Chuck Austen

Chuck Austen is an American writer and artist of comic books.

Although a long-time regular for Marvel Comics, his work has been controversial for what some claim to be a misogynistic portrayal of female characters and for what many longtime fans regard as a disregard for continuity. He has created several pornographic comics, including Strips, WorldWatch and Hardball.

Austen's career stretches back to the 1980s, when he briefly illustrated Alan Moore's superhero series Miracleman under the name "Chuck Beckham".

In the 2000s he started working regularly for Marvel Comics, writing and illustrating U.S. War Machine, illustrating Elektra, and writing a number of series, including Uncanny X-Men, Captain America, and The Avengers. He has also written various Superman stories for DC Comics. Austen's two-year run on Uncanny X-Men was his most prominent and lengthy writing assignment to date, but was also one of the most poorly recieved and reviewed.

Austen was fired from Marvel Comics in 2004 after a brief stint on New X-Men (which was renamed to X-Men after Austen's second issue), where he had the unenviable job of writing the in-between of Grant Morrison's run and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run.

He went on to create the independent title WorldWatch, which he claims to be like Warren Ellis's The Authority, except with more sex. To elaborate this point, most of the preview images he published prior to the first issue were sex scenes.

The last page of Worldwatch #2 featured an announcement from the publisher stating that, as a result of widespread fan disappointment with the writing, Austen had been fired, and that he would be replaced by notable writer Sam Clemens. Since (as creator and owner) Austen cannot be fired from Worldwatch, and since Austen has publicly claimed that his work is only disliked by a few vocal malcontents, this would seem to be a failed hoax with the goal of showing that fans would love the writing if only they did not recognize the writer's true identity.