The beloved writer was born 75 years ago, on Nov. 9, 1951… — UPDATED 11/9/26: Comics writer Bill Mantlo was born 75 years ago. Perfect time to reprint this piece from his birthday in 2023. Right on. — Dan — By CHRIS RYALL I’ve been re-reading a lot of Bill Mantlo comics of late. In part, because I often revisit his stuff. Bill always told fun, accessible, and consistently interesting stories in the superhero comics he wrote. But he also had a great handle on bringing in science-fiction elements that further enhanced and informed his comics. After Marvel’s very welcome announcement earlier this year that, decades after both series last saw print, my beloved Rom, Spaceknight and also Micronauts – both brought to comics and written by Bill – were finally going to be collected in deluxe omnibus formats. (Marvel asked me to write introductions for each volume.) So I had an excuse to re-read both series, not that I ever needed one. I used this research to also put together 13 FAR OUT ROM COVERS for 13th Dimension back in May, and in my Micro-Omnibus piece, I mused about all the great Michael Golden covers (far more than 13!) that the artist created for the Micronauts series. My original intent today, seeing how Nov. 9 is Bill Mantlo’s 72nd birthday (he was born in 1951), was to offer up 13 good examples of covers from each series. But not only does that run the risk of being repetitive, it also doesn’t provide a proper look at so many of the other great series Bill has written. And so, instead, here are 13 GREAT BILL MANTLO STORIES — along with their covers. (All are from Marvel): — 0. Tales to Astonish #90. OK, I know I tend to bend the “13” rule as much as I can when I do these tributes but there’re just so many good comics to show. This one doesn’t necessarily count as one of the 13, especially since I’ve never read the comic itself, but also because it’s not a comic that Bill wrote. However, it is the right starting place since this issue’s letters page features a letter from fan, not-yet-pro, Bill Mantlo. And it’s fitting that Bill’s letter focused on the Hulk story since he went on to write so many great...