Album Notes

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, J. M. DeMatteis was a professional musician and rock music journalist (writing reviews and interviews for a variety of music publications, including Rolling Stone), before entering the comicbook field.  

One of the most versatile writers in the graphic story medium, DeMatteis has been applauded for his intense characterizations and psychological themes, winning acclaim for a wide variety of projects. The epic Kraven’s Last Hunt  (which About.com chose as one of the Top 10 Superhero Graphic Novels) is considered a high-water mark in the forty-five year history of Marvel’s Spider-Man, while DC’s award-winning Speeding Bullets effortlessly blended the Superman and Batman myths.  Collaborating with Keith Giffen, he produced DC’s hilarious Justice League, an acclaimed spoof of the super-hero genre that spawned spin-offs and imitations throughout the industry.  The 2004 mini-series I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League won the Eisner Award—the comic book equivalent of the Oscar—for DeMatteis, Giffen and artist Kevin Maguire.    

But DeMatteis’s greatest acclaim has come for sophisticated original graphic novels like Seekers Into The Mystery, Blood:  A Tale, The Last One, Mercy, the groundbreaking, critically-lauded  Moonshadow and the autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams, which the ALA picked as one of the Ten Best Graphic Novels and Booklist, in a starred review, called “As graphically distinguished and creatively novelistic a graphic novel as has ever been...a classic of the form.”

Also a singer and songwriter, DeMatteis returned to his musical roots in the late 1990’s with the release of the independent CD, “How Many Lifetimes?”—featuring a broad range of songs (from raw rock to gentle ballads, multi-track epics to raw rock) detailing the struggles and triumphs of the spiritual search. The CD was re-released in 2006.

Read more at:

www.jmdematteis.blogspot.com/