Garth Gersten sent me this…
Was reading an older interview (2007) with Denny O'Neil where he states, "And I thought, 'Well, I've had a really long run at doing this.' According to Mark Evanier, the longest regularly-working writer in the history of the medium. Maybe it's time to get off the stage and to pass the torch."
In context, I think that it is you saying O'Neil was the longest regularly working writer. But, you've been at it since 1969, and it seems like there has always been some Evanier written comic book being published even when you were writing TV shows. (So, maybe not "regularly working writer"?)
So (1) where do you think you rank on the hypothetical list of "longest regularly working writer?"? and (2) what do you think is the longest gap where there was no Evanier written comic book published?
I'm pretty sure Denny was saying that I said he was "the longest regularly-working writer in the history of the medium" and I'm pretty sure I didn't say that because I'm pretty sure it was never true, especially in 2007. In 2007, Stan Lee was still alive and I don't know if you'd call what he was writing steady but Del Connell and Vic Lockman were still with us and both of them were writing comics way before Denny was. So was Roy Thomas, who happily is still with us. I would think all those guys — and there are probably others — could be said to be as "steady" as Denny ever was. Others that come to mind would include George Gladir, Sid Jacobson and Bob Bolling. I think Steve Skeates may have been writing a bit before Denny, too.
I dunno where I fall on any longevity list but I started getting paid for writing comic books in 1970 and among those who were in before me and are still at it are Roy, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman and Cary Bates. There are probably a few others.
As for (2), well: Since about the middle of 1982, there's always been an issue of Groo the Wanderer (or some other project with Sergio) in the works. There are gaps of several months between the time one mini-series ends and the first issue of the next one hits the stores but I'm always working on one of those.
Before that, I was usually working on some comic book even when I was writing a TV show. During the time I was writing on Welcome Back, Kotter — and this is taking me back to 1976 — I think I only wrote one or two comics and they were issues of DC's short-lived Welcome Back, Kotter comic book. The day after I left that TV job — and literally, it was the very next day — I started writing the Hanna-Barbera comic books published by Marvel.
Almost instantly, I realized then how much I missed writing comic books so no matter how busy things got on later jobs, I always made time to write a couple of comic books but they may not have come out on a steady basis. Or come out in this country. Does anything I've written here answer your questions?