Bob Budiansky

Bob Budiansky was a real Marvel editor who became a fictionalized version of himself in the self-referential Marvel Fumetti Book #1 (1984), a photo-comic experiment where Marvel turned its camera on its own staff and offices.

There's something wonderfully meta about Bob Budiansky turning up as a character in Marvel's own pages — debuting in the playful Marvel Fumetti Book #1 in 1984, a Bronze Age curiosity created by Mike Carlin and Eliot Brown that saw the House of Ideas turn its camera on itself. With a modest but genuinely eclectic footprint across Spellbound, Marvel Fumetti Book, and Tales of G.I. Joe, this real-world Marvel editor-turned-comics-character shares some gloriously unexpected panel space with the likes of Spider-Man, Roy Fortune, and Andrew King. Seven appearances may not sound like a long run, but for a behind-the-scenes figure who crossed the fourth wall into the funny pages, that's a legacy worth a knowing smile from any dedicated Marvel completist.