Stephen King & George R.R. Martin’s Forgotten X‑Men Comic Resurfaces

In 1985, before Westeros existed and long before Stephen King became a one‑man adaptation industry, the horror master and a then‑up‑and‑coming George R.R. Martin quietly teamed up on something very different: a Marvel X‑Men charity comic about famine in Africa. That strange, star‑studded one‑shot, Heroes for Hope Starring the X‑Men, is suddenly back in the spotlight as fans rediscover how two genre giants helped the mutants battle hunger itself.

The day the X‑Men fought a demon called Hungry

Published in 1985, Heroes for Hope opens with the X‑Mansion mysteriously transported into a desolate desert. Separated in the wasteland, each X‑Man is stalked by a Grim Reaper‑style entity called Hungry, a hooded demon that torments them with psychic visions of their worst fears.

Every nightmare sequence was handed to a different creative team for a true comics “jam.” Stephen King scripted three of the book’s 48 pages, taking on Shadowcat’s terror of starving to death, while fellow sci‑fi legends Harlan Ellison and a pre‑A Song of Ice and Fire George R.R. Martin contributed their own pages. By the end, the team defeats Hungry and then addresses real‑world suffering, airlifting food to famine‑struck regions in Africa.

The project was spearheaded by Marvel editor‑in‑chief Jim Shooter alongside writer Jim Starlin and horror artist Berni Wrightson, with the goal that all proceeds would support anti‑famine charities in Ethiopia. It would even inspire DC’s sister project, Heroes Against Hunger, released the following year with Superman and Batman headlining another all‑star benefit comic jam.

The charity that called Marvel’s famine comic ‘offensive’

Originally, every cent raised by Heroes for Hope was supposed to go to Oxfam. But according to Shooter’s own account of the project, the charity rejected the comic outright after seeing advance pages—going so far as to label the book racist, sexist and “unbelievably offensive.”

Oxfam’s representatives reportedly bristled at the idea of a “comic book” tackling famine and criticized the story’s imagery, including its use of the African X‑Man Storm, predicting the issue would damage Marvel’s reputation if published. The dispute grew heated enough that Oxfam walked away, forcing Marvel to redirect the roughly $50,000 raised to the American Friends Service Committee instead.

That controversy hasn’t stopped the issue from gaining cult status among fans of both authors. For King readers, it’s a deep‑cut counterpart to the ever‑growing wave of adaptations and new work—from 2024’s Rattlesnakes and upcoming crime novel Never Flinch, to fresh screen projects like Mike Flanagan’s long‑gestating take on The Dark Tower.

It also adds another curious footnote to Martin’s pre‑Thrones career, sitting alongside his early sci‑fi and horror tales that still haunt the genre. And for readers following every twist in the long road to The Winds of Winter, Heroes for Hope is a reminder that Martin has been crossing streams with pop culture icons—and quietly experimenting with superheroes—since long before dragons took over his life.

As King and Martin continue to expand their universes across novels, novellas, TV and film, this forgotten X‑Men one‑shot stands as a relic of a very specific 1980s moment: when comics, rock stars and genre writers all tried to tackle real‑world catastrophe together, one jam session at a time.

Part of our full guide: Stephen King Adaptations in 2026: What Is Filming, What Was Cancelled and What Is Next