Obituary

Roger McKenzie – RIP

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D. D. Degg Published: August 22, 2026 Updated: August 22, 2026 1 minute 0 comments

Comic book writer Roger McKenzie has passed away.

McKenzie’s death was announced on his Facebook page:

Early this morning, Peepster-in-Chief Roger McKenzie passed away peacefully in hospice care. He’d been dealing with end-stage heart failure and kidney disease for the past several months. He was certain that he still had some stories to tell in the time he had left, and struggled mightily to write one last script. He loved and valued all of his comic book colleagues, his friends, and the Peepsters who supported his work. He’ll be greatly missed by his wife Tami, chosen family member Catherine, and furry family members Timmy, MoJo, and Baby Girl.

McKenzie’s professional comic book career began in the mid-1970s with the Warren horror magazines. His big comic book claim was turning the Daredevil comic book into a darker version of what it had been. Halfway through his run he was joined by Frank Miller, who would take what McKenzie started and made it into a fan favorite.

McKenzie would eventually work for most of the major comic book publishers and a bunch of independents.

Fellow comic book writer Paul Kupperberg remembers his friend:

Oh, and he could write. We may have made fun of the other guy for his ethnicity or for being tall/short/fat/thin or the way he spoke, but all of us respected talent and I don’t recall a whole lot of derision about the other guy’s work. Roger wrote superheroes, horror, Westerns, and more for DC, Marvel, Warren, Gold Key, and likely other publishers in the course of a relatively short period, about a dozen years or so if memory serves me (and it doesn’t, so I Googled it), turning out some memorable runs on Captain America, Ghost Rider, and, of course, Daredevil, bringing the darker tone to that series that would later be credited to the artist who drew his stories…

John Freeman takes a fuller run through McKenzie’s work, as does The Beat.

Here we will note that McKenzie took over the scripting of the Star Hawks comic strip from Archie Goodwin in August of 1980 until it ceased the following year. During that time he also subbed for Goodwin on the Tarzan comic strip for one Sunday.

And then there was the weirdness that was The Knight Watchman webcomic.

Someone will have to explain that to me sometime.