Greg Rucka - Career

Career

Rucka's writing career began with the Atticus Kodiak series. Kodiak is a bodyguard whose jobs are rarely as uncomplicated as they at first appear. The series to date consists of: Keeper, Finder, Smoker, Shooting at Midnight, Critical Space, Patriot Acts, and Walking Dead. These works garnered Rucka much critical acclaim and comparisons to the elite writers of crime/suspense fiction. The "Atticus" novels are notable for their realism and attention to detail, which are partly a product of Rucka's fight training and experience as an EMT. He has also written three non-Atticus books: Fistful of Rain, A Gentleman's Game and Private Wars; the latter two are tie-ins to his comic book series Queen & Country.

In the 1990s, Rucka would hop onto the comic scene with his highly praised Whiteout, published through Oni Press. Whiteout focuses on a murder in an Antarctic base. It was followed by a sequel, Whiteout: Melt. Rucka would begin a pattern with this book: writing strong, independent female characters. Queen & Country, dealing with British spies, is his longest and most personal work (also published by Oni).

The majority of Rucka's work throughout the 2000s was for DC Comics, where he was involved with their main trinity of characters: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Rucka wrote on a regular basis for Batman following the events of No Man's Land. He also penned the novelization of the year-long arc. While writing Batman, he created a number of background characters that led to the co-creation of Gotham Central with fellow scribe Ed Brubaker. The police procedural was critically acclaimed but commercially underwhelming. During this time, from October 2003 to April 2006 he also wrote Wonder Woman after the success of The Hiketeia original graphic novel.

His run on both Wonder Woman and Gotham Central was ended due to the effects of Infinite Crisis, a company-wide crossover. Brubaker left DC for Marvel Comics and Rucka opted not to continue writing without him, while Wonder Woman started volume 3. During this time he did some work for Marvel, including the start of the third volume of Wolverine, Elektra and the mini-series Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra. He has also worked for Image Comics. The first volume of his series Queen and Country concluded in July 2007 with issue #32.

Although Rucka was not involved in the main storyline of Infinite Crisis, he did write The OMAC Project which built towards the event, focussing on Batman's distrust of other superheroes. This led to the revival of Checkmate, a UN authority that oversaw superheroes including Sasha Bordeaux, an integral character of The OMAC Project. He also was a co-writer on the weekly series 52, which he co-wrote with Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Mark Waid. This book chronicled in real-time the year following Infinite Crisis, and saw Rucka focus on Renee Montoya of Gotham Central and the creation of the new Batwoman, Kate Kane. Rucka returned to the Batwoman character frequently over the years in a 52 sequel: The Crime Bible and also Final Crisis: Revelations before by returning to Detective Comics with artist J.H. Williams III.

Rucka also wrote the screenplay for the "Crossfire" segment in the direct-to-DVD anime Batman: Gotham Knight, in which Crispus Allen, a character he created, also appears. In 2009, Rucka and artist Eddy Barrows took over Action Comics from Geoff Johns and Gary Frank as the title moved its focus from Superman to Kryptonian heroes Nightwing and Flamebird in the aftermath of the "New Krypton" story arc. As well as writing Action Comics, Rucka co-wrote the main New Krypton 12 part series with Superman writer James Robinson.

At Wondercon 2010 Rucka announced he would part ways with DC Comics to focus on his own projects. Rucka is now writing The Punisher for Marvel Comics.