Tony Isabella

Isabella later said the assistant editor referenced was Jim Shooter. In 2020, Shooter said he had been concerned that this "basically established the Marvel universe is a Christian universe" and could alienate some portion of the readership by suggesting "that all other religions are false." He said after consulting with editor Marv Wolfman, he made the changes.

Isabella wrote the Comics Buyer's Guide column "Tony's Tips" for over a decade. The last column was June 22, 2010. Starting in 2013, he continued "Tony's Tips" online at Tales of Wonder. He also regularly writes about comics and his work on his personal blog.

Isabella is the co-author with his fellow Comics Buyer's Guide columnist Bob Ingersoll of the short story "If Wishes Were Horses..." which was published in The Ultimate Super-Villains: New Stories Featuring Marvel's Deadliest Villains (1996), and the novels Captain America: Liberty's Torch (1998) and Star Trek: The Case Of The Colonist's Corpse (2003). In 2009, his non-fiction book 1000 Comics You Must Read was published by Krause Publications.

In 1990, Isabella returned to the characters and wrote the series for Innovation Comics, with Gustovich pencilling once more.

Isabella's wife is named Barbara; they have two children, son Eddie (born c. 1989) and daughter Kelly (born c. 1992).

In 1987, Isabella began writing the Justice Machine series for Comico, co-plotting with series creator and penciller Mike Gustovich. The new series picked up from the end of the Bill Willingham/Gustovich written limited series Justice Machine featuring the Elementals, which re-booted the series' continuity from the older Noble Comics/Texas Comics-published original series. The ongoing book became one of Comico's best-selling series, selling upwards of 70,000 copies of each issue at its peak. Isabella wrote the first 11 issues of the Comico series before moving on to other projects.

Isabella and artist Richard Howell produced the Shadow War of Hawkman mini-series in 1985, involving the characters of Hawkman and Hawkwoman. An ongoing series was launched the following year.

During the 1980s, Isabella operated Cosmic Comics, a comic book shop in the Colonial Arcade in Downtown Cleveland.

Isabella's work in comics fandom attracted the attention of Marvel editor Roy Thomas (whose professional career began in similar fashion), and in 1972 Thomas hired Isabella as an editorial assistant at Marvel. With Marvel's establishment of Marvel UK that year, Isabella was assigned the task of overseeing the reprints used in Marvel UK's nascent comics line. He also served for a time as an editor for Marvel's black-and-white magazine line.

During his mid-1970s run on Ghost Rider, Isabella wrote a two-year story arc in which Johnny Blaze occasionally encountered an unnamed character referred to as "the Friend" who helped Blaze stay protected from Satan, who had granted Blaze supernatural power and created the Ghost Rider. Isabella said in 2007,

For DC Comics, Isabella worked as a writer and story editor but is mainly known for his creation of Black Lightning, writing both the character's short-lived 1970s and 1990s series. After reaching an agreement with DC, Isabella returned to the character in 2017 with the publication of the Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands limited series.

Tony Isabella (born December 22, 1951) is an American comic book writer, editor, artist and critic, known as the creator and writer of Marvel Comics' Black Goliath; DC Comics' first major African-American superhero, Black Lightning; and as a columnist and critic for the Comics Buyer's Guide.