Via PulpFest, writer, journalist, and pulp fiction historian Will Murray died on Monday, August 24, aged 73. His death was announced by Matt Moring of Steeger Books, in the Facebook group Old Pulp, on Friday. Murray wrote novels, short stories, and comics, including the first appearance of Squirrel Girl/Doreen Green (created with Steve Ditko) in 1991’s Marvel Super-Heroes #8.
Murray’s comics bibliography was fairly scant, although he wrote for multiple prose anthologies featuring characters like Batman, and provided introductions to books like the Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus. He was also best-known for ghostwriting The Destroyer novels, starring Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir‘s creation Remo Williams, from 1988 to 1997.
A Boston native, William Patrick Murray was born on April 28, 1953, and attended the University of Massachusetts. Initially a fanzine writer and editor, he joined a publisher specializing in reprinting pulp novels, and became the literary executor for the estate of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent in 1979. His output included multiple books starring Doc Savage (under the estate’s pen name Kenneth Robeson), Tarzan, the Spider, Sherlock Holmes, and the Cthulhu Mythos.
His gig writing The Destroyer novels led him to Marvel, where he penned tie-in comics for the publisher. In a 2019 Smash Pages interview, Murray said Squirrel Girl was “a combination of Mary Martin as Peter Pan, my crazy imagination and an old girlfriend whose name was Doreen,” who “was into animal rescues,” including those for squirrels. He wanted her to wear green like Peter Pan and Robin Hood, but Ditko took her costume design in another direction.
Murray hoped to write more Squirrel Girl stories after her first appearance, but “I never got to execute [them] because Marvel decided at that time she was just not a good fit for the Marvel Universe.” He had darker plans for her, explaining she has “the speech patterns and emotional reactions of a 7 or 8-year-old. You could rationalize this as Doreen having essentially the mind of a squirrel – or you could wonder if she doesn’t have some type of emotional or developmental disability. She’s an upbeat character in the same way Peter Pan is. But why won’t she grow up? Is it her rodent nature? Childhood trauma? Even an upbeat character can have downbeat aspects.”
The character ultimately didn’t reappear until 2005’s Great Lakes Avengers series, and Murray did not write her again until he contributed a story to 2019’s Marvel Comics #1001. Other works for Marvel included the prose novel Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre (2000), illustrated by Jim Steranko; and the anthologies Untold Tales of Spider-Man (1997), and Ultimate Hulk (1998). His DC contributions consisted of five short stories for The Further Adventures anthologies, respectively found in The Joker (1990), Batman Volume 2 (1992) & Volume 3, Superman, and Wonder Woman (all 1993).
Murray was honored during his lifetime with several awards, including a First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, for contributions to the science fiction genre, in 2023. No information on any survivors was available at the time of writing, although his family will announce details on services at a later date. Mark Evanier paid tribute to him on his blog, calling him a “versatile” writer and “a great historian of comics,” while revealing he will be credited in an upcoming book about Jack Kirby “for unlocking some secrets” about the legendary cartoonist.
You can learn more about Murray from an hour-long interview with him recorded early last year:
