Ender Companion author Jake Black has eye for detail
WORD BALLOONS
With a degree in history and an eye for detail, Utah writer Jake Black is often a go-to resource for comics or books requiring a heavy degree of research.
He’s the author of “The Authorized Ender Companion,” which shares the histories of the thousands of
characters in the universe of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game.” He also writes character biographies for dozens of super-characters in magazines published by Eaglemoss and recently co-wrote a backup story in “Supergirl” No. 50, with Helen Slater, the star of the 1980s “Supergirl” movie.
He got started on the “Ender” companion after working with Card on a Marvel Comics adaptation of one of Card’s novels.
“He was really pleased with the result and asked me if I wanted to write the ‘Ender’s’ encyclopedia,” Black said in a recent interview. “He said that he needed it for his own reference, and he wanted someone with a background in research to handle that project, tackle it for him.”
Black, who has a degree in history from Brigham Young University, pored through the books multiple times to ferret out the information, now cleanly put together in encyclopedia format. It’s a similar process whether writing a major project such as the encyclopedia or an Eaglemoss magazine focusing on one character, he said.
“My degree is in history, so I just treat it all like I’m doing a paper about George Washington, but instead it’s a paper about Dick Grayson (the original Robin) or Ender,” Black said.
Black’s “Supergirl” story got started after Tulsa-born writer Sterling Gates, who pens the “Supergirl” series,
sought Slater to write an introduction to a collection of stories. Black and Slater previously pitched a “Supergirl” story to DC, and for the 50th issue of the new series, the pair again worked together on a backup story for the anniversary celebration. The Supergirl character originally appeared in 1959.
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