Peter David, Eisner Award-Winning Hulk Writer, Dies at 68

Peter David, the influential and Eisner Award-winning writer of The Incredible Hulk who redefined the character over a 12-year run referred to as David’s “magnum opus,” has died at 68. David’s wife, Kathleen O’Shea David, confirmed the news on social media on Sunday. No cause of death was provided, but the legendary comic creator had suffered from “compounded health problems” in recent years, including kidney failure, a series of strokes, and a mild heart attack per David’s GoFundMe page that was launched in 2022 and reopened in 2025.

“Since it’s out there, Peter David passed away last night,” Kathleen wrote on Facebook. “We are devastated. More when I can write about it.”

Kathleen has posted a series of updates to the GoFundMe page, which has raised over $100,000 of its $150,000 goal from more than 2,500 contributors. The GoFundMe was restarted due to mounting medical debt and living expenses, with Kathleen writing in a March 13 update, “Your contributions will go towards the bills we have, and are, accruing. This gives Peter and me much piece of mind.”

According to the GoFundMe, David was recently dropped from Medicaid, which had been supporting his long-term disability care. David underwent fistula surgery on March 18 and again on May 12. On May 18, Kathleen reported that David had been admitted to the ICU with bilateral pneumonia and that he was in his worst state since the original GoFundMe launched in November 2022.

In a final update posted on May 20, Kathleen wrote that David was intubated and under light sedation due to an inability to cough or clear his throat.

Born September 23, 1956, David’s tenure at Marvel Comics began in the Direct Sales Department, where he served as Direct Sales Manager for five years before approaching then-Spider-Man editor Jim Owlsey (AKA future Black Panther scribe Christopher Priest) to pitch Spider-Man stories. David was assigned to Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, scripting the four-issue Death of Jean DeWolff arc that pit a black-suited Spider-Man and Daredevil against one of David’s earliest co-creations: Stan Carter, the Sin-Eater. He also co-created the Spider-Man villain the Foreigner, who would become a recurring foe during David’s run on Spectacular and make his live-action debut (played by Christopher Abbott) in 2024’s Kraven the Hunter movie.

Then-editor Bob Harras offered David to take over The Incredible Hulk from Al Milgrom at a time when “no one else wanted to write the book,” David wrote in his 2004 introduction included in Marvel’s Hulk Visionaries: Peter David Vol. 1. On taking over scripting duties in 1987’s The Incredible Hulk #328, David added, “There was no foresight. No intuition. Bob wasn’t playing a hunch that matching me with Marvel’s monster-in-residence would lead to anything remotely memorable.”

As Marvel’s Direct Sales Manager, David recalled being “something of an editorial pariah” when he was offered to write The Incredible Hulk after he was fired off Spectacular over pressures stemming from a schism between Marvel editorial and sales.

“Editors weren’t exactly falling over each other to throw work my way. On the other hand, writers and writer/editors weren’t exactly falling over each other to grab the writing reins of The Incredible Hulk,” David continued of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby-created book that was canceled after just six issues in 1963. (The Hulk went on to co-star Tales to Astonish with Giant-Man, and Hulk wouldn’t have his own solo title until the retitled Tales continued as The Incredible Hulk starting with issue #102 in 1968.)

The Hulk “was a Marvel mainstay, to be sure,” David wrote in Visionaries, “but the high-profile days of his TV show were long gone. Spider-books and mutant titles were where the glamour gigs were.”

David teamed with future superstar artist Todd McFarlane on 1987’s Incredible Hulk #331, where the Green Goliath came under attack from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Hulkbusters when he was physically separated from his alter-ego, Bruce Banner.

At the end of the issue, in order to stop a rampaging Rick Jones Hulk, Banner subjected himself to another gamma bombardment to transform into another Hulk retaining Banner’s intellect. But Banner unwittingly unleashed “the real Hulk”: the grey-skinned Hulk who had debuted in 1962’s Incredible Hulk #1 as an ill-tempered brute that overtook Banner’s body at nightfall. (Hulk was recolored green by his second issue.)

“Even I wasn’t interested,” David wrote of writing Incredible Hulk with the “Hulk smash” Hulk. “My strong suit was, and is, dialogue. Writing a lead character who couldn’t even wrap himself around personal pronouns didn’t seem to be in my wheelhouse.”

But with Banner and the Hulk molecularly-separated, and the craftier, more articulate Hulk in play, David wrote in Visionaries, “Bob then told me I could go in any direction I wanted. Focus on the Rick-Hulk. Transform Bruce back into green and monosyllabic… naturally, it was the sinister gray Hulk who was of the most interest to me.”

“It mystifies me to this day that some people claim my work on the Hulk was not in the spirit of the original creation, considering the ground zero of my run was with the original creation,” David continued. “I worked longer with the pure initial concept of the Hulk than anyone, even his creators, did. So why I occasionally get tagged for not being faithful to the Hulk’s roots is beyond me.”

Indeed, David’s character-defining run would go on to inspire the acclaimed Immortal Hulk run by Al Ewing and Joe Bennett, a psychological-horror that doesn’t exist without David’s exploration of the psyche of both Banner and the Hulk. “By the end of my first year on the book, I started seeing the long-term possibilities, perceived the potential for treating the Hulk as a multiple personality disorder from groundwork laid by a story written by either Bill Mantlo or Barry Windsor-Smith, depending upon which version you believe,” David wrote at the time. “I began laying subtle groundwork for a development that I simply referred to as ‘the merge story’” in 1991’s Incredible Hulk #377, a story that used the psychiatrist Dr. Leonard Samson to mediate a meeting of the minds between Banner, the Green Hulk, and the Gray Hulk (who would take the name Joe Fixit).

“The question was, how to approach him in some way that would seem both different and yet a natural outgrowth of what had gone before? Furthermore — how do we take a monstrous character and make him sympathetic?” David wrote in a 2012 entry posted to his blog. “The way it had been generally done before, the Hulk was misunderstood and tormented by the world. A curious dichotomy, really: The underdog is not generally ‘the strongest one there is.’ But that was how the Hulk had generally been made appealing all the previous years. I wanted to try something different, find some new hook for the character.”

David’s formal training was in writing, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University. “I eventually decided that being a reporter was not the type of work that I wanted to pursue,” David said in a 1998 interview for the Marvel fan magazine Marvel Vision. After publishing his fantasy book Knight Life, the novelist also became a comic book scribe.

David has published over 50 novels, including authoring and co-creating the Star Trek: New Frontier series and producing the Babylon 5 Centauri Prime novels and penning the 1996 novel The Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast.

Besides the Hulk, David has written such titles as DC’s Supergirl, Young Justice, and Aquaman, including the 1994 relaunch that gave the aquatic hero his harpoon hand. (In 2012, David described the seven-issue limited series The Atlantis Chronicles as the comic he’s “most proud of,” however: “The Incredible Hulk nonetheless remains my magnum opus.”)

He had a lengthy run on the X-Men spinoff series X-Factor, and co-created Miguel O’Hara, AKA Spider-Man 2099, with artist Rick Leonardi, scripting a 43-issue Spider-Man 2099 run in the ’90s. David also wrote the 1999 relaunch of Captain Marvel, a run featuring the Mar-Vell version of the character and the Hulk’s former sidekick and friend, Rick Jones, in the space-spanning cosmic superhero book.

“One might ask: When you’ve lived with a dark, frightening character for so long, doesn’t that begin to affect you? Well… yeah. Yeah, it does. In many ways, the Hulk has been almost autobiographical for me,” David wrote in 2012. “Problems, things on my mind, assorted concerns have all wound up being played out in the pages of Hulk. Naturally it’s always been to a heightened degree, but the principle remains the same.”

“When a character gets that much into your head, he becomes second nature to you. You get to know his moods, he gets to understand yours. You feel loyalty to him. Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve stayed on the book is dedication and concern. For all I know, if I left the book, a new writer might come in who would undo everything I’ve done over the past decades,” David continued. “I judge situations as he would judge them. He will say the things that I dare not say… or even think. And I try not to let my temper get the better of me. Because believe me… you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”