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]
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.
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.