Gale was born to a Jewish family[2] in University City, Missouri; he is the son of Maxine (née Kippel and died in 2010),[3] an art dealer and violinist, and Mark R. Gale (1922–2018),[4] an attorney. Mark Gale was a World War II veteran and later a University City councilman.[5] Bob Gale has two younger brothers: Charlie, who wrote the screenplay for Ernest Scared Stupid,[6] and Randy. Bob Gale received a B.A. in Cinema in 1973 from the University of Southern California, where he wrote fanzine reviews for classmate Mike Glyer's fanzine, and met Zemeckis, who was his classmate.[citation needed]
As a child, Gale dreamed he would one day "go to Hollywood and work for Walt Disney", who was his hero.[7] As a teen, he created his own comic book, The Green Vomit, using spirit duplication; he was the co-founder of a popular comic book club in St. Louis. Later he and his brother Charlie made their own amateur three-film series parody of the Republic PicturesCommando Cody serials, using the character name "Commando Cus".[citation needed] The last two films were made in collaboration with Richard Rosenberg.[who?] (Rosenberg had taken over the series with the third, 1973's Commando Cus vs. Kung Fu Killers, in which Gale made a cameo appearance as the title character without his face-covering helmet, and was working on a fourth at the time of his death.)[citation needed]
Gale wrote the book and was a producer for the stagemusical adaptation of the first Back to the Future film, which premiered on the West End in 2020. The musical transferred to Broadway in August 2023 and closed in January 2024. The show is touring nationally, with international productions in Tokyo and Sydney.[9]
Comics
As a teenager, Bob Gale was a regular Marvel reader, and his fan letters appeared in Tales of Suspense #98, published in February 1968, and Iron Man #2-3, published in June-July 1968.
Gale began writing for comics in the late 90s, and his earliest work includes Ant-Man's Big Christmas for Marvel and Batman for DC Comics. In 2001, he had a short run on Marvel's Daredevil with artists Phil Winslade and Dave Ross. In 2008, Gale worked as one of the writers among the rotating writer/artist teams on The Amazing Spider-Man, which at the time was published three times a month. His other work in comics includes the Back to the Future monthly series published by IDW Publishing. The first issue was released in stores on October 21, 2015, which is the same date that Marty travels with Doc Brown to the future; the comic book is shown as part of the storyline for Part II.
Novels
In 1979, Gale published a novelization of 1941. In 2013, he published Retribution High, a novel based on his unproduced screenplay. [10]
Batman: No Man's Land Volume 1 (tpb, 544 pages, 2011, ISBN1-4012-3228-0) and Batman: No Man's Land Omnibus Volume 1 (hc, 1,136 pages, 2022, ISBN1-77951-322-4) include:
Time Served (collects #22–25, tpb, 104 pages, 2018, ISBN1-6840-5117-7)
Back to the Future: Citizen Brown #1–5 (written by Erik Burnham, drawn by Alan Robinson, 2016) collected as Back to the Future: Citizen Brown (tpb, 120 pages, 2017, ISBN1-63140-793-7)
Back to the Future: Biff to the Future #1–6 (written by Derek Fridolfs, drawn by Alan Robinson, 2017) collected as Back to the Future: Biff to the Future (tpb, 148 pages, 2017, ISBN1-6314-0974-3)
Back to the Future: Tales from the Time Train #1–6 (written by John Barber, drawn by Megan Levens, 2017–2018) collected as Back to the Future: Tales from the Time Train (tpb, 152 pages, 2018, ISBN1-6840-5313-7)
^Suman, Michael (1997). Religion and Prime Time Television. Praeger. p. 137. ISBN9780275960346. My name's Bob Gale. I'm a writer, producer, and director; most of my work is in motion pictures, and my best known works are the three "Back to the Future" films, which I wrote and produced. I consider myself Jewish, although I'm not a member of a congregation, nor am I terribly observant.
