I’m just happy I got a Rob Liefeld cover of The Last Halloween.

Jeph Loeb [00:42:20]: So I have to tell you that asking Rob, you know, raised a few eyebrows over at DC because he hadn’t ever done Batman, right? And I will tell everybody, that cover sold out like that. And you gotta understand, there’s people like Arthur Adams and Klaus Janson, and Adam Hughes — like all those guys who all came on because they loved Timmy. And Rob did it because he loved Timmy. They just couldn’t really just imagine that Rob’s cover was going to be the highest-selling of the entire series. And that’s just the power of Rob.

Batman/Spirit with Darwyn Cooke

Drew Mollo [01:14:40]: One of the things that I particularly love that you did was, um, the Batman/Spirit crossover that you did with the late, great Darwyn Cooke.

Jeph Loeb [01:14:48]: Yeah, um, 100% credit to Darwyn. I was lucky to be along.

Darwyn called. He got as far as, do you want to? And I went, yes. He said, all I know is that I want them in the story. I said, okay. Here are the things that need to tell the story. I need to put in the fact that Dolan and Gordon both have daughters, right? And that they’re very similar characters but approach things differently. Spirit always had a kind of a goofiness in it that was fun. And Batman had, you know, there’s darkness in it. But really, at the end of the day, we had Selina and P’Gell, and I was like, come on, two of really the great ladies of comics. I came up with the idea — it’s a police commissioner’s ball, and they’re all going to show up at some hotel, and we’re going to do sort of a Marx Brothers movie where they’re all running around.

And then it came out and it was just this sort of wonderful thing because you could see the passion that Darwyn put in it. And then he kind of ruined it for me because he went out and told people that it was my script. And I was like, okay, that’s fine. But it works because you drew it, and you made it magical.

X-Men of Apocalypse and Simone Di Meo

Jeph Loeb [00:53:38]: I got to know Simone Di Meo first as a person, right? It’s always helpful. And then when I brought this X-Men of Apocalypse idea to Tom Brevoort. He said, well, who do you want to draw? And I said, well, I really want Joe Mad, but I don’t think he’s going to come back because he makes about a billion dollars doing video games. But maybe we can get him to do covers. And then I met Simone, and I started looking at his stuff, and I went, you know what, I haven’t worked with somebody I’ve never worked with in a long time.

And when you guys read the next story — no surprise, you’ve seen the cover — they go to the Savage Land. There’s two really big Savage Land stories. There’s one from X-Men 114 to 116 — that’s Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Sauron. Some of the most beautiful artwork in the world. Then there’s Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, X-Men 248 through 250. Zaladane. And this is actually Zaladane’s in both stories. All I can think is, okay, I got a great idea. Sabretooth versus Zabu. Nobody’s done that. That’s cool. Do that.

On Losing Collaborators — Tell Them Now

Jeph Loeb [01:19:08]: It is the one thing. Having lost Michael Turner and Carlos Pacheco and Tim Sale and George Perez and John Cassaday — my friends more than working with my friends. And they’re on my wall. And every time I look at it, you know, it is the very definition of bittersweet. You know, I loved working with them. And people say to me, what’s your favorite thing you ever wrote? I go, I don’t read comics that way. I read comics because it’s a memory of what the experience was like to work with that individual, right.

Every day we are here is a gift, right? And I’m now old enough that I know too many dead people. And I remember when I was 20 or 30 years old — that’s the arrogance of youth, is that you don’t ever think about death. Why would you, right? But 30-year-olds and 20-year-olds die. And I, you know, I lost my son when my son was 17. So that’s my reality.

So, I urge everyone who’s listening to this — if there’s something that you want to say to someone, say it. Because I will tell you, the feeling that you have when they’re gone and you didn’t is far worse than the fact that you never said it. And so find that person at a comic book convention and take that second to go, yeah, thank you for the joy you’ve given me.

I was so glad, I hadn’t seen John Cassaday in so long, and we happened to be at this little con. There was hardly anybody there. And I look at the guest list, it said John Cassaday. I was like, oh my God. And I found him. He was like off in a corner. And like, I expected the line to be around the block. And you know, it wasn’t. It was just John. And he was doing a sketch. And we sat for like an hour talking, laughing, giggling about stuff that we’d done together. And then he was gone. And like, there’s times when I remember that memory and I sort of think, was I talking to a ghost? Was he not really there?

Don’t have that as part of the chapters of your life. Take that moment to say, I could not do this without you, or it would not be as good without you. There’s a book which I stole the title for my cable story called Our Last Things, and the whole point of the book is that it’s important that you tell people how you feel about them, because tomorrow they could get hit by a bus. And it’s — you’re not doing it for them. If they’re gone and they never knew how you cared for them, you’re the one who’s going to feel it.

Hush as a Gateway Drug

Drew Mollo [01:25:14]: Your Hush and Ultimate Spider-Man by Bendis and Bagley were two of the books that brought me back into comics, that really made me a collector. And I’m just really grateful that I got to meet you and Bendis. I’m very grateful, and I got to tell them how much that meant, having those books to kind of get me in, because without those two, I wouldn’t be here.

Jeph Loeb [01:25:49]: I appreciate it. I will tell you that Jim and I did Hush as a gateway drug, and now you’re hooked. I can’t speak for Brian, but I’m glad it worked out. If you go to the movie theater when people come out of a Batman thing and ask them what’s their favorite Batman story, they’ll look at you like, what are you asking? 90% of those people will go, who — they still make comic books? I thought they made comic books like in the ’40s. And it’s true, we’re in a little niche business, very loyal people, all of whom are for whatever reason aging out of our business.

And I’m really glad that DC decided to make those Pocket Digests. I call them manga-sized. Because we now have quantitative evidence that a lot of young people are reading comics because they are shaped like manga comics. And they can put them in their backpack and read them on a train or wherever they want. And that’s super cool because anytime that another generation comes along, then we get to continue to tell stories. And that’s all I really care about.

Ep. 144 | Aired January 3, 2026 | Splash Pages Comic Book Club