Peter B. Gillis, a retired comic book writer whose best-known work came in the 1980s for Marvel and First Comics, has died. He was 71 years old. Gillis’s career spanned five decades, beginning in 1978 and remaining extremely active throughout the 1980s. He worked sporadically after that, most recently on IDWs’ 2010 adaptation of The Last Unicorn. Even when he wasn’t working actively in the comics industry, Gillis made regular appearances at fan conventions, a key part of the comics culture and economy. In addition to a number of Marvel projects, Gillis worked at First, Comico, and DC during his career.
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Gillis is arguably best known for the First Comics title Shatter, which was the first mainstream American comic published using art that was done directly on a computer. Created by and Mike Saenz, Shatter is a dystopian sci-fi series written by Gillis and featuring art by Saenz created in MacPaint on a Macintosh Plus. During his time at First Comics, Gillis also did long runs writing Warp (1983-1985) and Starslayer (1984-1985).
At Marvel, Gillis similarly had a 20-issue run on Strange Tales, a Doctor Strange title, as well as a four-issue miniseries featuring the character. He wrote the bulk of Strikeforce: Morituri, a sci-fi series with artist Brent Anderson, which was published through Marvel but not a part of the Marvel Universe. He also wrote issues of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and a number of popular issues of Marvel’s What If…?, making him primarily a Marvel talent in the minds of many readers. It was the publisher who broke the news to the wider internet that Gillis had passed away.
You can see Marvel’s post below.
Marvel was announcing based on a post shared to social media by Gillis’s brother, Rob Gillis, who shared the following message to Facebook:
Expected but unexpected. Expired.
Many of you know my brother Peter has been struggling almost the the last two years with health issues. Getting better, getting much worse, getting much better, getting far worse. Yesterday he went from being “on the road back home” in the morning to a quick decline and passed away around 2am this morning in the presence of some close friends who drove to Albany to be with him.
There is more I could write and eventually will do so but right now that’s the way it is.
Our condolences go out to Gillis’s family, friends, colleagues, and fans.
