Barry Reese
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Barry Reese (born November 11, 1972) is an American writer. He is best known for his work on The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe for Marvel Comics, Lucifer's Cage for 86th Floor Productions and D6 Space: Fires of Amatsumara Worldbook for West End Games.
Reese was born in Milledgeville, Georgia.
[edit] Career
Active in fandom before he broke into professional comics at Marvel Comics in 2003, Reese was one of the pioneers in the field of Internet-based Fan Fiction. Reese founded the MV1talk mailing list in April 1998, the first known mailing list devoted to fans of a shared continuity fan fiction group. Reese was a part of a number of influential comic-based fan fic groups including Marvel Volume One, Avengers 2000, Marvel-X and Marvel 2000.
In 2003 Reese began work for Marvel Comics on volume five of their Marvel Encyclopedia series. Reese was responsible for handling the Blade and Ghost Rider (comics) sections of the book. It was this book that first confirmed that the comic book version of Blade was named Eric Brooks and that the Dan Ketch version of Ghost Rider was still active. This latter revelation was coupled with the book's theories about the reasons behind John Blaze's return as Ghost Rider and were considered fairly controversial at the time.
Following this, Reese worked on both the ongoing The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series and on D6 Space: Fires of Amatsumara Worldbook for West End Games. Amongst the issues of the Handbook that Reese worked on were Marvel Legacy: 1960s, Marvel Legacy: 1970s, Spider-Man 2006, Teams 2006, A-Z volumes 1-7 and Horror 2006. Reese also contributed to the New Avengers: Most Wanted and Marvel Monsters: From the Files of Ulysses Bloodstone books.
Reese's first novel Conquerors of Shadow: The Adventures of Eobard Grace was published in 2005, featuring a setting and character inspired by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This work was followed by Lucifer's Cage and a sequel entitled Kingdom of Blood. These last two novels feature the adventures of a 1930s era masked vigilante dubbed the Rook and were inspired by the pulp magazine heroes of the past. There are elements that relate back to the Conquerors of Shadow novel, forming a shared universe. Covers for the series are by artist Cari Reese.
Reese was the primary writer on The Long Winter, a canceled role-playing game project from West End Games and also contributed to USER'S Most Wanted, an as-yet-unpublished book for the Godsend Agenda game belonging to Khepera Publishing.
A collection of short stories featuring the Rook character is scheduled for publication in April 2007. Reese is also editing a pulp-themed anthology with the working title of Thrilling Adventures, for which he is contributing the story story entitled The Great Work and a Rook short story. He has also signed on to write for the publisher Airship 27, which prints anthologies and novels based around public domain pulp characters. Reese is expected to contribute to future publications featuring Ki-Gor, the Moon Man, Professor Challenger and Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery.
