Every day this month I will share with you the first (at least as far as I know) U.S. professional work by a notable comic book creator. Here is an archive of the creators who have been featured so far.

Today's featured creator is Mark Waid!

Enjoy!

After working as an editor for DC for a few years (and writing for DC's !mpact line), Mark Waid quickly made a name for himself as one of the top writers in the business with his acclaimed run on Flash. He followed that with a number of notable projects, like Captain America, Kingdom Come, JLA, Superman: Birthright, Ruse, Fantastic Four, 52, Legion of Super-Heroes, Amazing Spider-Man and his current Eisner-nominated work on Irredeemable and Incorruptible.

His first U.S. professional comic work came before he even got hired at DC as an editor (back when Waid was editing Amazing Heroes for Fantagraphics). October 1985's Action Comics #572 had three short stories in it. Waid wrote the last of the three. It's a mystery story - can YOU solve the mystery?

A few month's later, in February 1986's Action Comics #576, Waid had another short story appear, which, again, was a mystery story (of sorts)...

Can you guess what Superman is trying to tell Jimmy?

His next story wasn't until 1988's Detective Comics Annual that he co-wrote with Brian Augustyn (it was quite good). A couple of stories here and there (an Action Comics Weekly story and lots and lots of character profiles for DC's latest Who's Who and, notably, in terms of being an omen, work for a Flash Anniversary Special) and he began his work on !mpact, which pretty much was the start of Mark Waid...freelancer!