Marvel Comics
Before he joined Marvel Comics, Isabella had many letters published in the company's comic book letter columns. He began his career at Marvel as an editorial assistant in 1972. He also served for a time as an editor for Curtis Magazines, Marvel's black-and-white magazine line.
As a writer, Isabella scripted Ghost Rider, It, the Living Colossus in Astonishing Tales, Luke Cage in Hero for Hire and Power Man, Tigra in Marvel Chillers, The Champions, and Captain America.
During his mid-1970s run on Ghost Rider, Isabella wrote a story arc in which Johnny Blaze became a Christian, and in doing so, freed himself of the curse. In May 2007, Isabella said, "I’d written a story wherein, couched in mildly subtle terms, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan’s power forever."
"CCM Sightings" said on the subject, "According to Isabella’s account, the story arc took two years to unfold, and was approved by several editors. But when the story reached the big twist ... and a certain mysterious drifter was going to be revealed as Jesus Christ ... an assistant editor 'took offense' and intercepted the issue right as it was about to go to the printer and completely rewrote the story." Isabella says, "To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrong-headed actions I’ve ever seen from an editor."
DC Comics
For DC Comics, Isabella worked as a writer and story editor but is mainly known for his creation of Black Lightning, writing both the character's short-lived 1970s and 1990s series.
Isabella, along with artist Richard Howell, also produced the "Shadow War of Hawkman" mini-series, which ended up becoming the final, pre-Hawkworld reboot story involving the characters of Hawkman and Hawkwoman.
Justice Machine
In 1987, Tony Isabella began writing the Justice Machine series for Comico, co-plotting with series creator and penciller Mike Gustovich. The new series picked up from the end of the Bill Willingham/Gustovich written limited series Justice Machine featuring the Elementals, which re-booted the series' continuity from the older Noble Comics/Texas Comics-published original series. The on-going book became one of Comico's best-selling series, selling upwards of 70,000 copies of each issue at its peak. Isabella wrote the first 11 issues of the Comico series before moving on to other projects.
In 1990, Isabella returned to the characters to write the series for Innovation Comics, with Gustovich pencilling once more. Gustovich editorialized that Isabella was the best writer (others including Bill Messner-Loebs and Doug Murray) Justice Machine had ever had.
"Tony's Tips"
Isabella wrote the Comics Buyer's Guide column Tony's Tips for over a decade. The last column was June 22, 2010. The column continues as a regular online column/blog called Tony's Online Tips.
Other work
Isabella is the co-author (with his fellow Comics Buyer's Guide columnist Bob Ingersoll) of the short story If Wishes Were Horses... (which was published in The Ultimate Super Villains, ISBN 1-57297-113-4, in 1996) and the novels Captain America: Liberty's Torch (1998 ISBN 0-425-16619-8) and Star Trek: The Case Of The Colonist's Corpse (A Sam Cogley Mystery) (2003, ISBN 0-7434-6497-4).
He has also recently worked on translating foreign-language Disney comics and revamping the wording for the U.S. (such as Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge #354).
Isabella recently announced in his column that he plans on doing new comic book writing, for Heroic Publishing, probably working on that company's superheroine Tigress (not to be confused with the Marvel superheroine Tigra, mentioned above, or the DC characters).
During the 1980s, Tony Isabella operated Cosmic Comics, a comic book shop in the Colonial Arcade in Downtown Cleveland, Ohio, started by Mark Stueve in 1976.
