Beginning his journalism career at the Rocky Mountain News, where he became the paper’s first cultural affairs reporter, he served as art critic and senior arts editor at The National Observer and as senior staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, where he specialized in long-form narrative features before retiring in 2006. Marvel has written for Smithsonian, Horizon, American Heritage Invention & Technology, American Way, and D Magazine. His collaboration with R. V. Burgin, Islands of the Damned, was published by Penguin/New American Library in March 2010, coincidoing with the premiere of HBO’s Spielberg/Hanks–produced dramatic series, “The Pacific,” which portrays Mr. Burgin’s experiences as a marine in World War II. The book was a Main Selection of the History Book Club.