Jim Salicrup
Jim Salicrup was born and raised in the Bronx and dreamed of one day moving to Manhattan to live and to work at Marvel Comics. In 1972, at the age of 15, his dream was realized. Salicrup was hired to messenger pages of art from the Marvel offices to the Comics Code Authority. While attending Manhattan’s High School of Art and Design, he took on more Bullpen responsibilities, including helping package black-and-white reprints for the expanding UK market. Eventually he worked his way up to editor, with titles such as Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s The Uncanny X-Men, Byrne’s Fantastic Four, and long runs on Captain America and The Avengers under his purview. While overseeing the Spider-Man titles, he edited “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” the wedding of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, and recruited Todd McFarlane to draw The Amazing Spider-Man and, later, the artist’s own Spider-Man title. Salicrup also edited the insider newsmagazine Marvel Age for eight years, and scripted titles in Marvel’s Star Comics line, including Visionaries and The Inhumanoids. In 1992, after 20 years at Marvel, he left to serve as editor-in-chief at Topps Comics, where he launched Jack Kirby’s last major project in comics, the Kirbyverse. In the late ’90s, he worked for Stan Lee as a writer/editor at his Stan Lee Media startup. Salicrup, and his publishing partner Terry Nantier, launched Papercutz in 2005, publishing graphic novels and comicbooks such as the Smurfs, The Loud House, Asterix, and many more.