Arie Kaplan

Arie Kaplan is a New York City-based American writer, comedian, and public speaker whose career spans television, comic books, video games, nonfiction, and humor writing. Kaplan attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has built a body of work across multiple areas of popular culture. He is a screenwriter for television, video games, and transmedia, and is also an award-winning author and public speaker. His humor pieces, short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in MAD Magazine, Defenestration, Weekly Humorist, Points in Case, Slate, The Daily Drunk, National Lampoon, and The Jewish Review of Books.

A writer for MAD Magazine since 2000, Kaplan has written over two dozen humor pieces for the publication and created a recurring feature called "Shamazon.com," a parody of Amazon.com, with several of his articles reprinted in various MAD trade paperback collections. His television writing credits include the Netflix animated series "Charlie's Colorforms City," the TruTV comedy series "World's Dumbest," the PBS Kids series "Cyberchase," and the Cartoon Network series "Codename: Kids Next Door." His game writing credits include "Law & Order: Legacies" (Telltale Games), "Paranormal State: Poison Spring" (Legacy Games), and "eQuoo: The Next Generation: Lodestar" (PsycApps), and he served as lead writer for season one of the Vanderpump Rules mobile game.

Kaplan has also worked as a comic book writer and nonfiction author. He has written comic book scripts for DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Archie Comics, Bongo Comics, and other publishers, with stories featuring characters such as Superman, Speed Racer, Archie, Ben 10, Bugs Bunny, and Bart Simpson. He has written numerous books and graphic novels tied to licensed characters, including "LEGO Star Wars: The Official Stormtrooper Training Manual" (Scholastic), "The Jurassic Park Little Golden Book" (Penguin Random House), "Red Titan and the Runaway Robot" (Simon & Schuster), and the Batman leveled reader "Harley at Bat" (Penguin Random House). His book "From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books" was a National Jewish Book Award finalist, won the Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth and the Sophie Brody Honor Book, and was a finalist in the National Best Books Award competition. His nonfiction work, "Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed!" profiles the lives and careers of icons of the comic book genre, including Stan Lee, Neil Gaiman, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, Dwayne McDuffie, and Will Eisner.

Beyond his writing, Kaplan is a public speaker, lecturing internationally about pop culture-related subjects, including the history of comic books, comedy history, film history, television history, and the history of science fiction. He gives talks on topics such as the history of Jewish humor, comedy in television and film, video game history, piracy in real life and pop culture, and science fiction history. In his role as an entertainment journalist, Kaplan has interviewed recording artists, comedians, filmmakers, and cartoonists, including Carl Reiner, Susie Essman, Larry Gelbart, Nora Ephron, and Lewis Black. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America's Animation Writers Caucus and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. Kaplan's career bridges humor, history, and storytelling across mediums, making him a versatile voice in American popular culture, comic book writing, and entertainment journalism.