As part of his Marvel work, he co-created the character Gorr the God Butcher and introduced the concept of Jane Foster becoming Thor.
Early life
Jason Aaron was born in Jasper, Alabama.[2][3][4] His cousin, Gustav Hasford, who wrote the semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers (1979), on which the feature film Full Metal Jacket (1987) was based, was a large influence on Aaron. Aaron decided he wanted to write comics as a child, and though his father was skeptical when Aaron informed him of this aspiration, his mother took Aaron to drug stores, where he would purchase comic books from spinner racks, some of which he still owned as of 2012.[5]
Aaron's career in comics began in 2001 when he won a Marvel Comics talent search contest with an eight-page Wolverine story script.[7] The story, which was published in Wolverine #175 (June 2002), gave him the opportunity to pitch subsequent ideas to editors.[5] In 2006, Aaron made a blind submission to DC Comics's imprint Vertigo, which became his first major work, the Vietnam War story The Other Side.[5]The Other Side was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Miniseries,[8] and Aaron regards it as the "second time" he broke into the industry.[5][9] Following this, Vertigo asked him to pitch other ideas, which led to Scalped, a creator-owned series with artist R. M. Guéra set on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation.[5][9][10]
In 2007, Aaron wrote Ripclaw: Pilot Season for Top Cow Productions.[11] Later that year, Marvel editor Axel Alonso, who was impressed by The Other Side and Scalped, hired Aaron to write issues of Wolverine, Black Panther and eventually, an extended run on Ghost Rider that began in April 2008.[12] In January 2008, he signed an exclusive contract with Marvel, though it would not affect his work on Scalped.[12][13] In July of that year, he wrote the Penguin issue of Joker's Asylum.[14][15]
After a four-issue stint on Wolverine in 2007, Aaron returned to the character with the ongoing series Wolverine: Weapon X, launched to coincide with the feature film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Aaron commented, "With Wolverine: Weapon X we'll be trying to mix things up like that from arc to arc, so the first arc is a typical sort of black ops story but the second arc will jump right into the middle of a completely different genre."[16] In 2010, the series was relaunched once again as simply Wolverine.[17] He followed this with the relaunch of The Incredible Hulk in 2011[18] and Thor: God of Thunder in 2012.[19] Aaron and artist Mike Deodato collaborated on the Original Sin limited series in 2014.[20] In 2018, Aaron relaunched Thor with Mike del Mundo[21] and The Avengers with Ed McGuinness.[22] In addition to his work on Marvel characters, Aaron wrote a year-long run on the Conan the Barbarian series after Marvel regained the licensing rights to the character in 2019.[23]
In 2022, Aaron would write a new creator-owned book at Boom! Studios entitled Once Upon a Time at the End of the World. The 15 issue series began publication in November that same year with three artists, Alexandre Tefenkgi, Leila del Duca, and Nick Dragotta, being employed every 5 issues to highlight the passage of time.[27][28]
In March 2023, Aaron announced that he was no longer under exclusive contract with Marvel.[29] In August 2023, it was announced that Aaron would be writing a project for DC called Batman: Off-World, a six-issue limited series drawn by artist Doug Mahnke and inker Jamie Mendoza.[30] The series would focus on a young Batman's first adventure in space.[31] In October 2023, it was announced that Aaron's next DC project would be a three-issue story arc on Action Comics focusing on the character Bizarro to be drawn by artist John Timms.[32] The story arc is part of a new Action Comics initiative called "Superman Superstars" where rotating creative teams of writers and artists write short story arcs focusing on Superman and his villains.[33] Aaron's arc will start on Action Comics #1061 in January 2024 and end in March 2024 with Action Comics #1063.[34]
In June 2024, Marvel published a one-shot story, written by Aaron in collaboration with other artists, featuring for first time ever in a Marvel comic book Disney's Uncle Scrooge character. The story, named Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime, introduced Scrooge and the Duck Universe to the Marvel Multiverse concept.[35][36]
Commenting on the religious themes that run through his work, Aaron says he was raised Southern Baptist, but has since renounced religion:
I've been an atheist for many years, but I've remained fascinated by religion. If anything, I've become more fascinated by religion and faith after I lost mine."[38]
Wolverine by Jason Aaron Omnibus (collects #1–16, Wolverine vol. 3 issues, Wolverine: Manifest Destiny and all the one-shots and short stories, hc, 688 pages, 2011, ISBN0-7851-5639-9)
Wolverine by Jason Aaron: The Complete Collection Volume 4 (collects #10–20 and 300–304, tpb, 408 pages, 2014, ISBN0-7851-8909-2)
Wolverine Goes to Hell Omnibus (collects #1–20, 5.1, 300–304, Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine and the short story from Wolverine: Road to Hell, hc, 984 pages, 2018, ISBN1-302-91159-7)
Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron Omnibus (collects #1–35, 38–42 and Annual, hc, 936 pages, 2014, ISBN0-7851-9024-4)
Amazing X-Men vol. 2 #1–6 (with Ed McGuinness and Cameron Stewart (#6), 2014) collected as Amazing X-Men: The Quest for Nightcrawler (tpb, 136 pages, 2014, ISBN0-7851-8821-5)
The King of Killers Book One (collects #1–6, tpb, 208 pages, 2022, ISBN1-302-92877-5)
The King of Killers Book Two (collects #7–12, tpb, 192 pages, 2023, ISBN1-302-92878-3)
Deadpool vol. 2 #900: "Close Encounters of the @*#$ed-Up Kind" (with Chris Staggs, co-feature, 2009) collected in Deadpool: Dead Head Redemption (tpb, 240 pages, 2011, ISBN0-7851-5649-6)
Immortal Weapons #1: "The Book of the Cobra" (with Mico Suayan and various artists, 2009) collected in Immortal Iron Fist: The Complete Collection Volume 2 (tpb, 496 pages, 2014, ISBN0-7851-8890-8)
Avengers vs. X-Men #0 (Hope story, with Frank Cho) — #2 (with John Romita, Jr.) — #9 (with Adam Kubert) — #12 (with Adam Kubert, 2012) also collected in Avengers vs. X-Men (tpb, 384 pages, 2013, ISBN0-7851-6318-2)
AvX: VS (anthology) also collected in Avengers vs. X-Men: VS (tpb, 160 pages, 2013, ISBN0-7851-6520-7)
"The Invincible Iron Man vs. Magneto" (with Adam Kubert, in #1, 2012)
"Angel vs. Hawkeye" (with John Romita, Jr., in #5, 2012)
"Iron Fist vs. Iceman" (with Ramón K. Pérez, in #6, 2012)
Original Sin #1–8 (with Mike Deodato, Jr., 2014) collected as Original Sin (hc, 392 pages, 2014, ISBN0-7851-9069-4; tpb, 240 pages, 2015, ISBN0-7851-5491-4)
Vader Down (collects #13–14, Star Wars: Darth Vader #13–15 and the Star Wars: Vader Down one-shot, tpb, 152 pages, 2016, ISBN0-7851-9789-3)
All issues of the crossover — Star Wars vol. 4 #13–14, Star Wars: Darth Vader #13–15 and the Star Wars: Vader Down one-shot — are co-written by Aaron and Kieron Gillen.
Also collects the Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel one-shot (co-written by Aaron and Kieron Gillen, art by Marco Checchetto, 2017)
Omnibus (collects #1–37, Star Wars: Darth Vader #13–15, Star Wars: Vader Down and Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel, hc, 1,296 pages, 2019, ISBN1-302-91537-1)
Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo Omnibus (collects #1–20 and the Doctor Strange: Last Days of Magic one-shot, hc, 576 pages, 2022, ISBN1-302-93348-5)
War of the Realms #1–6 (with Russell Dauterman, 2019) also collected as War of the Realms (tpb, 192 pages, 2019, ISBN1-302-91469-3)
War of the Realms: War Scrolls #1–3: "The God without Fear" (with Andrea Sorrentino, anthology, 2019) also collected in War of the Realms: Spider-Man/Daredevil (tpb, 112 pages, 2019, ISBN1-302-91928-8)
War of the Realms: Omega: "God and the Devil Walk into a Church" (with Ron Garney, framing sequence in anthology one-shot, 2019)
Heroes Reborn #1–7 (with Ed McGuinness, Dale Keown + Carlos Magno (#2), Federico Vicentini (#3), James Stokoe (#4), R. M. Guera (#5), Erica D'Urso (#6) and Aaron Kuder (#7), 2021)
Heroes Return: "The Man Who Rebooted the World" (with Ed McGuinness, one-shot, 2021)
Miracleman #0: "The Man Whose Dreams Were Miracles" (with Leinil Francis Yu, co-feature, 2022)
Uncle Scrooge: "Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime" (June, 2024)
^ abAaron, Jason (September 8, 2010). "Where The Hell Am I". Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on October 1, 2013.
^Cowsill, Alan; Irvine, Alex; Manning, Matthew K.; McAvennie, Michael; Wallace, Daniel (2010). "2000s". In Dolan, Hannah (ed.). DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle. London, United Kingdom: Dorling Kindersley. p. 329. ISBN978-0-7566-6742-9. Writer Jason Aaron and artist R. M. Guéra mixed crime and Native American culture in Scalped...Scalped remains a brutal noir thriller that is not scared to reflect the grim reality of life for many modern-day Native Americans.
