Tom King has lived almost too many lives to count, and any one of them would be enough to make someone’s jaw drop at a dinner party. King interned at Marvel and with DC Comics’ edgier imprint, Vertigo, in the ’90s, shadowing the legends of the era. After that, he made a hard pivot into counterterrorism, working for the CIA in the shadow of 9/11. He’d return to the world of comics a decade later and hasn’t slowed down much since: This modern era has been largely defined by his pen, with heroes as big as Batman and Wonder Woman, or as obscure as Adam Strange, taking on surprising new lives on the page and off.
Still, that doesn’t mean the writer can’t get starstruck himself. When I meet King in the lobby of his hotel — tucked far enough away from the malaise of Comic-Con to feel almost like a different world — he wonders if we’ll run into any of the “beautiful people” here to promote their projects in panels and presentations. Never mind the fact that he’s technically one of those people now: He’s still stuck on the fact that his latest endeavor, Lanterns, has inspired a friendship with its star, Kyle Chandler.
