Legendary comics creator Len Wein died last night. Along with Dave Cockrum, Wein co-created the All-New All-Different X-Men and paved the way for a generation of iconic stories featuring those characters. Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus and many more were all his co-creations and Cockrum and Wein were instrumental in giving the X-Men the trans-national feel that they maintain to this day. Pyotr “Peter” Nikolayevich Rasputin, aka Colossus, is a particular favorite in MCM Towers.

Were this all Wein had done for superhero fiction his would have been a career well spent. But he was fiercely prolific, writing well regarded runs on DC titles like Batman and Justice League as well as Legends, the epochal George Perez-drawn run on Wonder Woman and co-creating Swamp Thing with Bernie Wrightson.

Wein also edited Watchmen, having been instrumental in hiring Alan Moore to write Swamp Thing when he left it. In recent years he worked extensively on animated series and with Disney Comics.

But all of that pales in comparison to the fact that, with John Romita Sr, Wein created Wolverine.

The short, hairy Canadian violence enthusiast is one of the best known western comic characters on the planet. He’s been a lynchpin of two movie franchises, a mainstay in comics for decades and his heir, Laura, is one of the best characters created so far this century.

Len Wein was more than a comics creator, he was an architect who built some of the best characters in the modern western comics industry. A titanic figure, he’ll be much missed but his work will resonate for decades to come. Rest in peace, sir.

Find out more about Wein’s massive career at your local comic shop. If you’re not sure where it was, this should be able to help.

Alternately, here’s the Comixology page listing everything of his they have.