Donny Cates

Donny Cates (born September 14, 1984) is an American comic book writer, artist, and podcaster, known for his work on titles like Venom, Thanos, Doctor Strange, Thor, and Hulk.

Early life Donny Cates was born in Dallas, Texas. Raised in Garland, Texas, Cates states that he was taught to read by his father using comic books. Cates graduated from Garland High School and attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he would meet future artistic collaborators Tradd Moore and Geoff Shaw. Cates majored in sequential art, but left the school after being accepted into a Marvel internship program. While interning, Cates stole a Diamond Distributors Gem Award awarded to Astonishing X-Men #1. At the advice of Marvel editor Mark Peniccia, Cates left the program after a year to pursue writing his own comics. After a chance meeting with a Dark Horse Comics staffer at C2E2, Cates was given the opportunity to write short stories for the company.

Career Cates' first comic work was a short story in Dark Horse Presents vol. 2 #24, released in August 2013. Co-written by himself and Eliot Rahal, the title of this story was Hunter Quaid: Armageddon Outta Here. It was followed up three issues later with Hunter Quaid: The Only Things We Have to Fear… are Nazis and Creepy Monsters. Satisfied with these stories, Dark Horse gave Cates the green light for later projects like Buzzkill, The Ghost Fleet with Daniel Warren Johnson and The Paybacks. Between 2016 and 2017 Cates also wrote stories for IDW Publishing, including an entry in Star Trek: Waypoint and a one-shot, Star Trek: Deviations. Cates eventually began writing for Image Comics, where he released God Country. With this title he attracted the attention of editors at Marvel, who offered him a contract.

His first long-term Marvel works were runs on Doctor Strange and Thanos. After the success of these titles, Cates was given writing duties on Venom, where he was paired with artist and podcaster Ryan Stegman. This led to him penning multiple company-wide events, including Absolute Carnage and King in Black. In January 2020, Cates took over as the new writer of Thor with Nic Klein as artist. Later that year, he would reteam with God Country artist Geoff Shaw on the book Crossover. In June 2021, Cates and Stegman started their own production company entitled KLC Press, named after a Todd McFarlane quote ("Kids Love Chains"), with its first title set to be the book Vanish by Cates and Stegman. In November that same year, Cates became the new writer of Hulk, with Ryan Ottley joining as artist. In June 2022, it was announced Vanish would receive a physical release via Image Comics.

In August 2023, it was revealed that he provided "additional literary material" for Kraven the Hunter. In October 2024, it was confirmed that he was allowed to read the screenplay for Venom: The Last Dance and consulted alongside Stegman in an advisory relationship due to the film's adaptation of their character Knull.

Personal life Cates lived in Austin, Texas with his ex-wife, comic artist Megan Hutchison. They hosted the comic review podcast, The Devil’s AdvoCATES Book Club.

In 2022, Cates was seriously injured in a car accident that gave him amnesia with no recollection of the prior six months of his life. During this time, he also went through a divorce. Cates was forced to pull out of numerous writing projects as a result.