| Robert Venditti | |
|---|---|
 Venditti at a signing forX-O Manowar vol. 3 #1 atMidtown Comics in Manhattan | |
| Born | Hollywood, Florida, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Area | Writer |
Notable works | The Surrogates The Homeland Directive Green Lantern The Flash X-O Manowar Justice League Hawkman |
| http://www.robertvenditti.com/ | |
Robert Venditti is an Americancomic book writer, known for his work on theTop Shelf Productions titleThe Surrogates, which was adapted to a major motion picture starringBruce Willis directed by Jonathan Mostow forDisney.,[1] and for theValiant Comics titleX-O Manowar. He is also known for his work onDC Comics titles such asThe Flash,Green Lantern,Justice League, andHawkman. He has also adapted thePercy Jackson & the Olympians andThe Heroes of Olympus book series byRick Riordan into graphic novels.
Robert Venditti was born and raised inHollywood, Florida, andPembroke Pines, Florida. Though he says he always wanted to be a prose writer, he rarely read comics as a child, but would peruse the comics at the barber shop.[2]
He later moved toGainesville to attend theUniversity of Florida where he received aB.A. inPolitical Science and English. After college he worked as a clerk at a law firm in southern Florida with aspirations to practice law, but found that work not to his liking. After subsequently worked pumping gas on a fuel truck, he moved to thePort St. John/Titusville area inBrevard County to which his parents had moved, where he attended theUniversity of Central Florida, working at aBorders Books store inWinter Park, while earning his M.A. inCreative Writing. In about 2000, while working at Borders, a coworker recommended comics books as reading material to him. Though the skeptical Venditti initially thought of comics as solely for children, his reading ofKurt Busiek'sAstro City impressed him enough to decide to change his career aspirations from prose to comics.[2]
In 2002 Venditti attended a convention and metChris Staros fromTop Shelf Productions, and was added to Staros' email list. That April, Staros subsequently sent out a mass email announcing that Top Shelf's distributor was going bankrupt, and asking recipients of the email to place orders to aid the distributor. Venditti contacted Staros to offer help, and ending up doing warehouse work for him. Venditti began working onThe Surrogates in July 2002, and after finishing the script that December, he gave it to Staros, who decided to publish it through Top Shelf, despite the fact that it was not typical of the material they usually published. The first issue of the five-issue miniseries was published in July 2005,[2] and the fifth in March 2006. The prequelSurrogates: Flesh & Bone, was released in September 2009,[3] the same month as the release of thefeature film adaptation of the first miniseries, starringBruce Willis.
In May 2012 Venditti began writing theX-O Manowar series forValiant Entertainment.[4] Venditti began his first work forDC Comics when he took over fromPaul Cornell onDemon Knights beginning with issue #16, and took overGreen Lantern andGreen Lantern Corps in June 2013.[5][6]
As of 2008, Venditti lives inAtlanta, Georgia.[2]
