- Comic book writer Tom King became a CIA counterterrorism officer after 9/11.
- He used his knowledge of comics to go undercover as a comic book writer while traveling.
- Now, he’s balancing writing comics with working on the “Lanterns” TV series for HBO.
To say that Tom King has had a varied career is an understatement.
As a little boy growing up in Los Angeles, King wanted to be a comic book writer. After honing his writing skills as a young man, his dream came true when he interned for Marvel in New York.
But the bubble burst when Robert Harras, the editor in chief of Marvel at the time, told him that “comics are dead” and he should find a real job. So, he studied philosophy and history at Columbia University, and worked at the Department of Justice for over a year after he graduated in 2000.
Then, 9/11 happened. King told Business Insider he felt a call to action, which led to another career move: joining the CIA.
Growing up, King’s grandmother would tell him stories of how his grandfather volunteered to help the US after Pearl Harbor.
“That just got under my skin. So I did like a million other people did. And I just tried to find some way to get into the fight,” he said.
King thought he would have a desk job because he “was good with information.” But after a year of psychological testing, in 2002 he became a counterterrorism officer, working for seven years in countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Things came full circle when he was given a cover for when he traveled abroad. He dismissed his boss’ suggestion and instead told border security interrogators that he was a comic book writer.
He said: “I thought it was such bullshit. ‘Tom, you’re a pretend chemistry businessman.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know shit about the chemistry business!’ So I threw that away and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m a comic writer.’
“If I ever got interrogated, they’d be like, ‘Let me talk to you about comics.’ I’d be like, ‘Let’s go!'”
After the birth of his first son, King left the CIA — partly because he didn’t want to give him “a fatherless life” — and returned to his first passion: comics. Pretending to be a comic writer in the CIA meant he was already in the right mindset.
In 2013, he wrote for the Vertigo imprint, before his first work at DC Comics, “Nightwing” — about Batman’s former sidekick — was published in 2014. Since rejoining the industry, he has earned many accolades, including winning the best writer Eisner Award, considered the Oscars of comic books, in 2018 and 2019 for “Batman,” “Mister Miracle,” and “Swamp Thing.”
“I love writing. I really liked the CIA, I very much enjoyed the work. But I thought ‘I like this even more.’ This feels so natural to me,” he said.
To King’s surprise he was able to draw on his skills as a writer when trying to recruit suspected terrorists to spy for him.
“The most important thing about being a CIA officer is not the gunplay and all that stuff — the most important part is empathy. I was what they call a case officer, which means you’re trying to get people to spy on other people,” he said.
“I had to find what was in common with them, and I had to get inside their head and immediately understand what they wanted, how to make their lives better, what their motivations were.”
Similarly, writing is about inspiring empathy for characters, he said. His work at DC usually involves deconstructing a beloved character and presenting them from an unconventional angle.
His latest series, “Black Canary: Best of the Best” is a story about motherhood through the lens of an MMA fight between the titular hero and the DC Universe’s strongest fighter, Lady Shiva.
King said: “It’s a story about not giving up. It’s a story about an underdog who should lose, who everyone predicts should lose, and how they’re beaten to the ground and beaten just to the edge of everything until nothing’s left of them but their soul, and how they have to cling to that and get back up from the mat and keep fighting.”
Writing a story about a hero fighting a villain is harder than fans might think. At its heart, King said, it’s “about a mother and a daughter and about the greatest theme in all of DC lore, which is legacy.”
He added: “The idea of what your parents give to you, what you take from them, how they shape you, how you rebel against them.”
King said that his father was “out of the picture” from a young age, and he gives the impression that using his dream job to provide for his family is his way of rebelling against his upbringing.
“I’m working with the characters I had in my head as a kid, but I always see it every day as a job I need to do,” he said. “I have a responsibility both to my family to sort of get my work done, and to my audience to make it as good as I can and to myself to create art I’m proud of.”
It’s this balancing act that has shaped his approach to writing for HBO’s upcoming “Lanterns” series, which is expected to arrive in 2026, alongside co-creators Damon Lindelof and Chris Mundy.
It follows Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), two members of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps, as they tackle a dark, Earth-based mystery.
King said that he felt “responsibility” to the comic characters that the fans have been reading for over 60 years: “I was friends with Neal Adams, the co-creator of John Stewart, and every time I was in the room, I felt Neal yelling at me: ‘Don’t forget where you come from kid.’
And although the series features cosmic characters, it aims to engage with the audience on a real-world level.
He said: “Damon, Chris, and I came with a lot of love for the material and we wanted to do what I’ve always done in comics, which is take these original creations and show why they’re still relevant today, and why they can speak to both the audience and the issues of everything we’re dealing with.”
He added: “It feels like a DC renaissance. We’re at the beginning of creating an entirely brilliant world.”
The next turn in his rollercoaster ride of a career? Movies: King is a member of the team developing the “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” movie based on his comic series of the same name.
He ends our call on a characteristically ambitious note: “I have to go pitch a movie in 15 minutes!”
