We Told You So: Comics As Art

THOMPSON: By the time I got to Marvel I was reading credits very carefully. I’d see if the new Iron Man was inked

by Jim Mooney or Vince Colletta and act accordingly.

I bought into the Marvel mystique completely. I won some No-Prizes. I didn’t realize what the No-Prize was. I got it, and I opened the envelope, and there was nothing in it. I didn’t know what the fuck it meant. It took me a year to figure out that “No-Prize” meant “no prize.” I think the day I finally figured it out, I was like, “Wow, that’s cool.”

There was this ersatz intimacy that Stan Lee established in the letters pages and the Soapboxes, this hipness that made you feel as if you were part of the club.

They played it off against DC, which was staid and anal retentive and kind of corporate. Marvel looked loose and chummy; it looked like it was one big happy family with the nicknames of the creators and so forth. I bought into it hook, line and sinker. I was 12, 13, 14. I was at the right age to buy into that. I was an increasingly antisocial kid at that point, so I needed to buy into it.

GROTH:

ics. Those series are completely individual, and they don’t have that carnival barker kind of atmosphere.

I don’t recall anybody from my school being interested in collecting comics — certainly not as interested as I was. In my neighborhood, me and all my friends would act out superhero scenarios. I actually made a Captain America shield with layers and layers of cardboard and glue. I made a Thor hammer. I would conscript my friends into playing supporting characters.

GROTH:

I was the only one in my town that I knew of reading comics. It was one of those typical, isolated fanboy things. I don’t remember it being a source of much of anything, like kidding or anything like that. It wasn’t anything I was sharing, because I didn’t have any reason to — I couldn’t tell anyone else had an interest.

CATRON:

CATRON: By that time I was collecting and throwing my underwear out of my chest of drawers so I could put them in there and stack them neatly. You remember that in the DC comics especially, but also in Marvel, they had those little notes at the bottom — “see issue #127.” I wanted to see issue #127! At that time, the only way to have that issue was to have bought it previously and save it so you could refer back to it. That’s how I started collecting. Once I’d found this goofy little world, I didn’t want to miss anything.

THOMPSON: I got a super crash course in Marvel history because at the time I started they were reprinting a lot of the classic Ditko and Kirby Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men stuff in those big 64-page 25-cent comics. I was a collector but as a reader, so I wasn’t anal about original issues — an issue of Marvel Tales with SpiderMan #17 was just as good as Spider-Man #17 so far as I was concerned. I also bought back issues through the Passaic Comics Company and quickly assembled a formidable Marvel collection.

I think I was responding to what everyone responds to: the power fantasies, the fun, the violence and the energetic graphics. I loved and still love European comics, but something like the American comics back then can be a breath of fresh air. The pulpy excitement of them.

Then of course there’s the whole Marvel world where everything is interrelated and the Stan’s Soapbox kind of thing — there’s nothing like that in European com-

Opposite above: Mike Catron displays an early appreciation for art.

Opposite below: Young Kim Thompson reading comics in Europe.

Above: Gary Groth, circa mid-’60s, with Captain America shield made out of layers of cardboard glued together.

CHAPTER ONE

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lecting and put on a rock ’n’ roll convention. Fall of ’74, we targeted the Fourth of July weekend.

GROTH: I was attending journalism classes full time at the

University of Maryland, but I somehow felt that I was pretty unemployable; the idea of working for someone didn’t appeal to me. One of our ideas was to start a publishing company, but we didn’t have a pot to piss in. We needed capital in order to do that. So we had this idea of putting on a rock ’n’ roll convention that would make a fortune by which we’d finance a radical publishing company This came out of Gary putting on comic-book conventions.

CATRON:

The template was comic-book conventions. I had put on a couple annual comic conventions with Mike’s help called Metro Con in ’70 and ’71. I assembled the professional guests, came up with panel discussions, an art show, a dealer’s room — all the facets of a comics convention that I had experienced. My dad helped book hotel space and with dealing with grownups. They were modestly successful. They didn’t make money but they didn’t lose money.

I talked Frank Frazetta into coming down in ’71. Sal Buscema was a local artist, who I talked into giving the

GROTH:

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WE TOLD YOU SO

keynote speech at the first convention. He lived five minutes away from my home and every six months or so I would work up the courage to call him and ask him if I could come over and visit him. He and his wife were incredibly warm and generous, putting up with me for a couple hours at a stretch while I asked him inane questions about working in comics. He gave me some of his rejected pencil pages for comics he was working on for Marvel, which I treasured — and still have.

I have memories of Frank Frazetta in a room, passing out paintings, telling us what he did and how he did it. Frazetta giving a chalk talk — that’s pretty damn cool.

CATRON:

FANTUCCHIO: Gary also put on a couple of first-class conventions. In one case, at Crystal City, I was honored to have some of my covers on display, and they brought high praise. At another convention, at the Washington Statler Hilton on K Street, one of my paintings was of President Nixon welcoming Captain America to Washington, D.C. That illustration appeared with me in several local newspapers. Frank Frazetta was the featured guest at one of the conventions, and I was fortunate enough to meet and talk with him and even-

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Above: “Sadly, this was probably not an uncommon occurrence. We sure were broke back then, but if you have to bounce a check, bouncing it to the U.S. Post Office is the worst idea. I don’t remember how I explained this or what the repercussions were, but apparently, they still accepted mail from us. Probably C.O.D.” Opposite: “This is obviously a staged photo, probably taken during our photo ‘shoot’ (get it?) in which Marilyn Bethke, one of the Journal’s most feared columnists and a rousing feminist, good-naturedly participated.” —GG WE TOLD YOU SO

CHAPTER THREE

“EVERYTHING WAS IN SEASON” The wisdom of Gil Kane and Art Spiegelman and the growth of the Fantagraphics publishing family: Amazing Heroes, Nemo and … comic books

NEW DIGS GARY GROTH: I don’t remember our move to Connecticut

feeling that momentous. Everything seemed impermanent to me back then. The company could have gone out of business two months after we moved to Connecticut; I would’ve just moved on.

KIM THOMPSON: You have to bear in mind that never in my

life up until that point had I lived more than three years in the same house, let alone city, let alone country. So moving to Connecticut was a smaller leap than anything that had come before.

RICK MARSCHALL, COMICS HISTORIAN AND NEMO EDITOR: I flattered

myself at the time to think that I played a role, or planted a seed, regarding the move to Connecticut. I met Gary, Mike and Kim after I started at Marvel, and I had just moved to Westport for the second time. I remember urging a Connecticut World HQ for Fantagraphics on Gary as a matter of inevitability and pride. Comic-books artists in the stretch between Greenwich and Ridgefield included Gil Kane, Curt Swan, John Byrne. When I

later moved from my apartment in Westport to a house in Weston, Bill Sienkiewicz took the apartment; Terry Austin then rented upstairs. Anyway, I have a recollection of urging Fantagraphics’ move to Connecticut for all these reasons — and of course proximity to New York City — and my memory is that Gary said “Connecticut?” in the same way Ralphie asks Santa in A Christmas Story, “Football? What’s a football?”

I knew nothing about Connecticut, had never set foot in the state before. But, New York was too ex-

GROTH:

CHAPTER THREE

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CHAPTER THREE

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Powers is now a documentary filmmaker whose work has been broadcast on Showtime, and has written a book about gun violence. Mark Waid, another Amazing Heroes editor, of course became a superstar comic-book writer.

Bob [Fiore] was editing special-assignment books. Rachel was running the accounting books and distribution. She was living with Teresa Moore, who was an assistant in the art department. They were these two cute giggling girls who lived together — Jaime had a big crush on Teresa at the time, Rachel had a little thing with Mario. When I first met them, I wondered if Rachel and Teresa were models for Maggie and Hopey,

POWERS:

which of course wasn’t the case. Kimberly Friar was the managing editor of The Comics Journal.

RACHEL ENGER, ACCOUNTING AND CIRCULATION: I stepped over the many piles of paper and other clutter Gary adorns his office space with, and had the strangest interview of my life. The most memorable part was when Gary asked me if I could really be tough when collecting from distributors who owed money. And I replied something to the effect of, “I can be a bitch when I want to be.” Apparently, this was enough to land the job, or perhaps it was my abundant cleavage. Whatever the reason, it was the beginning of a very enriching friendship. I count Gary amongst my closest friends, and we have stayed in touch for almost 20 years [now almost 30 years].

FIORE: As for myself, any ambitions I had ran afoul of my

search for an effort-free existence, and the success of these people is a constant rebuke.

Bob Fiore wasn’t exactly the most sociable guy you’ve ever met, but I think he was about as sociable with me as he was with anyone and he passed the goodfriend test — we could argue passionately about things and never let it get personal.

GROTH:

I had followed Bob’s work in the Journal and was mesmerized by how much wit he could pack in a

POWERS:

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WE TOLD YOU SO

Above: Left to right: Covers to the first five issues of Prime Cuts by Alec Stevens, Gilbert Hernandez, Rick Geary, José Muñoz, Drew Friedman.

Below: Left to right: Prime Cuts #6–10 with covers by Francisco Solano López, L.J. Kopf, Peter Kuper, Gary Kwapisz, Jim Woodring.

PHIL ELLIOTT, CARTOONIST: Me and Fantagraphics in chronological order: I meet Gary Groth at a comic convention in London. Me, Gary, Eddie Campbell and some other guy have a beer in a nearby pub. I can’t remember what we talked about, but Eddie and Gary did most of it. I will never see Gary Groth ever again. I contribute to Honk!, Prime Cuts and Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy.

Fantagraphics publishes Blite [1989], featuring my work. Years later I discover that it’s the only comic by me available as a torrent download.

ic itself is terribly drawn, but that’s something I could only admit to myself about 20 years down the road.

The point is, I had my foot in the door and I was fucking grateful. I remember Gary saying, when he came up with the idea of Prime Cuts, that it would be “Raw done right.” I don’t know if history will consider that claim fulfilled. Of course, I started a Fantagraphics anthology called Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy, which I claimed would be Prime Cuts done right, and I think we know what history thought of that.

Prime Cuts will always have a soft spot in my heart because I believe it was the home of my very first printed comic, “The Industrial Revolution.” The com-

GROTH:

SACCO:

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WE TOLD YOU SO

We published a succession of anthologies and Prime Cuts was one of mine. Looking back on it, I can see that it was self-consciously “literary” and reflected

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CAROL LAY

stairs with him, that had to be my schedule as well. You can’t be sleeping while Gary’s in the house, that’s just not going to happen.

I’m not saying that he’s crassly loud or just unconcerned with others. But I think many times it doesn’t occur to him just how noisy a son of a bitch he could be. So, that said, I just pity the plethora of downstairs guys that rotated through the downstairs rooms while we were there. One of these days, I’m going to have to hunt them all down and ask for forgiveness in my part of just making their attempts to get to sleep at decent hours and all that kind of stuff nearly impossible.

Mark Thompson and Robert Boyd were the two that were mainly living down there during my span of time. And they got up in the morning like decent people, did a day’s work at the office and went to bed at a decent hour. And the barbecues, the firecrackers off the back of the porch, they were right underneath that.

Those were dangerous days for the poor bastards. And I should track them down and apologize for our rambunctious ways.

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WE TOLD YOU SO

THE SKETCHPAD MORIARITY: Helena [Harvilicz] and I founded the Ballard

house. I needed a place to live and her lease was up.

So we decided to get a house because we were working together at Fantagraphics and we knew we would get along. It was Helena and me and Tom Harrington and Frank Young, who was going to be the next Comics Journal managing editor. It probably looked the same then as it does now — it’s always been a pretty dilapidated house. We got it because of the indifference of the landlord guy. He just wanted the money. He wasn’t too interested in the idea of maintenance. It turned into a rotating door of cartoonists that moved in and out of the place. J.R. Williams, Jeremy Eaton, R.L. Crabb.

R.L. CRABB, CARTOONIST: I have many fond memories of the old Greenhouse — or as Pete Bagge called it, “The Crabbpot” — in Ballard.

MORIARITY: It kind of turned into a crash pad for cartoon-

ists that were traveling through town and wanted to stay there or couldn’t really afford a hotel room. Being a cartoonist is almost like being in a rock band, where you don’t make any money and you just want to stay at