John Ney Rieber

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John Ney Rieber is an American comic book writer.

John Ney Rieber 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 around 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, Ney 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 around the finished pages.^[4]

It's a long story and not at all very fun to talk about, but the upshut of it all was that I ended taking the art that Kent had already done and generated a completly 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 beautifull art, so I gave Kent my script and an option of showing it to Karen Berger, if he feelt 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] Ney 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.

Ney 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]

Ney 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 Ney 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 briding 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 Ney Rieber but still agreed to bring his plots to a close.^[12]

Titles published by various American publishers include:

• Tell Me, Dark (after Kent Robert Williams and Karl Edward Wagner, graphic novel, hc, 80 pages, DC Comics, 1992, ISBN 1-5638-9032-1; sc, ISBN 1-5638-9088-7)
• Ray Bradbury Comics #5: "Picasso Summer" (with John Van Fleet, anthology, Topps, 1993) collected in The Best of Ray Bradbury – The Graphic Novel: Volume 1 (tpb, 160 pages, iBooks, 2003, ISBN 0-7434-7476-7)

Titles published by Marvel include:

• Wolverine: Killing (with Kent Robert Williams, graphic novel, sc, 48 pages, 1993, ISBN 0-7851-0001-6)
• Captain America (Marvel Knights):
  • The New Deal (hc, 176 pages, 2003, ISBN 0-7851-0978-1; tpb, ISBN 0-7851-1101-8) collects:
    • "Enemy" (with John Cassaday, in #1-3, 2002)
    • "Warlords" (with John Cassaday, in #4-6, 2002)
  • The Extremists (tpb, 120 pages, 2003, ISBN 0-7851-1102-6) includes:
    • "Part 1: Barricade" (with Trevor Hairsine, in #7, 2003)
    • "Parts 2-3" (plot; script by Chuck Austen and art by Hairsine, in #8-9, 2003)
  • Ice (tpb, 128 pages, 2003, ISBN 0-7851-1103-4) includes:
    • "Part 1" (plot; script by Chuck Austen and art by Jae Lee, in #12, 2003)

Titles published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint include:

• The Books of Magic:
  • The Books of Faerie (tpb, 144 pages, 1998, 1-5638-9401-7) includes:
    • Arcana Annual: "Long Walks in Dancing Shoes" (with Peter Gross, 1994)
  • Hellblazer #56 (reprint): "The Lot" (with Gary Amaro, co-feature, 1994)
  • Bindings (tpb, 112 pages, 1995, ISBN 1-5638-9187-5) collects:
    • "Bindings" (with Gary Amaro, in #1-3, 1994)
    • "Epilogue" (with Gary Amaro and Peter Gross, in #4, 1994)
  • Summonings (tpb, 240 pages, 1996, ISBN 1-5638-9265-0) collects:
    • "The Hidden School" (with Peter Snejbjerg, in #5, 1994)
    • "Sacrifices" (with Peter Gross, in #6-8, 1994)
    • "The Artificial Heart" (with Gary Amaro, in #9-11, 1995)
    • "Small Glass Worlds" (with Gary Amaro, in #12-13, 1995)
  • Reckonings (tpb, 224 pages, 1997, ISBN 1-5638-9321-5) collects:
    • "What Fire Leaves Us" (with Gary Amaro, in #14, 1995)
    • "Playgrounds" (with Peter Snejbjerg and Peter Gross, in #15-19, 1995)
    • "Playgrounds: Epilogue" (with John Ridgway, in #20, 1996)
  • Transformations (tpb, 128 pages, 1998, ISBN 1-5638-9417-3) collects:
    • "Heavy Petting" (with Peter Gross, in #21, 1996)
    • "Needlepoint" (with Peter Gross, in #22, 1996)
    • "Red Rover, Red Rover." (with Peter Gross, in #23, 1996)
    • "And Sure in Language Strange She Said" (with Peter Gross, in #24, 1996)
    • "Used to Bes" (with Peter Gross, in #25, 1996)
  • Girl in the Box (tpb, 192 pages, 1999, 1-5638-9539-0) collects:
    • "Prologue" (with Peter Gross, in #26, 1996)
    • "Rites of Passage, Parts 1-6" (with Peter Gross and Peter Snejbjerg, in #27-32, 1996–1997)
  • The Burning Girl (tpb, 192 pages, 2000, 1-5638-9619-2) collects:
    • "Rites of Passage, Parts 7-12" (with Peter Snejbjerg, in #33-38, 1997)
    • "The Burning Girl" (with Peter Gross, in #39-41, 1997)
  • The Books of Faerie: Auberon's Tale (tpb, 128 pages, 1999, ISBN 1-5638-9502-1) includes:
    • "Dark as Day, My Lady, Bright as Night" (with Mark Buckingham, in Annual #1, 1997)
  • Hellblazer/The Books of Magic #1-2 (with Paul Jenkins and Paul Lee, 1997–1998)
  • Death After Death (tpb, 224 pages, 2001, ISBN 1-5638-9740-7) collects:
    • "The Bridge" (with Jill Thompson, in #42, 1997)
    • "King of This" (with Peter Gross, in #43, 1997)
    • "Slave of Heavens" (with Peter Gross, in #44-49, 1998)
    • "The Box" (with Peter Gross, in #50, 1998)
  • "Horn" (with Jamie Tolagson, in Annual #2, 1998)
  • "Thanks for Nothing" (with Steve Parkhouse, in Winter's Edge #1, 1998)
  • "The Kite" (with Peter Gross, short story in Annual #3, 1999)
• Shadows Fall #1-6 (with John Van Fleet, 1994–1995)
• Mythos: The Final Tour #1-3 (with various artists, 1996–1997)
• Weird War Tales #4: "Salvation" (with Danijel Žeželj, anthology, 1997)
• The Trenchcoat Brigade #1-4: "Misery" (with John Ridgway, 1999)
• The Books of Faerie: Molly's Story #1-4 (with Hermann Mejia and Ryan Kelly (#4), 1999)
• Strange Adventures #4: "Perfect Stranger" (with Danijel Žeželj, anthology, 2000)
• Sandman Mystery Theatre: Sleep of Reason #1-5 (with Eric Nguyen, 2007) collected as SMT: Sleep of Reason (tpb, 128 pages, 2007, ISBN 1-4012-1454-1)

Titles published by various American publishers include:

• Neil Gaiman's Wheel of Worlds #0: "Adam Cain" (with James Vance and Shea Pensa, anthology, Tekno Comix, 1995)
• Tomb Raider Compendium (tpb, 1280 pages, Top Cow, 2006, ISBN 1-5824-0637-5; hc, 2008, ISBN 1-5824-0803-3) includes:
  • "The Trap: Path of the Tiger" (with Randy Green, in #21-23, 2002)
  • "Medusa's Garden" (with Gerardo Sandoval, in #24, 2002)
  • "Endgame, Part 1" (with Michael Turner, in #25, 2002)
  • "Abyss" (with Randy Green and Scott Benefiel, in #26-28, 2003)
  • "Strange Flesh" (with Gerardo Sandoval and Tony Daniel, in #29-30, 2003)
  • "Conquista" (with Pop Mhan, in #31, 2003)
• Transformers/G.I. Joe #1-6 (with Jae Lee, Dreamwave, 2003) collected as Transformers/G.I. Joe: Tyrants Rise, Heroes are Born (tpb, 168 pages, 2004, ISBN 0-9733-8179-5)
• G.I. Joe Reloaded (with Joe Bennett, Javier Saltares, Eddy Barrows and Jason Millet, Devil's Due, 2004) collected as:
  • G.I. Joe Reborn (includes the Reborn one-shot, tpb, 96 pages, 2004, ISBN 1-9327-9602-9)
  • In the Name of Patriotism (collects #1-6, tpb, 144 pages, 2005, ISBN 1-9327-9623-1)
  • An Act of Treason (includes #7-9, tpb, 144 pages, 2005, ISBN 1-9327-9622-3)
• Image:
  • 24Seven (anthology graphic novel):
    • Volume 1: "The Pit" (with Chris Brunner, tpb, 224 pages, 2006, ISBN 1-58240-636-7)
    • Volume 2: "Cane" (with Ben Templesmith, tpb, 240 pages, 2007, ISBN 1-5824-0846-7)
  • Comic Book Tattoo: "Winter" (with Ryan Kelly, anthology graphic novel, hc, 480 pages, 2008, ISBN 1-58240-965-X; tpb, ISBN 1-5824-0964-1)
• Army of Two: Dirty Money (with Brandon McKinney, graphic novel, sc, 112 pages, Prima Games, 2008, ISBN 0-7615-5744-X)

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