Back Issue #140

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DINOSAURS ARE INVADING…

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William Stout interview • Godzilla at Dark Horse Comics • Sauron villain history • Dinosaurs Attack! • Dinosaurs for Hire • Dinosaur Rex • Dino Riders & Jurassic Park

RetroFan: The Pop Culture You Grew Up With!

Remember when Saturday morning television was our domain, and ours alone? When tattoos came from bubble gum packs, Slurpees came in superhero cups, and TV heroes taught us to be nice to each other? If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, TwoMorrows’ new magazine is just for you! Editor MICHAEL EURY (author of numerous books on pop culture, former editor for DC Comics and Dark Horse Comics, and editor of TwoMorrows’ Eisner Award-winning BACK ISSUE magazine for comic book fans) has assembled an unbeatable roster of regular and rotating Celebrity Columnists to cover the pop culture you grew up with: • ANDY MANGELS (best-selling sci-fi author and award-winning pop culture historian) • ERNEST FARINO (Emmy Award-winning visual effects designer, animator, and director) • SCOTT SHAW! (acclaimed cartoonist, animator, Emmy Award-winning storyboard artist, and historian) • WILL MURRAY (pulp adventure novelist and pop culture historian) • SCOTT SAAVEDRA (graphic designer, cartoonist, and COMIC BOOK HEAVEN creator) • MARK VOGER (renowned pop culture newspaper columnist and book author), and others!

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Meet JULIE NEWMAR, the purr-fect Catwoman! Plus: ASTRO BOY, TARZAN Saturday morning cartoons, the true history of PEBBLES CEREAL, TV’s THE UNTOUCHABLES and SEARCH, the MONKEEMOBILE, SOVIET EXPO ’77, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns

by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Surf’s up as SIXTIES BEACH MOVIES make a RetroFan splash! Plus: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ZORRO’s Saturday morning cartoon, TV’s THE WILD, WILD WEST, CARtoons and other drag-mags, VALSPEAK, and more fun, fab features!

Like, totally! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet the stars behind the Black Lagoon: RICOU BROWNING, BEN CHAPMAN, JULIE ADAMS, and LORI NELSON! Plus SHADOW CHASERS, featuring show creator KENNETH JOHNSON. Also: THE BEATLES’ YELLOW SUBMARINE, FLASH GORDON cartoons, TV’s cult classic THE PRISONER and kid’s show ZOOM, COLORFORMS, M&Ms, and more fun, fab features! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Interviews with Lost in Space’s ANGELA CARTWRIGHT and BILL MUMY, and Land of the Lost’s WESLEY EURE! Revisit Leave It to Beaver with JERRY MATHERS, TONY DOW, and KEN OSMOND! Plus: UNDERDOG, Rankin-Bass’ stop-motion classic THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY, Christmas gifts you didn’t want, the CABBAGE PATCH KIDS fad, and more!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Meet Mission: Impossible’s LYNDA DAY GEORGE in an exclusive interview!

Celebrate Rambo’s 50th birthday with his creator, novelist DAVID MORRELL! Plus: TV faves WKRP IN CINCINNATI and SPACE: 1999, Fleisher’s and Filmation’s SUPERMAN cartoons, commercial jingles, JERRY LEWIS and BOB HOPE comic books, and more fun, fab features! Edited

by MICHAEL EURY.

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Dark Shadows’ Angelique, LARA PARKER, sinks her fangs into an exclusive interview.

Plus: Rankin-Bass’ Mad Monster Party, Aurora Monster model kits, a chat with Aurora painter JAMES BAMA, George of the Jungle, The Haunting, Jawsmania, Drak Pack, TV dads’ jobs, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns by FARINO, MANGELS, MURRAY, SAAVEDRA, SHAW, and MICHAEL EURY.

Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep you forever dreaming of Jeannie! Plus: The Invaders, the BILLIE JEAN KING/BOBBY RIGGS tennis battle of the sexes, HANNABARBERA’s Saturday morning super-heroes of the Sixties, THE MONSTER TIMES fanzine, and more fun, fab features! Featuring ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW!, and MICHAEL EURY.

Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer Films actress CAROLINE MUNRO! Plus: WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO WRESTLER ERASERS, behind the scenes of Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty, Go-Go Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton Museum, and more fun, fab features!

MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, is profiled! Plus: TV’s Route 66 and an interview with star GEORGE MAHARIS, MOE HOWARD’s final years, singer B. J. THOMAS in one of his final interviews, LONE RANGER cartoons, G.I. JOE, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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Volume 1, Number 140 December 2022 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Mark Schultz (Cover art originally produced for Kitchen Sink Press’ Cadillacs and Dinosaurs 3-D #1, July 1992. Scan courtesy of Heritage.)

COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore

PROOFREADER David Baldy SPECIAL THANKS Arthur Adams Matt Levin Mark Arnold Ed Lute Mike Baron Manny Maris Al Bigley Tom Mason Stephen Bissette Brandon McKinney Glen Cadigan Gordon Purcell Howard Chaykin Tom Smith Bill DeSimone Randy Stradley Stephan Friedt Jan Strnad Gary Gerani Toho Co., Ltd. Don Glut Topps Company, Grand Comics Inc. Database Don Vaughan R. C. Harvey Ryder Windham Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Heritage Comics VERY SPECIAL Auctions THANKS Dan Johnson Mark Schultz Barbara Kaalberg William Stout Dave Lemieux

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IN MEMORIAM: Neal Adams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 IN MEMORIAM: George Pérez. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 INTERVIEW: William Stout’s Dino Comics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 PINUP: DC Special #27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Sauron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Dave Cockrum’s The Man With the Dinosaur Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 ROUGH STUFF: Captain Marvel, Jr.’s Dino Battle by Cockrum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 INTERVIEW: Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 FLASHBACK: Godzilla at Dark Horse Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 INTERVIEW: Jan Strnad and Dinosaur Rex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 PRINCE STREET NEWS: Holiday Grab Bag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 BACKSTAGE PASS: Tom Mason’s Dinosaurs for Hire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 FLASHBACK: Topps’ Dinosaurs Attack!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 THE TOY BOX: Dino-Riders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 FLASHBACK: Jurassic Park, the Comic Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 BACK TALK: Reader Reactions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 BACK ISSUE™ issue 140, December 2022 (ISSN 1932-6904) is published monthly (except Jan., March, May, and Nov.) by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Back Issue, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.

Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $90 Economy US, $137 International, $39 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © 2022 TwoMorrows and Michael Eury except for Prince Street News, TM & © 2022 Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1

Background art: Dinosaur vs. butterfly! A 1977 specialty illustration by William Stout, from the archives of Heritage Comics Auctions. Art © William Stout.

COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

IN MEMORIAM

(1941–2022)

This brave and bold innovator awakened a sleeping giant and introduced the comic art form to a larger audience.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.

2 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

IN MEMORIAM

(1954–2022)

From a quiet day in the life to an earth-shattering crisis, no scene was beyond the reach of this talented titan.

Photo credit: DC Comics.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

by M

ichael Eury

I can’t recall exactly when I was first exposed to dinosaurs. Chances are it was on The Flintstones, either the Fred-loving pet dinosaur Dino or the wisecracking prehistoric beasts of burden that helped TV’s Modern Stone Age Family function.

A classic Marx toy, “Fred Flintstone on Dino,” combined the Flintstones’ pet and Fred’s bronto-rig from the rock quarry into one mechanical plaything. I begged my parents for it, but never got one—until decades later, during Christmas of 1991, when my wife, learning of my unrequited love for that toy, bought me one from a dealer’s ad in Krause Publications’ old Toy Shop newspaper. “Fred Flintstone on Dino” now decorates my bedroom dresser, and our bedroom walls display Flintstones original art and other “primitive” images, proving that this old relic of an editor sleeps among the dinosaurs!

Of course, paleontology lessons imparted by that Hanna-Barbera cartoon have to be taken with a grain of salt (washed down with a swig of Cactus Cola). Same with Alley Oop, the comic-strip caveman with the washboard abs and Popeye forearms, whose adventures I’d laugh at daily in my local paper’s funnies. The green brontosaurus (also dubbed “Dino,” confusing Flintstones-watching kids) that was the corporate icon of the Sinclair Oil Company also fascinated me. As a kid, I owned a much-hugged inflatable Sinclair dinosaur that doubled as a beach floatation device. Back then, dinosaur movies were a staple of weekend afternoon television, from the stop-motion primeval creatures in Ray Harryhausen movies to the man-in-a-rubber-suit-can-you-spot-the-zipper monstrosities in Godzilla movies.

For a species that went extinct long ago, dinosaurs still roamed the Earth throughout the 1960s.

While those memories have melted into my tar pit of childhood nostalgia, I do recall a specific moment when I went, well, ape over dinosaurs. I was nine in the summer of 1969 when TV commercials trumpeted a new movie, director Jim O’Connolly’s The Valley of Gwangi. This family-friendly proto-blockbuster featured cowboys vs. prehistoric monsters. What a mash-up! After pestering my mom to drop me off at the movie theater for an afternoon matinee (unsupervised kids could wander all over the place in those days), I was once again awed by Harryhausen’s stop-motion wizardry… but this time on a much larger (and crisper) screen than the fuzzy Motorola back home.

Fast-forward 24 years to the summer of 1993, when my friend Rick Taylor, who was also my Comico and DC Comics professional colleague, and I saw Steven Spielberg’s newly released movie Jurassic Park on a Sunday afternoon during its opening weekend. I remember repeatedly gasping, “Wow…” throughout that first viewing of the now-classic film, blown away by its realistic depiction of dinosaurs.

If you’ve been inclined to purchase this edition of BACK ISSUE, you probably have similar memories. Dinosaurs continue to fascinate us. As I pen these words in May of 2022, cinemagoers are preparing for yet another installment in the Jurassic Park franchise (Jurassic World: Dominion), and DC Comics has just released the first issue of a miniseries splicing the DNA of its superhero trinity with dinosaurs: Jurassic League. Clearly, my generation, the children of the 1960s, wasn’t the only one fascinated with dinosaurs.

In the pages following, you will read stories of similarly fascinated writers and artists who created comic books starring prehistoric monsters as heroes or as villainous protagonists. We are honored this issue to feature two of America’s premiere dino-artists, William Stout and Mark Schultz, in exclusive interviews. For those of you mired in the superhero mainstream who may be discovering their work for the first time… you are in for a treat. And to the myriad Stout and Schultz fans out there who don’t regularly read BACK ISSUE, but have joined us this issue… welcome!

And before I unleash the dinosaurs, allow me to thank reader Matt Levin for the theme suggestion. A few issues ago, in a letter published in our “Back Talk” column, he asked about the possibility of a dinosaurs issue. Thank you, Matt, for the great idea!

The Flintstones © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Alley Oop © NEA, Inc. Sinclair Dino © Sinclair Oil Co. The Valley of Gwangi © Warner Bros. Most images courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

4 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

interview by D o n

Va u g h a n

William Stout is one of the preeminent paleo artists of his generation. His murals and paintings of prehistoric life can be found in museums of natural history around the United States, and his first book, The Dinosaurs: A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era (Bantam Books, 1981), was an inspiration for Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

But that’s just one aspect of Stout’s expansive career. He has also illustrated album covers, movie posters, trading cards, book covers—and comic books.

A LOT of comic books, many of which, unsurprisingly, feature dinosaurs. Some are serious, others cartoony.

All are gorgeous.

I’ll admit this right off the bat: William Stout is among my favorite artists for a variety of reasons.

Foremost, he’s a remarkable craftsman, capable and at ease with the tools of his trade, able to capture the essence of a scene with stunning realism, whether it’s a museum mural or a comic-book illustration.

There’s a genuine sense of joy in Stout’s art, no matter the subject or the medium. He’s obviously an artist who loves his job.

In the following conversation with BACK ISSUE, Stout discusses various aspects of his prolific dinosaur comicbook work, a favorite gig illustrating the words of Ray Bradbury, his artistic influences, and more.

– Don Vaughan DON VAUGHAN: Bill, thank you for talking with us today.

I’d like to start with your gig in william stout the early ’70s assisting Russ Manning JaSunni Productions, LLC, on the Tarzan newspaper strips and at PicasaWeb/ Wikimedia Commons. graphic novels, some of which featured dinosaurs. How did you get that job, and what did you learn from Manning?

WILLIAM STOUT: I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan and had a subscription to a Burroughs fanzine called ERB-dom. I would occasionally contribute stuff to that magazine. The Burroughs estate was about to release a previously unpublished Burroughs novel called I Am a Barbarian, told from the point of view of Caligula’s personal slave. I got a copy and saw that it was illustrated by Jeff Jones. I felt the Jones drawings weren’t compelling enough, so I did my own drawings based on Burroughs’ novel. I did six of them, each in a different style. I did one in the style of Frank Frazetta, one in the style of Al Williamson, one in the style of Reed Crandall, and others. I sent them off, and about a year later they were published in ERB-dom. As soon as they were printed, I got a call from Russ Manning, asking if I would like to be his assistant. I jumped at the chance because I was a huge fan. I had all the Magnus Robot Fighter comics, and I was a big fan of his Tarzan comics. It was funny because when I read the Tarzan novels, the picture in my head of Tarzan turned out to be exactly as Russ drew him. I knew it was going to be an interesting experience.

I began inking for him and also doing the color on the Sunday strips. My lettering was pretty crappy back then, so either Russ or Mike Royer did the lettering. Russ lived way out in a place called Modjeska

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth Cover to Stout’s The Dinosaurs: A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era (Bantam Books, 1981). © William Stout.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

Lord of the Jungle (top) Stout was an assistant to Tarzan comic-strip artist Russ Manning in the early 1970s, inking Manning’s pencils and coloring the Sunday pages. This color guide is from the Sunday, October 15, 1972 strip. (bottom) Stout’s original art for an unpublished Tarzan portrait produced in 1981. Both, courtesy of Heritage Comic Auctions (www.ha.com). © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

Canyon in a very rural part of Orange County, California. He was a member of the volunteer fire department there, so every now and then an alarm would go off and Russ would be in his truck and on his way to the fire in about three seconds.

I learned a tremendous amount from Russ, especially about respecting deadlines, the importance of artistic consistency, and being professional. Russ introduced me to Japanese prints, Hal Foster’s best work, and opera. Most importantly, Russ showed me how to be a great dad. I learned lots watching how Russ interacted with his son and daughter.

When I was inking Russ, I could ink everything except the main characters. Russ always wanted to ink Tarzan, and if there was any other main character he wanted to ink, he would let me know. I usually ink with two tools: a crow quill pen or a Windsor Newton Series 7 #1 brush. That worked out great because Russ did most of his inking with a brush. My job was basically to speed things up for Russ, get the comics and the daily and Sunday strips done in a reasonable time, so we weren’t panicking about deadlines.

VAUGHAN: How long did you work for Russ?

STOUT: I worked for him for about three or four years.

I started in 1970, and I think the last thing I did for him was in ’73 or ’74. I was inking the dailies, coloring the Sundays, and Russ and I did three graphic novels together. Unfortunately, when Dark Horse reprinted our graphic novels, they didn’t use my coloring.

VAUGHAN: Ray Bradbury Dinosaur Tales (Byron Preiss, 1983) gave you the opportunity to illustrate one of Bradbury’s best-known dinosaur stories, “A Sound of Thunder.” Dinosaur Tales isn’t really a comic book, but I think it falls in the purview of this article.

STOUT: That’s a great collection. All of the illustrators were comic artists. Some of the other contributors were Jim Steranko, Moebius, Overton Loyd, and Gahan Wilson.

6 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

VAUGHAN: Your illustrations for “A Sound of Thunder” are really evocative. Tell us how the project came about.

STOUT: That was a Byron Preiss project. Byron was always looking for ways to bring Bradbury before a broader audience.

“A Sound of Thunder” is one of my favorite Bradbury stories, and was actually featured in my American Literature textbook in high school. Dinosaur Tales wasn’t my first introduction to Ray, though. Byron introduced me to Ray when I was working on my first dinosaur book, The Dinosaurs: A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era. We became friends, and Ray ended up writing the introduction to my book. We started collaborating whenever we could on projects. In addition to “A Sound of Thunder,” I illustrated the cover of Dinosaur Tales.

Lost World. Tell us about that.

STOUT: When I got into the film business, I was sharing offices with Steven Spielberg. I would work on Conan the Barbarian during the day, and then Ron Cobb, my Conan production designer, and I would jump across the hall to Steven’s office, and in the evening, we would kick around ideas for Steven’s next project, which was Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, he was well aware of my work.

When Steven was making Jurassic Park, I had lunch every other week with Rick Carter, Steven’s production designer on the film, and I fed him a bunch of stuff to put into the film, a lot of which actually ended up in the film. Rick or Steven or Kathleen Kennedy must have seen my cover for the paperback edition of Ray Bradbury Dinosaur Tales of a Tyrannosaurus rex [T. rex] looking across water at a city, because that ended up being a shot in the second Jurassic Park movie, Lost World.

I think in the movie the T. rex is looking at San Diego.

VAUGHAN: You drew several full-page black-and-white illustrations for “A Sound of Thunder.”

STOUT: And some double-page spreads, too. We all drew several illustrations for whatever story we were assigned. I was experimenting with a sort of Franklin Booth–style of inking with some of the pictures. I think I did some of my best stuff for that book. [Stout revisited “A Sound of Thunder” a decade later with a stunning cover for The Ray Bradbury Chronicles vol. 4 (NBM, 1993). The story was adapted by Rich Corben, and the issue also contained a reprint of the EC Comics adaptation illustrated by Al Williamson.]

VAUGHAN: In 1991 and 1992, you provided two covers to a six-issue Fantagraphics series that retold the story of King Kong. You’ve said that you had hoped to do all six covers. What happened?

STOUT: I didn’t get to do all of them because the other guys they got to draw covers were Mark Schultz, Dave Stevens, and Al Williamson! That’s stiff competition.

I was lucky to get two covers instead of just one.

VAUGHAN: You note in your career overview book Fantastic Worlds: The Art of William Stout that one of your illustrations for “A Sound of Thunder” inspired a scene in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park:

VAUGHAN: Speaking of covers, you did three variant covers for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Topps’ 1994 continuation of Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales.

You’ve said that the cover for #2 was inspired by your

‘A Sound of Thunder’ Original art, courtesy of Heritage,

by William Stout, from pages 74–75 of Ray Bradbury’s Dinosaur Tales.

Art © William Stout.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 7

Past Times A trio of watercolor dinosaur portraits by Stout: (top) “Carnivore,” dated 1977; (bottom left) a 2005 Stegosaurus illo; and (bottom right) a Triceratops, produced in 2006. All, courtesy of Heritage.

Art © William Stout.

8 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

experience piloting a Zodiac boat during a trip to Antarctica. Please tell us about that unique experience and how it informed the resulting comic-book cover.

STOUT: I got a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to live and paint in Antarctica. I spent two months at McMurdo Station, which is the largest station in Antarctica during the summer. There are about 1,200 people there. Then I spent two months at Palmer Station, which is the smallest station in Antarctica. There are just 39 people there because there are only 39 beds at the station. At Palmer Station, I became a licensed Zodiac operator. A Zodiac is an inflatable boat craft. Each day I would go to a different island and do sketches of the wildlife there.

One day I had a high-up NSF official with me. You don’t go anyplace in Antarctica alone, so she was my buddy for this trip. We found an island, and I set up and started painting and drawing. Several hours went by, and I noticed the temperature had suddenly dropped about 20 degrees within ten minutes. I thought, “Uh-oh—we better get out of here!” So, she and I went down to where we had left the boat, and there it was—sitting on the rocks, high and dry. The tide had gone out so the boat was no longer in the water.

The Zodiac was too heavy for me to move to the water, but because of my training I was able to take the engine out, set it aside, take the inflatable into the water, then take the engine and reinstall it on the boat.

Then, we began to head back. We had the wind to our

back, so that was really helping us speed-wise. But in the middle of returning to the station, my Zodiac partner said, “Hey, look—there’s one of those rare yellowish leopard seals. Swing around so I can get a photo.”

I didn’t think it was a good idea because we had to get back before we were stranded away from the station. I tried to talk her out of it, but finally decided to whip around to where the leopard seal was resting, so she could get some shots, and we could then head back to the station. I turned the boat around and the wind caught the front tip of it. Suddenly, our Zodiac was straight up vertical in the water. From the back of the boat, I had to leap forward to the front of the boat to keep us from completely capsizing. My NSF pal got her shot, and we took off.

It was terrifying because the seawater is 28 degrees Fahrenheit. You wear orange floatation jackets in case you end up in the water. It’s not to save you, it’s so they can find your body, because if you enter water that cold, in two minutes you’re paralyzed, and in four minutes you’re in a coma.

VAUGHAN: The cover to Cadillacs and Dinosaurs #3, in which Jack and Hannah are attacked by pterosaurs on a cliff, also has an interesting backstory. What exactly happened?

STOUT: I would sometimes accompany the bird scientists in Antarctica when they would go out to do their biological studies.

The Eighth Wonder of the World… …is William Stout!

But Kong’s pretty impressive, too.

Stout’s covers to (left) King Kong #3 (May 1991) and (right) 4 (July 1991).

This adaptation by Donald Simpson was published by Fantagraphics under its “Monster Comics” imprint. © 1991 Monster Comics, Donald Simpson, and Richard Merian Cooper.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 9

Skuas are one of the main predators in Antarctica. They’re sort of a cross between a hawk and a seagull, but they have these nasty claws at the tips of their webbed feet. If you come too close to their territory, they will dive-bomb you and skim just above your head and take out a chunk of your scalp as they pass over you.

The scientists were weighing the skua chicks. You bring a skua pole with you because a skua will only fly as high at the tallest object it sees, so the pole protects you. One skua spotted a scientist in its territory and went into a divebomb. At that moment, the scientist stood up and the skua couldn’t pull out in time and hit him square in the back of the head. Knocked out the scientist and the skua. That’s what inspired that drawing.

VAUGHAN: You worked with Harvey Kurtzman on one of Kurtzman’s final projects, Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures (1990). Your contribution was a dinosaur tale titled “Shmegeggi of the Cavemen,” which actually first appeared in the September 1990 issue of Heavy Metal [vol. 14 #4—ed.].

What do you recall of this story and working with Kurtzman?

STOUT: Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures was a Byron Preiss project. The idea was to put something together with Harvey’s involvement that was sort of like the old MAD comics. Your readers might not know that the first 23 issues of MAD were not magazines, they were full color comic books. And Harvey wrote and did the layouts for every story in those first 23 issues. We were working in a similar way. Harvey wrote seven or eight stories and did the layouts; then each story went to a different artist.

“Shmegeggi of the Cavemen” went to me. I decided to surprise Harvey and make Shmegeggi the ancestor of Goodman Beaver, a character created

by Kurtzman and Will Elder for Help! magazine.

I also did the book’s cover. The initial cover was from a Harvey Kurtzman rough and it was two explorers finding a dinosaur egg, not realizing that there is a big T. rex and other dinosaurs behind them. Marvel didn’t get the idea and asked for one of their characters on the cover since they were going to be the publisher. So, we did a Silver Surfer cover, which I thought was pretty weak, at least as far as the concept. It depicts the Silver Surfer riding a surfboard through outer space and a miniature Count Dracula is biting him on the neck. To this day, I can’t make any sense out of that. But that was the gig, so I did it.

We planned to have a deluxe edition of Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures. One of the things the deluxe edition publishers wanted to do was a jam page. Now, I usually hate jam pages because they are spontaneous, unplanned, and often look like hell. I thought, “What if I designed the entire jam page.” Using my ability to duplicate other artists’ styles, I could insert characters from the other stories in pencil. The idea was that it would go to each artist, and I would tell them, “Look—you can either ink what I drew or redraw it in your own style with a different idea, but just use that particular space.” So that way, it came out with a nice, flowing design. It was sort of an S-shaped design, like some of the old Jack Davis/Frank Frazetta movie posters in which all the characters are chasing someone. In this instance, they are chasing Harvey Kurtzman, who was drawn by Robert Crumb on the jam page. That way, each artist got to do their bit for what ended up being the signature page of the deluxe edition. The dinosaur cover that Marvel rejected was going to be used on the deluxe edition. I expanded it and made it a wraparound cover.

“Shmegeggi” and other associated Strange Adventures art of mine are going to be included in an upcoming three-volume box set from Flesk Publications collecting all my comic-related work. I believe it will really surprise people who think I’ve done very little in comics. I’ve actually done a lot of comics, it’s just that they are scattered all over the place.

In my quest to put together the three-volume set, I have been going through all kinds of stuff, and I’m the kind of guy who saves everything.

In my research, I came across a letter from Bob Chapman at Graffiti Designs. Attached to it was an unpublished Kurzman story titled “The

Real-Life Inspirations Stout produced variant cover art for the first three issues of Topps Comics’ Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. In this interview, he reveals his personal experiences that helped shape these extraordinary images, for issues #2 (Mar. 1994) and 3 (Apr. 1994).

Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

10 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Chickens.” In the letter Bob asked me to create model sheets, which I had come across a couple of months earlier, of the characters in “The Chickens.”

I wondered at the time, what in the heck was this for? It was in the same format as Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures stories.

I penciled, inked, colored, and lettered “The Chickens.” I emailed Denis Kitchen because he was working closely with the Kurtzman family as an agent on some projects. He helped clear up the mystery of “The Chickens.” Denis explained that that story was going to be included in the deluxe edition, and each panel was going to be given to a different artist. That explained why Bob needed model sheets. They were a way of keeping the characters looking somewhat consistent. “The Chickens” will be published for the first time in my upcoming box set.

Coincidentally, a few weeks ago Bob Chapman and Denis Kitchen were talking about publishing the deluxe edition on their own. So, it may appear in that book as well.

VAUGHAN: In your big retrospective book Fantastic Worlds you have an image titled “Uh Oh!,” which is a girl in peril from a bunch of dinosaurs. This was for a proposed comic-book series to be edited by Arthur Suydam. Did the project see publication?

STOUT: No, it never did. As I recall, Penthouse wanted to publish a regular sexy Heavy Metal style of comic book. Art had the job of being the editor, and he designed the look of the girl in peril. She was to be a regular character in each issue. Not too much later, the project was cancelled—but not before I had finished my piece.

VAUGHAN: We have to talk about Alien Pig Farm 3000, an odd Image title from 2006. You created the covers for issues #1 and 3, and #1 featured some pretty cool dinosaurs. What the heck was Alien Pig Farm 3000, and how did you become involved in it?

Kurtzman Collaboration (left) Page 1 of “Shmegeggi of the Cavemen,” from its first publication in Heavy Metal vol. 14 #4 (Sept. 1990). The story was reprinted Marvel/ Epic’s 1990 hardcover collection Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures.

Its cover (right), laid out by Kurtzman and finished and painted by William Stout, was not the artists’ original cover for the one-shot. © 1989–1990 Harvey Kurtzman and William Stout.

STOUT: That was a hillbillies-meet-aliens science-fiction series co-published by RAW Studios (Tim Bradstreet and Thomas Jane). They hired me to do the covers to number one and number three and, very cleverly they hired Mark Schultz to do the covers to two and four. So, I did the first cover. Then, I saw Mark’s first cover and thought, “Oh, no! I’ve really got to up my game here!” So, I poured a lot more work into the cover for number 3. They figured that Mark and I would compete to outdo each other, and they were right. Smart guys!

VAUGHAN: Though not a comic book, we should discuss your award-winning children’s book, The Little Blue Brontosaurus (1983), which was the inspiration for The Land Before Time movie franchise. Your style here is very cartoony. Why did you want to do a children’s book like this?

STOUT: This was a project presented to me by Byron Preiss. We collaborated on the story, and I designed the characters and did all of the layouts. I think I did five or six finished pieces for the book, but most of the interior illustrations were completed Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 11

A STOUT MOVIE SHOUT-OUT

Cult Classics Stout has produced artwork for many movie posters.

While the artist admits his preference for dominant images that can be seen from afar such as Wizards (1977), he is also a master of multiple-character imagery, seen here in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979), and Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). Posters courtesy of Heritage.

Wizards © 20th Century Fox. Life of Brian © Warner Bros. Rock ’n’ Roll High School © New World Pictures. Amazon Women on the Moon © Universal.

12 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

by Don Morgan, who at that time was ghosting Pogo for the Walt Kelly estate.

It worked out great because I was able to draw in a style similar to 1936-era Walt Disney cartoons, which I love. Everything meshed together that particular year at Disney. The cartoons lost the crudeness of the silent stuff, but it wasn’t overly slick like the later Mickey Mouse cartoons where he became more of a suburban character.

We did the book, which won the Children’s Choice Award for 1984. I just fell in love with that character and immediately started pressing Byron to do more books with it. He kept putting it off and putting it off. Finally, I just ended up writing the sequel myself and presented it to Byron. He was upset because it didn’t have any of his input, so I said, Byron, change anything you want, I just want to get this thing out.

But it was never finished. I really wanted to do a Little Blue activity book.

VAUGHAN: Was the book optioned for The Land Before Time movies?

STOUT: Nope, it was stolen. But what am I going to do, sue the most powerful director in the movie biz? That would have been the end of my film career. I ended up doing a lot of the advertising for The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park and working on other projects for him, so it all kind of worked out in the end.

VAUGHAN: Is your approach to a comic-book dinosaur different from your approach to, say, a fine-art painting of a dinosaur or a museum mural? When drawing dinosaurs for comics, what is your process?

STOUT: When I’m not drawing for comics, I try to make the dinosaurs as accurate as possible because I know it may be the only time the public gets to see an image of that particular creature. In the 1970s, I joined the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, so I could stay updated and current on all the latest dinosaur information. Membership in that club introduced me to the paleontologists of the world.

If I wanted to draw a newly discovered dinosaur, I would start a correspondence. This was before email. I would snail-mail photocopies of my pencil sketches of my reconstruction to the paleontologist who had discovered the dinosaur I was reconstructing, and we’d go back and forth, with me getting valuable input until my reconstruction was as accurate as it could possibly be.

Comic books are a different world. I don’t feel compelled to be as accurate. I think my dinosaurs are probably more accurate than most dinosaurs in comics, but that’s just because of my paleo background. For instance, the cover I did for the first issue of Alien Worlds [vol. 3—ed.], the Tyrannosaurus

‘The Little Blue Brontosaurus’ Our featured artist produced the cover and some interior illustrations for this beautiful, award-winning 1983 children’s book. © William Stout and Don Morgan.

VAUGHAN: Bill, when drawing a dino-themed comicbook cover, what informs the design and composition of the image? In other words, what is your inspiration?

Do you always try to capture a scene from the interior story, or do you allow your imagination to go wild?

STOUT: I drew a whole dinosaur story that will be published in my three-volume set. It’s written by Bruce Jones and was originally intended for a revival of Alien Worlds, which never happened. With that story, I was just following what Bruce had written and doing my usual breakdowns, trying to tell the story as clearly as possible. I thought I should do the book’s cover, too.

I chose what I thought was one of the more dramatic scenes in the story for the cover.

I like covers to be really bold. I believe you should be able to read a cover from 100 yards, if you’ve done your job right. To me, they are like mini posters in a way. Before I began making movies, I worked on more than 120 ad campaigns and movie posters for motion pictures. I developed a really keen design sense and a knowledge of the importance of silhouettes reading from a distance. The work I was doing advertising the movies would usually be seen from your car, so you wouldn’t have more than a few seconds to tell what it is. That’s always been my approach to covers—make it so they can be read from a distance. I must add that I haven’t always been successful in achieving that goal.

VAUGHAN: Have you been influenced at all by any of the great dino comic artists of the past, such as Roy Krenkel, Al Williamson, or Wally Wood?

STOUT: The EC guys were all huge influences on me, especially Williamson, Krenkel, Frazetta, and Wood. I became friends with all of those guys except Wally Wood. I was really good friends with Roy Krenkel and Al Williamson. Al invited me to stay at his home a few times. He was an incredibly generous guy.

It was Williamson who coined the term “Good Lizard Man.” That was someone who was good at drawing or painting dinosaurs. We formed an informal group called “The Good Lizard Men,” which was me, Mark Schultz, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, and anyone else who was good at drawing dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 13

Aliens and Dinosaurs! (top) Stout’s cover to Alien Worlds vol. 3 #1 (May 1988) featured a mega-sized T. rex. (bottom) Feeding time is disrupted by visitors from the heavens on his cover to Image’s offbeat 2006 title, Alien Pig Farm 3000 #1.

Cover art © William Stout.

rex is probably four times as big as a real T. rex. Spielberg did the same thing with the T. rex in Jurassic Park. That head is about two to four times the size of an actual T. rex skull.

For comics, it’s fiction and you’re doing something much more dramatic than the painting of a museum mural or a series of paintings for a scientific dinosaur book. I try to make my dinosaur illustrations accurate, but also exciting and dramatic at the same time.

VAUGHAN: Are you quick at the drawing board? Are dinosaur comic-book covers something you can illustrate fairly quickly?

STOUT: I’m really, really fast. I once read an article that said Jack Davis was making a million dollars a year, and I thought, “That’s a worthy goal! How does he do it?” I began analyzing his stuff and one of the things I found out right away was that Jack was one of the fastest artists in the business. That was one of the reasons he could make that much money. You want to be fast, but never lose any of the quality of what you’re doing. Those were my goals.

Draw everything at the highest quality possible as quickly as possible—and take home a big check.

VAUGHAN: Who among your contemporaries do you feel really excel at drawing comic-book dinosaurs? Who inspires and awes you?

STOUT: That’s an easy one: Mark Schultz! He’s not only a great guy, he’s a phenomenal artist and probably the best living dry-brush artist in the world.

To his credit, even at the level he is at, he doesn’t stop trying to get better and better. I really admire that. I revere his work ethic and the quality of his work. Mark’s been doing some of what I’ve been doing in the paleo world. We have friends who are paleontologists, and he has been doing reconstructions of some of their findings. He goes full-on accuracy when he’s doing that. It’s no longer a comic-book illustration, it’s a beautiful drawing of a new dinosaur that’s been discovered.

VAUGHAN: What are your earliest memories of reading comic books featuring dinosaurs? Did you read the “War That Time Forgot” series in DC’s Star Spangled War Stories?

STOUT: I discovered “The War That Time Forgot” in the 1960s. I thought that Joe Kubert (I still love Joe’s Tor) and Russ Heath especially understood the essence of dinosaurs and the essence of reptilian things and they conveyed that in their comics work. Both became big influences on me. Their dinosaurs were so much fun to look at because they really felt so real.

VAUGHAN: Does it bother you when dinosaurs aren’t realistically drawn in comic books? Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, for example, weren’t exactly using Charles R. Knight as their guide on “The War That Time Forgot.”

STOUT: That didn’t bother me at the time. Their stuff was more cartoony that Kubert and Health. Guys like Kubert and Heath and Bernie Wrightson really understood the essence of what made something reptilian. So even though their dinosaurs weren’t accurate, they felt accurate, and they felt like living creatures because the artists understood the soul and essence of those beings. That’s something I’ve always tried to capture when I do my reptilian and dinosaur drawings.

VAUGHAN: Speaking of reptilian things, you had the privilege of inking a Devil Dinosaur page penciled by Jack Kirby. Were you a fan of that series?

STOUT: Not as big a fan as I was of The Demon and Jack’s [Thor backup] “Tales of Asgard” series. That Devil Dinosaur page came about because Jack did a gift book for his wife, Roz, called Heroes and Villains. In it were pencil drawings of every single hero and villain that Jack had created. Someone got the bright idea to have a different inker for each piece, so there was an inked edition of that book as well. The piece I was assigned was Devil Dinosaur—for obvious reasons. Before that, though, because I had secretly inked [much of] The 14 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

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Demon #15 [to help credited and regular inker Mike Royer catch up on deadlines—ed.], I inked a Demon pinup based on the Demon drawing Jack had done for Roz. VAUGHAN: What do you enjoy most about drawing dinosaurs in comic books, Bill? What is the special thrill for you?

STOUT: It’s pretty much the same kind of joy I get from drawing dragons, except for the fact that with dragons I don’t need any reference.

I know enough about dinosaur anatomy that I can make my dragons more realistic because I can add that real anatomy to the drawing.

I also love depicting dinosaurs in ways that have never been done before. Part of that comes from my experience in making movies. I was one of the first paleoartists to break from doing static portraits of dinosaurs. I wanted to show what these creatures were like when they were alive!

I use lots of skeletal reference. When I’m drawing dinosaurs… say, I’m drawing a Tyrannosaurus rex— I have a T. rex skull in my living room. So, I’ll draw from that skull. For any other dinosaurs, I’ll go back to the bones and stuff to do the recreations. I do try to make them as accurate as possible, even though they are comic-book illustrations.

VAUGHAN: Wait… How did you get a T. rex skull?

STOUT: I was close to the old regime at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I visited there a lot. And there was a woman in the bone lab named Mary Odano, a very sweet and insightful woman who I got to know very well. When she heard I was doing a painting of a mosasaur rising out of the sea, she came over and gave me a big mosasaur skull that I could work from.

The public often doesn’t know that the dinosaur skeletons they see in museums aren’t the real skeletons, they are casts, usually in resin or fiberglass, of the bones. The reason is that the actual fossils are too fragile, too heavy, and too important to mount and put in front of the public. They are kept behind the scenes for scientists to study. Casting is also an inexpensive way for museums to add to their collections; they will swap castings with each other. A museum in Tokyo had requested a casting of the T. rex skull at the Natural History Museum of

Los Angeles County. Mary called me. She told me it’s just as easy to pop two out of the mold as one—“Are you interested?” So I bought a T. rex skull from her. When I got it, I was living in a small apartment in Hollywood, so that skull kind of dominated my living room. At the time, it was the biggest T. rex skull ever found. There are two big scoops in the back of the skull where the neck muscles attached, and when I hosted parties, I would line the scoops with foil and then fill them with tortilla chips and guacamole.

VAUGHAN: Lastly, Bill, of all your dinosaur comics work, is there a particular cover or page that is your favorite? One that is especially meaningful to you?

STOUT: There are a couple. I’m really happy with the second King Kong cover I did, where Kong is fighting a pterosaur. The Antarctica-inspired second and third Cadillacs and Dinosaurs covers—I’m pleased with how those came out. Alien Worlds, the one with the girl behind the tree with the T. rex trying to find her, was important to me because it was the first work of mine to be auctioned off by the famous Christie’s auction house. That put me on the art collectors’ map.

They had an estimated sale price of $1,200 and it went for well over $3,000 or $4,000. It proved to art collectors that I had a strong secondary market and that purchasing my work was a good investment.

My sincere thanks to Bill Stout for his time, his fascinating stories, and the thousands of pages of stunning art he has created over the years. Check out his website: williamstout.com. Stout is also an annual guest at Wonderfest in Louisville, Kentucky; Dragon Con in Atlanta; and both San Diego ComicFest and Comic-Con International, wherehe sells his dinosaur books, sketchbooks, original art, and more.

DON VAUGHAN has had a love affair with comic books since he was 11 years old. His writing has appeared in an eclectic array of publications, including Military Officer Magazine, Nursing Spectrum, Filmfax, The Weekly World News, and RetroFan.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 15

Where Were YOU During the Incredible Dinosaur Invasion of 1977?

DC Special #27 (Apr.–May 1977) spotlighted DC’s mutant, the recently revived Captain Comet, the “hero in residence” appearing in Secret Society of Super-Villains.

In its 34-page time-toppling adventure written

by Bob Rozakis and illustrated by Rich Buckler and Joe Rubinstein (who also did the cover shown here), Cap encountered Tommy Tomorrow and the Planeteers, the JLA, the villain Chronos, and a new towering terror, Tyrano Rex! (For a Captain Comet history, see BACK ISSUE #29.)

TM & © DC Comics.

16 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

“It is said, X-Men, that the greatness of a being is measured by the quality of his foes. If so, our mutual glory is assured. Yours, of course will be posthumous.”

– Sauron, Marvel Fanfare #4

by C h r i s t o p h e r

Larochelle

The story of the villainous Sauron, also known as Dr. Karl Lykos, unfolds over the course of a few stories that are spread out between 1969 and 1982. The character’s visuals are spectacular: a fusion of man and pterodactyl, menacingly colored green and looking absolutely horrifying! When it comes to the origins of the character, one legendary team of comics creators is involved: Roy Thomas and Neal Adams. Before the X-Men title was relegated to becoming a reprint book for several years, the energy of the Thomas/Adams issues showed what could really be done with the X-Men concept, which had proven to have a difficult time finding its footing in the 1960s. Sauron’s story is an essential piece of this exciting run of comics.

A ‘PSYCHIC VAMPIRE’

roy thomas

The entire idea of Sauron was certainly “edgy,” given the harsh restrictions on what was and wasn’t possible in stories that had to be submitted to the Comics Code Authority in 1969. According to Roy Thomas, “Neal and I wanted to do a mutant vampire story… but this was still in the days before the Code was changed to allow vampires, and—I forget which—either I checked with the Code or we just assumed they’d give us trouble. So we made it a ‘psychic vampire,’ without using those words.”

At the very end of X-Men #59 (Aug. 1969), Havok has been injured following a battle with the Sentinels.

The Beast makes a call to Dr. Karl Lykos in hopes that his teammate can be helped. The reader is warned that Beast’s phone call may not have gone to the best physician available, since Lykos himself is in shadow… and a victim harnessed to some kind of horrible device is shown at first resisting, and then succumbing to, something that sure does look like torture. The beginning of X-Men #60 (Sept. 1969) explains Beast’s phone call. Lykos was, in fact, a colleague of Professor Xavier’s when both men worked on a “mysterious enterprise” called Project Mutant. Beast doesn’t have much more information to share with his teammates, stating, IMDb.com.

Mutants vs. a Terror-dactyl Sauron’s first appearance, in X-Men #60 (Sept. 1969). Written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by the late, great Neal Adams.

(BACK ISSUE #142 will honor the artist, who died on April 28, 2022, with a special Neal Adams Tribute edition.)

TM & © Marvel.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17

Tolkien of Our Gratitude (top) Dr. Karl Lykos’ painful transformation into Sauron, from X-Men #60. Neal Adams would soon illustrate a similar metamorphosis with the introduction of Man-Bat in DC’s Detective Comics #400 (June 1970). (bottom) Adams’ cover for the twoparter’s conclusion, in X-Men #61.

TM & © Marvel.

18 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

“The Professor’s records on him are decidedly incomplete!

But right now, he’s the only physician we dare trust!”

After helping Havok, Dr. Lykos recounts how some unusual circumstances led to his current status quo. Before he had grown to adulthood, Lykos had been a part of an expedition in Tierra del Fuego. Lykos’ father worked as an explorer’s guide. On this particular trip, Karl came along as his father showed this dangerous land to a man known as Herr Anderssen. Anderssen’s child, Tanya, was also present and soon became lost. After a long search, Karl found the missing Tanya in a cave populated by some truly shocking creatures—pterodactyls! Karl sustained some injuries… and little did he know the mark his wounds would leave on him. He soon discovered that touching a being would transfer life energy to him (his pet dog was the first victim). This led to a dependence on taking the raw energy of others; in fact, Dr. Lykos’ association with Professor Xavier was merely to source some ultra-powerful mutants he could use. Rigged up to Lykos’ machinery, Havok supplies the energy that leads to a truly terrifying transformation! With energy surging throughout him, Lykos begins to take on some of the traits of the pterodactyls that attacked him years ago. His skin turns green, a beak forms, giant wings sprout… a monster has been born. “My body… my face… my very soul… they are changed… transformed… filled with a bursting, billowing power… power for good… or power for evil!

And, I choose… evil! An evil so great, so monumental that only one name in all the annals of literature will contain it! The name of Tolkien’s ultimate villain… the dark lord who personified evil… who was truly evil incarnate! The name of… Sauron!”

Regarding the villain’s Lord of the Rings-inspired name, “It was a sort of mixture of homage and pandering, I suppose,” Roy Thomas tells BACK ISSUE. “I liked Tolkien well enough, but I was never a big fan. Since the psychic vampire was to be reptilian, ‘Sauron’ seemed a good enough name, but it was a mistake to use it, even if—since it’s only a name and nothing else of Tolkien was used—it was probably legal enough. If I had it to do over, I’d use a different name.”

Hearing about a “winged thief” on the news, the X-Men discuss that maybe it’s best to lie low. Angel dissents, caring little for what people think about mutants. He brashly flies out to meet Sauron, quickly becoming a victim of the villain’s hypnotic gaze.

X-Men #61 (Oct. 1969) continues the X-Men’s dangerous encounter with Sauron. Before the rest of the X-Men arrive to help, Angel fights through Sauron’s hallucinations. The winged X-Man eventually realizes what’s real and what isn’t in a twopage spread that showcases a fantastic layout by Neal Adams.

Sauron’s figure fills the pages, and smaller panels that recap the previous issue’s details are drawn over his wings. Soon after the battle between heroes and villain begins, Sauron’s powers fade.

He manages to coerce Angel to return him to his office, reverting again to his human form.

At the office, Havok is doing much better than before… but not all is well for Karl Lykos. Tanya is there, and Lykos reminds her that she has been forbidden, by order of her father. Sure enough, Dr. Anderssen re-enters Lykos’ life at this moment, dragging his daughter away. A chance to drain the mutant energies of Polaris is soon taken advantage of, and Sauron flies again. Sauron’s game here is one of simple revenge. He crashes through a window of the Anderssen household, threatening to do harm to the father of the woman he loves. The X-Men aren’t far behind, though, and Sauron seems to be gaining a sense of not wanting to follow through with his evil impulses: “Murder? Yes… yes, I would have killed him! How could Tanya have looked at me again… if I destroyed her father? I hadn’t realized till now… how fully the evil side of me… is in command! Must go away someplace… where none can ever find me…!”

With that, Sauron flies away to the place where it all began… his father’s cabin. Living in complete seclusion, Karl Lykos reemerges. He’s very intentional about this being the end of his life, and when Tanya returns to bring him back, he is so fearful of being dangerous that he runs right off a cliff. If not for a quickly created ice shield, Tanya surely would have followed him.

Behold, the Rebirth Sauron’s back— boy, is he ever!

The cliffhanger ending of the Chris Claremont–written X-Men #114 (Oct. 1978) in original art form, signed by its artists, penciler John Byrne and inker Terry Austin.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © Marvel.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 19

Mutants vs.

Mutates (left) The X-Men tangle with Sauron’s Savage Land Mutates in Marvel Fanfare #3 (July 1982). Cover by Dave Cockrum and Bob McLeod. (right) X-Men #115 (Nov. 1978). Cover by Byrne and Austin.

TM & © Marvel.

That ice shield, of course, means that Iceman (along with Cyclops and Marvel Girl) was following Tanya. Marvel Girl laments the fact that Tanya hadn’t alerted them sooner, but Cyclops thinks that maybe it was for the best: “two beings struggled for supremacy within Karl Lykos… one of them a monster! But, it was the man who won out… even in death! And somehow… we must find strength in that!”

Sauron’s first story would seem to be his last… except that the character really seemed to catch the interest of another significant writer who followed Roy Thomas as a chronicler of the X-Men’s adventures!

MASTER OF THE SAVAGE LAND

Sauron wasn’t seen again for years until he reappeared in The Uncanny X-Men #114 (Oct. 1978, the very first issue of the series to feature that unusual adjective on the cover).

By the time X-Men reached issue #114, seismic changes had taken place. Following the “reprint years,”

20 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

in which issues #67–93 featured X-Men tales that had already been told, the “All-New, All-Different” revamp brought new characters, fresh ideas, and the writer who would become synonymous with the franchise for well over 15 years: Chris Claremont.

“I love the Savage Land as a concept,” says Claremont. “Sauron as a tragic adversary was always fun, especially as he dates back to Roy and Neal’s X-Men run.” In Claremont’s story, Sauron comes along at a time that is extremely trying for the heroes.

Following a battle at Magneto’s Antarctic base, Beast and Phoenix become separated from the rest of their teammates, creating two groups of heroes that think that the others are dead. A helicopter rescue comes quickly for Beast and Phoenix, but for everyone else there is a long road ahead!

The journey of Colossus, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, Banshee, and Wolverine soon brings them to the Savage Land. While Storm leaves her teammates behind to enjoy a lake and some sunlight, she’s spotted by a man who isn’t fully shown on-panel.

“The life-force within her is incredible… no! I musn’t!

But… I hunger!” the mystery man says.

This is, of course, Dr. Karl Lykos, but he is soon completely overtaken by the energy that surges from Storm. So much energy, in fact… that Sauron is reborn! As the rest of the X-Men respond to the threat, the newer members of the team don’t recognize the winged villain. Cyclops does, describing him as “someone who should be dead.”

Sauron’s response: “Dead, mutant? I am evil incarnate—I cannot die! Behold, fools, the rebirth of—Sauron!”

The beginning of Uncanny X-Men #115 (Nov. 1978) makes it clear that Sauron’s goal is nothing short of ruling the Savage Land. In a thrilling double-page spread, John Byrne’s artwork shows an enraged Wolverine proclaiming: “the only place you’re gonna

You Can’t Beat Cockrum!

A look at the artistry of the original New X-Men illustrator—now the subject of writer Glen Cadigan’s biography, The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum, from TwoMorrows—in this original art page from Marvel Fanfare #3.

Inks by Bob McLeod. Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © Marvel.

rule… is in Hell!” Cyclops remembers the tactics employed by Sauron in their previous encounter, and he knows that Wolverine is a victim of Sauron’s hypnotic powers. Wolverine sees his fellow X-Men as monsters and tries to attack. Cyclops blasts his dangerous teammate to take him out of the fight.

Caught between another optic blast and a shriek from Banshee, Sauron is weakened. He tries to take the energy of Colossus, but when the X-Man activates his power to change his skin to steel, the villain is completely overwhelmed. Gone are the wings, the beak, and everything threatening… it’s just Karl Lykos.

If not for the quick intervention of Ka-Zar, Wolverine probably would have killed poor Dr. Lykos! Ka-Zar and the X-Men want to hear Lykos’ story.

The X-Men were deceived the last time they saw the man who turned into Sauron. He didn’t actually plunge too far from that cliff in X-Men #61 (a ledge broke his fall). The despondent Lykos eventually found his way to the Savage Land. He witnessed a powerful woman named Zaladane transform a normal man into Garokk, the Petrified Man. With his great powers of destruction, Garokk posed a huge threat to the Savage Land. Karl Lykos was able to get information to Ka-Zar, and it was this alliance that caused Ka-Zar to so vehemently defend Lykos’ life when Wolverine threatened to end it. Garokk’s interference causes snow to fall, signaling grave danger for the Savage Land’s survival.

Uncanny X-Men #116 (Dec. 1978) resolves the story. The heroes manage to defeat Garokk and save the Savage Land. Karl Lykos is sidelined for the entire issue, but is present to bid the X-Men farewell as they begin a boat ride toward home (they hope!). It comes down to a handshake between Lykos and Cyclops, as the former says: “I’m not going with you, Cyclops.

The world thinks Karl Lykos is dead. Let’s leave it at that.”

To this, Cyclops replies: “I understand, Lykos.

Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it.”

Parting ways with the X-Men here in issue #116, Sauron was again dormant for years. However, when Marvel launched a special new series in 1982, the character came back into the spotlight.

WITH GREAT FANFARE

The series was Marvel Fanfare, an ad-free, bimonthly series that was printed on high-quality paper to better showcase art from both Marvel’s established and new talent. Chris Claremont wrote the lead story weaving through Marvel Fanfare #1–4, and he brought Sauron with him. The Fanfare Savage Land story’s individual chapters are each distinct; both characters and artists swap out while Claremont binds everything together in a tale that effectively brings the story of Sauron to a close. [Editor’s note: The changing of co-stars and artists in this four-parter is the result of its original conception as a four-issue Marvel Team-Up serial starring Spider-Man with different partners, starting

with the Angel. The story was shelved, incomplete, after its first two issues until editor Al Milgrom reactivated its production once Marvel Fanfare was hastily slotted onto his editorial schedule. See BACK ISSUE #96 for in-depth coverage of Marvel Fanfare.]

Events are set in motion in Marvel Fanfare #1 (Mar. 1982), lushly illustrated by Michael Golden, when Tanya Anderssen seeks out the help of Angel.

While she had believed that she had witnessed Karl Lykos’ death, a recently published magazine’s story about the Savage Land featured a picture she couldn’t ignore. Standing next to Ka-Zar, in a picture only a few months old, is Lykos. Because of past history, Tanya feels that Angel is the best person to help with the reunion. Begrudgingly, Angel agrees. Parallel to this, in New York City, Peter Parker finds himself given a special assignment for the Daily Bugle that will take him to the Savage Land. He and Angel find themselves together with Tanya on the military helicopter bringing them into the heart of the Savage Land, and

chris claremont © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 21

STEGRON THE DINOSAUR MAN

by Michael Eury Watch out, Web-Slinger! Here comes the Bronze Age’s other Marvel dinosaurvillain—a super-fast man-turned-stegosaurus with a bulletproof hide and spiky claws, who can heave up to 25 tons! He’s Stegron the Dinosaur Man, the cold-blooded Spider-rogue hatched from the same science-gone-wrong that created another of Spidey’s deadliest foes.

The Dinosaur Man first showed his tail (really!) in the Spider-Man/Ka-Zar adventure in Marvel Team-Up #19 (Mar. 1974), written by Len Wein and illustrated by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia. In “The Coming of… Stegron the Dinosaur Man!,” Spidey’s confidant, Dr. Curt Connors—who sometimes doubles as one of Spider-Man’s most lethal enemies, the Lizard—petitions the Wall-Crawler to swing (via a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft) to the prehistoric realm of unparalleled dangers, the Savage Land, in pursuit of the good doctor’s erstwhile lab assistant, Dr. Vincent Stegron. Stegron has pilfered Connors’ cellular-regeneration research data—which most recently employed dinosaur DNA samples provided to S.H.I.E.L.D. by the Savage Land’s own Ka-Zar—and is using it for foul purposes in that lost world. Partnering with the Lord of the Hidden Jungle, Spidey and his loin-clothed teammate discover that the Savage Land’s dinosaurs are under the psionic sway of a new master—Stegron himself, now self-mutated into a monstrous dino-man. In wide-eyed amazement, Spidey and Ka-Zar listen as the hideous Stegron immodestly hisses his plans: “I ssseek not to rule the Sssavage Land! I ssseek to rule the world!”

And “Steggy,” as Spidey would later call him, does his darnedest to do so as the Dinosaur Man hauls a herd of his “reptilian ‘brothers’” to New York City in issue #20’s Spider-Man/Black Panther team-up, appropriately titled “Dinosaurs on Broadway!” With Sal Buscema spelling Kane as penciler, Wein’s MTU #20 is a rollicking romp featuring Stegron’s dinosaur assault on the Big Apple. “Thusss,” the scaly scalawag slobbers, “I do hereby claim the island Manhattan—in the name of the holy dinosssaur empire!” Not if T’Challa and Spidey can stop it, which they do, and Stegron apparently dies at story’s end.

But no card-carrying M.M.M.S. member really thought this would be the last time we’d see the Dinosaur Man… Len Wein, whose favorite Marvel character to write was the man-monster superhero the Incredible Hulk, enjoyed writing monster-villains as well. As the wordsmith of Amazing Spider-Man, Wein resurrected Stegron in issues #165–166 (Feb.–Mar. 1977), once again involving the Lizard. It was clear to readers that the Dinosaur Man was a worthy adversary of the Wall-Crawler.

Other writers slowly received that message, however, as it took a decade before Stegron once again reared his ugly head, at first getting only a token pinup in a “Forgotten Foes” gallery in 1987’s Web of Spider-Man Annual #3. Before long, beginning in the 1990s, Marvel writers, emboldened by Jurassic Park mania, realized the villainous value of the character. Stegron has since been seen with increasing regularity, sparring with no end of Marvel characters including Thunderstrike, Black Widow, Captain America and Hawkeye, Venom, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, and Spider-Woman, as well as Spidey… even forming an alliance with Sauron. And with comicdom’s ongoing love of dinosaurs, you can be sssure the Dinosaur Man will resssurface before long!

[Editor’s note: Ka-Zar’s 1970s adventures will be explored in BI #144, themed “Savage Lands.” And many of Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery—some famous, some “forgotten”—take center stage in our “Spider-Foes” issue, BI #145!]

(top) Stegron debuts! Marvel Team-Up #19 (Mar. 1974). Cover by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia. (middle) Look who’s back! Amazing Spider-Man #165 (Feb. 1977). Cover by John Romita, Sr. and Giacoia. (bottom) “Forgotten Foe” no more! Venom #152 (Sept. 2017). Cover by Francisco Hernandez.

TM & © Marvel.

22 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Savage TV Land An animation cel featuring Dr. Karl Lykos’ sinister alter ego, from the ’90s X-Men series.

Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © Marvel.

of course things soon go haywire. Magneto’s Mutates defeat Angel and Spider-Man, and the heroes find themselves about to be subjected to experimentation via a reworked version of an evolution-altering device called the Genetic Transformer.

Marvel Fanfare #2 (May 1982) explains what happened with Tanya after she was separated from Angel and Spider-Man. A man with a familiar voice holds her, and it’s none other than Karl Lykos!

The reunion isn’t peaceful for long, as the horrifically mutated Spider-Man and Angel appear. Tanya is captured by the Mutates, and is soon devolved by the Transformer’s powers. Lykos can’t accept this, and once again risks losing everything by draining the newly imbued mutant energy from Tanya. Lykos’ powers are also the only hope for Angel and Spider-Man, which leads to the dangerous return of Sauron. Back to full strength, Sauron sets off with his goal of ruling the Savage Land. While boarding a helicopter with Peter Parker, all Angel can do to comfort Tanya is assure her that he’ll call the X-Men for help. Tanya has decided to see this through: “As for my decision to stay, I’ve found the man I love. I won’t rest—I can’t—until he’s cured, once and for all… or destroyed.”

Tanya wonders if she’s done anything right. “Should I have left well enough alone, then?! Karl would still be himself, and two good, decent men would have been spared a horror that may scar them for the rest of their lives.”

Ka-Zar’s response drives home the heart of Chris Claremont’s story: “Only you can answer that. But remember, you came out of love, and you stay out of love—and Karl sacrificed himself out of love.

You know… there are worse motivations.”

In Marvel Fanfare #3 (July 1982), Claremont swaps some players in the story while the penciling job also sees a switch-up: enter Dave Cockrum. As promised by Angel, the X-Men (in this case, a small roster consisting of Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus) are en route to the Savage Land. It doesn’t take long for Sauron to appear and engage in a one-on-one battle with Angel (freshly returned to the Savage Land after a brief recuperation from the previous issues’ events) while the rest of the X-Men fare poorly against the Mutates.

Sauron seems to have made quick progress with his goals, as he proclaims his victory over the X-Men while seated on a throne. The

X-Men are soon to be subjected to the Genetic Transformer, so as to be devolved into much less threatening foes and to provide Sauron with plenty of mutant energy to harvest.

The story reaches its finale in Marvel Fanfare #4 (Sept. 1982), as Paul Smith’s art brings Claremont’s script to life. Angel is able to recruit Ka-Zar’s help in rescuing the X-Men. While the X-Men are threatened by the Genetic Transformer, they are able to escape and defeat Sauron by using some fantastic displays of teamwork: Storm drops the temperature, immobilizing him, and Colossus gives him a good whack right into Wolverine’s claws. Having expended far too much of his stored mutant energy, Sauron transforms back into his humanform. Karl Lykos fears his life will always be lived under the shadow of Sauron, and says that it might be best to be killed (Wolverine is all too eager to oblige). “With Sauron, it was always a matter of him yielding to the darker side of his nature. He wants to be a decent guy, but he’s an addict,” says Chris Claremont. Storm, however, offers a less deadly solution: Professor Xavier has been studying Lykos’ condition and might in fact have a cure. In the final page of the story, Tanya and Karl embrace as everything seems to have gone just as Xavier hoped. Cured of his condition, Karl Lykos vanished from the pages of Marvel Comics until well after the end of the Bronze Age. It’s easy to think that Sauron was actually more prolific in the early decades of the Marvel Universe, but the truth is that the stories mentioned in this article cover everything, telling both the beginning and end of Karl Lykos’ saga. As a genuinely interesting character with a stunning visual, Sauron later found his way into action figure lines, cartoons, and video games.

Sauron’s absence from the comics themselves ended when Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld brought him back for X-Force #5 (Dec. 1991), and he’s popped in and out of comics stories ever since.

CHRISTOPHER LAROCHELLE is a lifelong comics fan whose first article for BACK ISSUE appeared in #62.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23

It happened in 1973. The year before, Dave Cockrum had begun his run on the “Legion of Super-Heroes” feature that ran in the back pages of Superboy. A year later, he would leave the (nowcover-starring) series because of a dispute over the return of his original artwork. In between, he joined with friends Mark Hanerfeld, Marv Wolfman, and Len Wein to form Graphic Features, a company designed to create custom comics for clients.

Their first (and apparently only) patron was Aurora Plastics, with whom Cockrum already had a professional relationship.

Aurora got its start in the 1950s with models of planes and, by the 1960s, had added cars to its lineup. But its most popular kits (arguably; at least, the ones people talk about the most today) came from tie-ins with licensed material from movies, TV shows, and comic books. Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Lost in Space were all represented, as were various Marvel and DC characters. But ahead of all the rest were kits based upon its license with Universal Studios to make models featuring its various monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man were all produced, as was a personal favorite of Cockrum’s, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. [Editor’s note: See our sister mag, RetroFan #17, for a look at Aurora’s monster models and an interview with their extraordinary cover art painter, James Bama.]

With the Cockrum connection, Graphic Features signed a deal with Aurora to produce comic books (eight pages each; six pages of story and art [including the cover], two of instructions) for reissues of its superhero kits. They hired some of the best talent around to work on the comics: John Romita, Sr. did Captain America and Spider-Man; Gil Kane drew The Lone Ranger and Tonto; Neal Adams did Tarzan; Dick Giordano drew Batman and Robin.

Cockrum himself handled Superboy (Curt Swan had Superman), as well as did the instructions for many of the figures. [Editor’s note: See BI #138 for a glimpse at the Lone Ranger comic art.]

But Aurora also had dinosaurs! In fact, Cockrum’s first job for the company was to design its Tyrannosaurus rex figure. In 1973, with sales failing on Aurora’s Prehistoric Scenes line (it would be discontinued in 1975), Dave concocted a scheme to help it: a model based upon a figure, which was what Aurora did best.

And so was born Lord Dinosaur, a.k.a. T. Rex, the man with the dinosaur brain! The plan was the character could also function as a toy and allow potential customers to engage with (and buy more of) the extinct reptiles.

Cockrum had a vested interest in helping the Prehistoric Scenes line; not only was he a fan, he was also a designer. In fact, he had two unproduced dinosaur designs in their hands: the parasaurolophus and the stegosaurus, the latter of which actually made it to the sculpt stage. What was more, there was also a planned Science Fiction Scenes line based upon popular old movies, and Cockrum had many designs in the works there, too. (In a clever premise, the time machine from The Time Machine would’ve been used by imaginative youngsters to merge the two together.)

Alas, the Aurora brass lacked the same vision. They shut down both their Prehistoric Scenes line and their soon-to-be-started Science Fiction Scenes before it could even get off the ground. Not only that, but proposed new kits for its Comic Scenes (such as Flash Gordon and the Phantom) were also cancelled. It was the mid-’70s, and models were fading in popularity. Aurora attempted to enter the toy and board game market (one particular toy, Kar-a-a-ate Men, was also designed by Cockrum), but they were outmatched and outgunned by companies that specialized in those fields.

Aurora’s model kit division was sold by its owner, Nabisco, to a competing modeling company, Monogram, in 1977. There are still Aurora fans around today, and “lost” Auroras get made from time to time in limited runs by smaller companies. Both of Dave Cockrum’s unproduced dinosaur kits have since made it into physical form; he even consulted on the recreation of 24 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

by G l e n

Cadigan

Meet T. Rex… …a.k.a. Lord Dinosaur. Cover for Dave Cockrum’s proposed Aurora comic tie-in. Scan courtesy of Al Bigley. © 1973 Aurora Products Corp.

Dave Draws Dinos

the stegosaurus, and a resin kit of it can be purchased today for the low, low price of $300.

Getting back to the comic book: only the cover of Lord Dinosaur (also seen with an Aurora Comics overlay) is known to exist. Cockrum’s signature of ’73 suggests it was done at the same time as the other comic inserts, but no design sheet has ever been found for the character. In all likelihood, the idea did not make it past the initial, unsolicited, drawing.

Questions remain surrounding Lord Dinosaur, a.k.a. T. Rex, the man with the dinosaur brain. Where did he get his dinosaur brain? How did he get his dinosaur brain? Why did he get his dinosaur brain? Did the dinosaur get his brain in return? How does a dinosaur brain fit inside a human skull, anyway?

Was his last name really Rex? If so, what did “T” stand for? Trevor? Todd?

Today, Aurora is no more. And to think, their demise might’ve been avoided, all those long years ago, if only they had made T. Rex, the man with the dinosaur brain!

(top left and center) Cockrum’s designs for two of Aurora’s dinosaur models. (top right) A 1974 Aurora ad featuring Dave’s art. Courtesy of Glen Cadigan. (bottom) Dave Cockrum, with his first wife Andrea, modeling an ad for Aurora’s Comic Scenes. Photo taken

by Bruce Mittleman at the 1974 Comic Art Convention and originally published in the Marvel fanzine FOOM #7. Scan courtesy of Manny Maris. © 1974 Aurora Products Corp.

Frankenstein © Universal.

Photo © Marvel.

GLEN CADIGAN is the author/editor of the recently released The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum. Before that, he produced The Legion Companion and The Titans Companion vols. 1 and 2 for TwoMorrows.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 25

TM

presented by

Glen Cadigan

CAPTAIN MARVEL, JR.

by DAVE COCKRUM

The World’s Mightiest Boy (this page and opposite) Joining these rare penciled pages is (above) a 1973 color portrait of Captain Marvel, Jr., by Dave Cockrum.

Shazam! and Captain Marvel, Jr. TM & © DC Comics.

Back when Dave Cockrum was breaking into the industry in the early 1970s, he drew sample pages of various DC Comics features to show what he could do. These weren’t commissioned or in response to an artist’s opening on a book—instead they were Dave taking the initiative when he was young and hungry.

Cockrum penciled and inked three Legion of Super-Heroes pages (which came in handy when Murphy Anderson told him they were looking for a Legion artist for the Superboy book), and he also penciled (but didn’t ink) three Captain Marvel, Jr. pages. In two of them, Cap. Jr. fights a dinosaur.

We simply didn’t have the space to run any of them in my new TwoMorrows book, The Life and Art of Dave Cockrum [shown above, and now shipping], but I thought they could run in BACK ISSUE’s dino-issue. Enjoy!

26 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

TM

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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BRONZE AGE TV TIE-INS! TV-to-comic adaptations of the ’70s to ’90s, including Bionic Woman, Dark Shadows, Emergency, H. R. Pufnstuf, Hee Haw, Lost in Space (with BILL MUMY), Primus (with ROBERT BROWN), Sledge Hammer, Superboy, V, and others! Featuring BALD, BATES, CAMPITI, EVANIER, JOHN FRANCIS MOORE, SALICRUP, SAVIUK, SPARLING, STATON, WOLFMAN, and more!

TV TOON TIE-INS! Bronze Age HannaBarbera Comics, Underdog, Mighty Mouse, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Pink Panther, Battle of the Planets, and Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl. Bonus: SCOTT SHAW! digs up Captain Carrot’s roots! Featuring the work of BYRNE, COLON, ENGEL, EVANIER, FIELDS, MICHAEL GALLAGHER, WIN MORTIMER, NORRIS, SEVERIN, SKEATES, STATON, TALLARICO, TOTH, and more!

BRONZE AGE PROMOS, ADS, AND GIMMICKS! The aborted DC Super-Stars Society fan club, Hostess Comic Ads, DC 16-page Preview Comics, rare Marvel custom comics, DC Hotline, Popeye Career Comics, early variant covers, and more. Featuring BARR, HERDLING, LEVITZ, MAGUIRE, MORGAN, PACELLA, PALMIOTTI, SHAW!, TERRY STEWART, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and more!

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THE KIRBY LEGACY AT DC! Explores Jack Kirby’s post-Fourth World Bronze Age DC characters! Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, and Kirby’s Odd Jobs (Atlas, Manhunter, and more). Plus: the SIMON & KIRBY Reunion That Wasn’t! Featuring BISSETTE, BYRNE, CONWAY, GIBBONS, GOLDEN, GRANT, RUCKA, SEMEIKS, THOMAS, TIMM, WAGNER, and more.

Demon cover by KIRBY and MIKE ROYER!

1980s MARVEL LIMITED SERIES! CLAREMONT/MILLER’s Wolverine, Black Panther, Falcon, Punisher, Machine Man, Iceman, Magik, Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., Wolfpack, and more! With BOGDANOVE, COWAN, DeFALCO, DeMATTEIS, GRANT, HAMA, MILGROM, NEARY, SMITH, WINDSORSMITH, and more. Cover by JOE RUBINSTEIN. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

STARMEN ISSUE, headlined by JAMES ROBINSON and TONY HARRIS’s Jack Knight Starman! Plus: The StarSpangled Kid, Starjammers, the 1980s Starman, and Starstruck! Featuring DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, ROBERT GREENBERGER, ELAINE LEE, TOM LYLE, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Jack Knight Starman cover by TONY HARRIS.

BRONZE AGE RARITIES & ODDITIES, spotlighting rare ‘80s European Superman comics! Plus: CURT SWAN’s Batman, JIM APARO’s Superman, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT’s Marvel custom comics, MICHAEL USLAN’s unseen Earth-Two stories, Leaf’s DC Secret Origins, Marvel’s Evel Knievel, cover variants, and more! With EDUARDO BARRETO, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ALEX SAVIUK, and more. Cover by JOE KUBERT.

SILVER ISSUE, starring the Silver Surfer in the Bronze Age! Plus: JACK KIRBY’s Silver Star, SCOTT HAMPTON’s Silverheels, Silver Sable, Silver Banshee, DC’s Silver Age Classics, and more! Featuring BUSIEK, BUTLER, BYRNE, ENGLEHART, STAN LEE, LIM, MARZ, MOEBIUS, POLLARD, MARSHALL ROGERS, ALEX ROSS, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by RON FRENZ and JOE SINNOTT.

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Plus Charlton’s comic strip tie-ins and the MENOMONEE FALLS GAZETTE. With COLAN, GOODWIN, GIL KANE, KREMER, STAN LEE, ROMITA, THOMAS, TUSKA, and more.

1980s PRE-CRISIS DC MINISERIES! Green Arrow, Secrets of the Legion, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Krypton Chronicles, America vs. the Justice Society, Legend of Wonder Woman, Conqueror of the Barren Earth, and more! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, KURT BUSIEK, PAUL KUPPERBERG, RON RANDALL, TRINA ROBBINS, JOE STATON, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and others.

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CLASSIC HEROES IN THE BRONZE AGE! The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Flash Gordon, Popeye, Zorro and Lady Rawhide, Son of Tomahawk, Jungle Twins, and more!

Featuring the work of DAN JURGENS, JOE R. LANSDALE, DON McGREGOR, FRANK THORNE, TIM TRUMAN, GEORGE WILDMAN, THOMAS YEATES, and other creators. With a classic 1979 fully painted Gold Key cover of Flash Gordon.

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interview by

Allan Harvey Comics readers were first transported to the Xenozoic Age in the pages of the science-fiction/horror anthology Death Rattle #8 (Dec. 1986), published by Kitchen Sink.

Springing from the mind of writer-artist Mark Schultz, the concept was quickly awarded its own title by publisher Denis Kitchen. The resulting Xenozoic Tales proved to be one of the longer-lasting properties birthed during the black-and-white comics boom of the mid-1980s and ran until #14 (Oct. 1996).

The series is set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic future, some 600 years hence, where mankind has re-emerged from vast underground shelters to find a much-changed landscape. The challenge now is how to survive this brave new world.

Some would like to live in harmonious balance with nature, while others would prefer a return to the old ways. Mechanic Jack Tenrec meets diplomat Hannah Dundee, and their sparky relationship forms the emotional core of Xenozoic Tales.

However, their lives, and the lives of everyone on the planet, are made mark schultz just a little bit more difficult by the © John Fleskes. fact that, unexpectedly, while humans sheltered, the dinosaurs have returned to stalk the Earth— and they may not be willing to share!

Via the wonders of transatlantic cabling, BACK ISSUE sat down with Mark Schultz to excavate the hidden history of the Xenozoic Era. Mark copyedited the transcript for clarity.

– Allan Harvey ALLAN HARVEY: What’s the secret origin of Mark Schultz?

MARK SCHULTZ: I saw the original King Kong when I was six years old on the TV. At the same time, they were rebroadcasting the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, and the first Jungle Girl serial, with Frances

Deal me in!

Mark Schultz shows us a new way to crash a card game on the wild and wonderful cover to Kitchen Sink’s Xenozoic Tales #1 (Feb. 1987).

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 29

Influential Dino-Comics Turok, Son of Stone (#50, Mar. 1966) and Gorgo (seen here in Fantastic Giants #26, Sept.

1966) were among the works imprinting young Mark Schultz.

(Be sure to come back for BACK ISSUE #144 and its examination of the return of Turok!)

Turok © Random House.

Gifford. So, that all got kind of lodged into my conscious and subconscious, I guess, and led to an appreciation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books in general, beyond just Tarzan. Then, when I was about seven years old, my mother took me to the movies, and I saw Hatari!, the Howard Hawks film with John Wayne, where they’re capturing rhinoceroses and giraffes, using motor vehicles. That all kind of mish-mashed up in my head, I think, and eventually Xenozoic was the result of that.

HARVEY: You can sort of see that: cars and dinosaurs, cars and safaris… with John Wayne as Jack Tenrec.

SCHULTZ: Absolutely. I grew up in an era when John Wayne was still kind of the iconic, male action hero figure, so that imprinted on me. Him and guys like Burt Lancaster were the templates for Jack, and actresses like Barbara Stanwyck were the origins of Hannah— temperamentally, at least—although the look of Hannah came straight from Wally Wood’s version of [drawing] women. [laughs] HARVEY: You were introduced to writers like Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard at a young age…

SCHULTZ: Yep. H. G. Wells. All those classic writers.

HARVEY: They made a big impression on you?

SCHULTZ: Yeah. Absolutely. Some of those stories that Verne and Wells wrote, I first encountered in the Classics Illustrated comics.

They intrigued me enough to plug into the novels. This would have been in the ’60s, when there was—in the States, anyway—a huge resurgence of reprints, in paperback form, of people like Verne and Wells. Burroughs. Robert E. Howard. All of a sudden you had a flood of wonderful, classic science fiction and fantasy.

HARVEY: How old were you when you discovered comics?

SCHULTZ: Five or six. Again, the ones that grabbed my attention were the ones that had dinosaurs on the cover. Turok, Son of Stone.

DC’s “The War That Time Forgot” [in Star Spangled War Stories], I guess.

I don’t think I recognized the titles at the time, I just remember seeing the covers in stores.

HARVEY: I read in an interview that a book called The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs was important.

SCHULTZ: Yeah. That was the first factual dinosaur book my parents 30 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

bought me, and it started me on the direction where I would take my stories.

HARVEY: And Gorgo [the 1961 movie] comes out around that time.

SCHULTZ: Yeah. You know, it’s limited in its special effects—especially by today’s standards, of course—but it’s a great story. It’s the one giant monster/dinosaur film where the dinosaurs are the sympathetic protagonists. Your sympathies are with Gorgo and Gorgo’s mother.

That’s another thing: when I was around nine years old, Charlton reprinted Steve Ditko’s adaptations of Gorgo and Konga [in Fantastic Giants #26 (Sept. 1966)—ed.], and they blew my mind. His adaptation of Konga is much better than the movie, I’ve got to say! [laughs] I still have my copy.

HARVEY: Let’s jump ahead to Xenozoic Tales. Where did that first germinate?

SCHULTZ: In the early ’80s, I was doing illustration work for local companies. Advertising, some book illustrations for “how to” books, like “How to Renovate your Kitchen,” that kind of stuff. I was also working as a security guard at a college campus at a small university, and I had a lot of time to daydream about what I’d like to be doing.

Over a period of years, Xenozoic developed. Again, from these old stories, old movies, old comics that I grew up with and I loved.

Over a period of, I’d say, three to four years, it coalesced into something that I finally felt… Well, I was turning 30, and I figured, “You know, I’m starting to get old: I’m 30! I’ve got to do something with my life.” [laughs] I finally got up the nerve, [and] over a sixmonth period, in my spare time, I put together a six-page Xenozoic

‘Xenozoic’ Premiere (opposite page, inset) Schultz’s cover to Death Rattle #8 (Dec. 1986) hinted at horrors, not dinosaurs, but (main) the interior story’s first page—and its EC-influenced art— made it clear that prehistoric beasts were to be on view.

Page restoration by Allan Harvey.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 31

proposal story, which I then mailed around to seven different companies that were extant at the time. I got a response from almost all of them, of some sort or another; but Kitchen Sink was the one that was actually interested in my story and my proposal.

They asked me if I could do a story that was more of a science fiction or horror story for the Death Rattle comic, which was their anthology book. So, I did the first published Xenozoic story, [which] was tailored for Death Rattle. [Editor’s note: The original Xenozoic story from the pitch, “Mammoth Pitfall!,” eventually saw print in Xenozoic Tales #2 (Apr. 1987). For a history of the Death Rattle series, see BACK ISSUE #75.] Thank goodness, Denis Kitchen then offered me the chance to take Xenozoic as its own book. It was successful enough to keep it going well into the ’90s.

It turned out that I’m way too slow to do a regular book, so what we had originally envisioned as a bimonthly, I think, quickly devolved into a quarterly, and then devolved further into…

HARVEY: Bi-annual! [laughs] SCHULTZ: Yeah. [laughs] HARVEY: The second issue was the first one I got.

I remember being in the comic shop and asking for recommendations, and the guy behind the counter said, “This Xenozoic Tales thing is pretty good.” So, I bought that and went back for the first one, and I’ve been a fan ever since.

SCHULTZ: I think word of mouth did more than anything else to promote Xenozoic. At the time, you just weren’t seeing much in the way of adventure comics anymore. Superhero comics had become ubiquitous.

HARVEY: Yeah.

SCHULTZ: Something that I didn’t mention [earlier as an influence]: EC Comics. I studied a lot of their short-format stories. The first few issues of Xenozoic more or less follow that template. I studied a lot of EC stories, especially Harvey Kurtzman stories, and Will Eisner’s Spirit stories, too, just to figure out, how do you tell a story? How do you pace a story in six, seven, eight pages?

It was on-the-job training. [laughs] Learning how to tell stories with sequential art.

HARVEY: Being at Kitchen Sink, which was already reprinting Will Eisner’s Spirit, was quite fortuitous then?

SCHULTZ: Yeah. A few years earlier, around ’83–’84, the first independent comic shop had opened in my vicinity. I went in, and all of a sudden, I’m seeing all these comics that you didn’t see on the traditional newsstand. All the independent companies that sprang up at the time. I was seeing Love and Rockets, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg…

Hannah and Jack Hannah Dundee and Jack Tenrec, and friend, in a gorgeous pencil portrait by Schultz, courtesy of Heritage, plus (above) early covers. (inset) A tenrec.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

32 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

HARVEY: The Rocketeer…

SCHULTZ: And Kitchen Sink doing all those great Spirit reprints, and Death Rattle. It just seemed to me, all of a sudden, this is something I could do; something I could get into. I have no particular desire myself to do superhero comics, but there was adventure stuff out there that harked back to the stuff from the ’50s and early ’60s. That was really inspiring to me. It was the

opening of the door. I could see that I could fit through there and do something that maybe I could make a living at, and [at which] I’d definitely be happier than what I was doing at the time.

HARVEY: How much material had you created of the Xenozoic world before you submitted that first story?

Did you do a lot of background work, character portraits, and so on?

SCHULTZ: Yes, but it was constantly evolving. It started out that my first notions were one thing, but I had the luxury of several years to play with it in my mind before I did the submission. I had the timeframe, the world itself, the main characters, pretty well sketched out for myself. Then I was lucky enough to work with an editor [at Kitchen Sink], David Schreiner, who really helped me frame these things up even further and solidify the ideas.

HARVEY: You have a great way with names. Jack Tenrec.

Hannah Dundee. Wilhelmina Scharnhorst. Mustapha Cairo. Where do these come from?

SCHULTZ: You know, I collect names. My wife and I will go out and visit cemeteries and just look at the names of people from the 1800s. Our graveyards don’t stretch back as far as your graveyards do, but they stretch back far enough that there’s some noticeable changes in the popularity of certain names. That’s just one instance. If I hear a name while listening to a news broadcast, or reading a newspaper, I’ll write it down for use in the future. What I’m looking for is a name that has some sort of crispness to it, some sort of an impact. Even though it’s a comic and no one is saying the names out loud, I think it makes a difference as you read a good, crisp name like “Tenrec,” it’s got a sharpness to it. A tenrec, of course, is a mammal…

HARVEY: Oh, right.

SCHULTZ: …that existed all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs. So, I must have read that in some book I was reading about prehistoric times, and it just stuck with me. Purely in an abstract sense, “Tenrec” has a nice crispness to it.

Hannah Dundee… I liked the sound of “Dundee.”

I knew it first from Major Dundee, a Sam Peckinpah movie, starring Charlton Heston, from back in the ’60s.

Later, I learned it was a city in Scotland.

HARVEY: As Xenozoic Tales progresses, your art style evolves. It’s very much an EC-style at the beginning.

I can see a lot of Jack Davis in there.

SCHULTZ: Primarily I was looking at Wally Wood, but also Jack Davis.

HARVEY: I was rereading the issues again last week and as I went through, I could see the art develop from a Jack Davis–style look, through a Wallace Wood period, then a bit of Will Eisner comes in, then Frank Frazetta, and finally ending up with Al Williamson…

SCHULTZ: That’s absolutely spot-on. The only person you’re missing… If you look back at issue #7, I was really heavily into Alex Raymond for that issue.

HARVEY: The last few issues are spectacular, as you come into your own style. I’m always kind of wary about saying that an artist’s style looks like this person or that person because it could be misconstrued as an insult. It’s not intended as that, just that one can see the influences.

SCHULTZ: No, absolutely. I wouldn’t argue with that at all, and it’s high praise for me that you recognize any of that in there.

After I finished the second issue, I got in touch with Al Williamson. Turns out Al lived about two-and-a-half hours from me, so he invited me to come up to his studio. I did, and for the first time I saw original comic art. Not just comic art in general, but Al had an incredible collection of Foster and Raymond and Milton Caniff. On and on and on. So, I got to see what the actual ink on the actual board looked like and that really became a game-changer for me. You could see, oh, that’s the way he handled the brush to get that effect. It was an education that I hadn’t had before, being able to look and spend time with these masterful cartoonists. Of course, Al’s work, too. Not only did I get

Wings While fans went ga-ga (they still do) over Mark’s magnificent Xenozoic Tales covers, this original art page from issue #6 (May 1988)— excavated from the cavernous Heritage archives—display his facility with sequential storytelling.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz.

Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 33

to see Al’s originals, but I got to see Al work, and see how he handled the brush in process. That was important.

HARVEY: How do you approach an issue of Xenozoic Tales? What comes first, the script or the art? Do you write full script for yourself?

SCHULTZ: Yeah, I do. It’s a mix of doing little thumbnails and page breakdowns. I’ll come up with an idea for a story, and I need to know where it’s going to end up because you’ve got to pace out a story over a certain number of pages. It needs to end in, like, 20 or 22 pages, in terms of Xenozoic.

So, I would start to thumbnail out the pages and figure out how many panels I need to convey the information [required] for this particular scene. Then I have to figure out how many scenes are going to be in this [story]; and maybe this scene needs two pages, this scene needs three or four pages. Kind of like fitting a puzzle together.

Then I will write out a full script. I’ll start breaking down how much information can I convey in this panel; do I need to convey it with captions, or do I need to convey it with dialogue; can I just convey it with visuals. I’ll play around with that quite a bit as I write the full script.

Then, as I actually start drawing the finished product, the finished boards, the script will evolve even further. It’s an organic process and it keeps evolving until it’s done.

HARVEY: Is there an overall story to Xenozoic; an overarching plot with a final destination, or have you just created a world in which to tell ongoing stories?

SCHULTZ: As far as the overarching format goes, I’ve always thought of it in terms of Prince Valiant: it’s the story of these people’s lives. I don’t have any grand conclusion in mind, no.

HARVEY: So, Jack Tenrec isn’t going to find a vault and, “This is why dinosaurs are back!” [laughs] SCHULTZ: Probably not. I do have in my head the story of how the Xenozoic Age came to be, but, again, like a lot of things, that evolves over time, too. How I look at it and how I think about it. Even if I did have it all worked out, I like the idea of keeping some things a mystery; of just saying, well, we don’t know everything. Someday we might figure it out, but it will be in increments. It won’t be one big revelation. So, I kind of like that idea of just keeping it a mystery that these people have to work with and live with.

Recommended Reading Schultz’s pencil rough, and finished artwork, for Fantagraphics’ The Comics Journal #150 (May 1992), which included an interview with the artist.

Courtesy of Heritage.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

34 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

HARVEY: One of the big themes in Xenozoic Tales is the environment and ecology, which was there right from the beginning in the 1980s, and, obviously, back then, those ideas were still “fringe” at best. It wasn’t really spoken of much, the notion of caring for the environment, or fears about the future, and what we’re doing to the planet. I’m intrigued to find out where those interests came from.

SCHULTZ: Coupled with my interest in science fiction and fantasy, I’ve always been interested in the sciences and scientific enquiry. That goes back to my childhood, too. Science has been very aware that there are severe problems, man-made problems, that are impacting our environment, going back, I would imagine, to at least the 1940s. Probably much earlier. I know there are papers that were generated by people doing research that showed concerns that our carbon emissions, from just our coal industries, were affecting environmental conditions. I can remember—I think it was 1970—the first Earth Day. I remember doing posters for my school’s activities connected with this.

So I’d always been aware that there was this concern, but the widespread awareness of our situation that we’re in now, has, you’re right, only happened recently, but there was always a hard core of people that understood that this was happening. When I introduced it into

Xenozoic, this had been a long-term concern I’d had, and I didn’t think it was anything outside the norm to express these things. It was important. It was the element that I added to my adventure story that made it personal for me: that concern for environmental change, and man-made impact on the environment— and the consequences. We can only hope that the consequences are that we have dinosaurs come back! [laughs] And the worst that happens is that we’re lower on the food chain. Again, this was a long-term interest of mine, and it was one of the last elements that I figured into the story, but it made Xenozoic something that I knew I could continue with and not grow tired of. It was the underlying theme that gave it some meaning for me.

I’m not sure if that answers the question…

HARVEY: No, that’s fine. I mean, there are a lot of post-apocalyptic stories going back decades, but in most of those the apocalypse was caused by a war, or the bomb, or whatever, but what was interesting about Xenozoic Tales is that it was an ecological disaster. Or it’s at least hinted that it was ecological.

SCHULTZ: Right.

HARVEY: The idea that man and nature “fell out of balance,” that something went wrong, seems

Baby, You Can Drive My Car (left) As early as Xenozoic Tales #2 (Apr. 1987), Jack’s wheels became an important “cast member” in cover art.

A special arrangement with the automobile manufacturer led to the series’ 1990s rebranding as “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs,” and included (right) a relaunch under Marvel’s Epic imprint, commencing with this first issue (Nov. 1990). The Epic series reprinted Xenozoic Tales stories, in color, with new covers by Schultz.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz.

Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35

36 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

to be very much at the heart of the story, which is what makes it different from your standard postapocalyptic story, I thought.

SCHULTZ: Thank you. Yeah. Right. That was the angle I wanted to take on this: that what we were doing to the environment was going to come back and destroy us eventually. Or destroy our world as it was. You’re making me think back now on what was I thinking at the time. [laughs] This is, what, 30 years ago…

HARVEY: Nearer 40.

SCHULTZ: What made it work for me within the context of the story was figuring out that Jack Tenrec, my male hero, was going to be a… what would the word be…? He’s a fundamentalist. Evangelical.

But his religion is this hardcore belief that you don’t screw with the environment. That almost killed us all in the past. And he doesn’t take a scientific view of it, it’s almost like he’s a fanatic. It’s a faith-based belief. Hannah is the scientific one. She’s looking at the facts and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t and why are we in this situation, rather than just taking it as gospel, as Jack does. She’s the one trying to figure out the what and where of it all.

Those two character differences are what I hoped would make the story interesting.

HARVEY: Into the 1990s now. The concept starts to grow in popularity and branch out. You come up with the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs moniker,

for ease of brand-recognition, which is then used [on a] lot of merchandizing: color reprints from Epic Comics, a 3-D issue, apparently there was a chocolate bar, a CD—which I discovered on iTunes just today, so I bought and listened to it this afternoon…

SCHULTZ: Oh. Thank you! We’re still making sales! [laughs] HARVEY: There was also something, which I again only discovered today, from Topps Comics, which I’d always thought were just reprints, but, no, it was new stuff. New Cadillacs and Dinosaurs stories.

SCHULTZ: Written by Roy Thomas.

HARVEY: Three sets of three issues.

SCHULTZ: Right. There was going to be a fourth set of three issues. Drawn by David Roach, who I believe may be a fellow Welshman. He did this beautiful work, but they discontinued the series, and it never was published. Unfortunately.

HARVEY: The next big thing then was the TV cartoon.

I’ve been watching it all over this last couple of weeks, one episode a day.

SCHULTZ: Wow. HARVEY: My dedication knows no bounds! [laughs] SCHULTZ: I think the best episode—and I’ll admit I didn’t see them all—was the one that Marv Wolfman wrote. The one about the Wild Child. I

In Demand This stunning color print, a limited edition of 250 with a 16 x 24inch image area, was produced in 1993, each copy personally numbered and signed by Mark Schultz. Courtesy of Heritage. (opposite page) Jack, Hanna, and Mustapha Cairo take center stage on Mark Schultz’s cover for Marvel/ Epic’s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs #4 (Feb. 1991), whose interiors reprinted Xenozoic Tales #4’s (Nov. 1987) “History Lesson.”

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz.

Xenozoic® Mark Schultz. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs TM General Motors Corp.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

Look What’s Coming…

Courtesy of Mark Schultz, a penciled panel and page from his forthcoming Xenozoic graphic novel.

Artwork © 2022 Mark Schultz. Xenozoic® Mark Schultz.

thought that was probably the most engaging one, at least as far as the story went.

HARVEY: From a comics perspective, its writers included Marv Wolfman, Marty Pasko, and Harlan Ellison.

SCHULTZ: You know, when people ask me what I think of it, the truth is I find it impossible to be objective. It is what it is. It’s a cartoon, made for TV, for kids on Saturday morning. It’s pretty ambitious, some of the concepts they put in there, and kudos to them for being able to work those in.

I’m just too close to the original material to be objective about it, unfortunately.

HARVEY: Going back to the comics, there was usually one story each issue drawn by Steve Stiles. How did that come about?

SCHULTZ: Because I was too slow to get the work done regularly. It took me so long to do the first issue of Xenozoic Tales, I was pretty despondent about being able to continue.

Denis Kitchen suggested that Steve, who was looking for work at the time, I guess, might ink my pencils. He did ink the second issue, two of the stories. He did a great job, but I just wasn’t happy giving over that kind of control to someone else. I wanted to do complete art. We came to the formula that, instead of me doing 28–30 pages of art through the entire book, I would do two of the stories and write the third for Steve to illustrate.

That worked out really well. My current publisher, Flesk Publications, would like to eventually reprint all those stories, as part of a massive, comprehensive collection. All the Xenozoic material together, including Steve’s stories.

HARVEY: 1996. The series comes to an end. I assume that was prematurely; it wasn’t intended to finish then...?

SCHULTZ: It just got to the point where it wasn’t economically feasible for me to continue to do it. I had to look elsewhere for work, so I started taking on more freelance and work-for-hire jobs. Writing for DC and doing adaptations of properties for Dark Horse.

HARVEY: Recently, you did the Storms at Sea book, which kind of incorporates at least a hint of Xenozoic Tales, if you know what you’re looking for…

SCHULTZ: Exactly. Easter eggs.

HARVEY: What’s the future for Xenozoic Tales?

SCHULTZ: As I am able to, between jobs that pay the bills, I have been working on a Xenozoic graphic novel. It’s a little more than halfway done, not quite two-thirds, but getting there. It’s all penciled out. I’ve started inking it. I have no finish date in mind, it’ll get done when it gets done, but there is another story coming.

HARVEY: Good news. Something to look forward to.

SCHULTZ: Don’t be in a big hurry for it! [laughs] My thanks to Mark for being so gracious with his time.

ALLAN HARVEY hails from Wales and makes a living digitally restoring old comics for new reprint editions. His most recent projects include Kona, Air War Stories, and the Atlas at War! hardcover collection.

38 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

When Dark Horse Comics first came on the scene in the mid-1980s, I was aware of the company and had seen their titles in my local comic-book shop, but I really didn’t take the time to check out what they had to offer.

Back then, I was a teenage reader, and a publisher had to do something big to get my attention. Let me tell you, for 17-year-old Danny Johnson, nothing was bigger than Godzilla.

IN THE BEGINNING

by D a n

Johnson

The first Dark Horse Godzilla comic was Godzilla, King of the Monsters Special #1 (Aug. 1987). This black-andwhite one-shot brought Godzilla back to American comics, right at the time the character and the other Toho “Kaiju” Monsters were experiencing a resurgence in Japan that began with the 1984 film The Return of Godzilla [a.k.a. Gojira 1984], or, as it was known in America, Godzilla 1985.

This one-shot, and the comics that would follow, were the brainchild of Dark Horse writer and editor Randy Stradley. “I was always pushing for some Godzillarelated project and was lucky enough to make Godzilla our first licensed project,” says Stradley.

I know from chronicling the history of comics that people can remember things differently. That being said, everyone I spoke with for this article confirmed the same thing to me: Randy Stradley was a huge fan of Godzilla. A copy of a letter dated December 23, 1986 from Stradley to artist Stephen Bissette confirms this fact in his own words. In the letter Stradley wrote, “We’re all beside ourselves with excitement here.

As I mentioned, this has been a long-term project for me, so I feel like a kid getting to fulfill a lifelong dream.”

The endgame for Stradley was going to be a series that would lead to a giant monster mash-up, similar to the Godzilla film Destroy All Monsters, where all the Toho Monsters were featured in one movie. Once a deal to publish Godzilla has been struck, though, Stradley realized there was one hitch. “At that time, the US rights for Godzilla were licensed through Hank randy stradley Saperstein’s UPA Productions in Los Angeles,” recalls Stradley. “And it © Dark Horse Comics. wasn’t until after we had acquired the license that we realized we had only Godzilla, and that any of the other monsters would cost us the same as what we were paying for Godzilla. That led to the creation of some of the other monsters that were glimpsed in that first special—Soran, Kamerus, etc.”

Stephen Bissette, who helped redefine horror comics in the 1980s, was the artist Stradley wanted for Godzilla.

“I was still coming off of Swamp Thing and DC had burned my ass,” recalls Bissette. “I was in very rough

Urban Renewal (Needed) Dark Horse Comics unleashed the fury of the Big G in Godzilla, King of the Monsters Special #1 (Aug. 1987). Detail from the cover by Stephen Bissette.

Godzilla® © Toho Co., Ltd.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 39

shape and had no desire to work on another tightly scheduled comic. Randy called me out of the blue and he kind of had to talk me into it. He and I hit it off right from the start. We had a lot of common interests, and he was a really sweet guy, but unfortunately they caught me coming off of a really rough stretch as a freelancer. When I had been on Swamp Thing, I really had been put through the meat grinder. I remember Randy calling more than once, and I wanted to do Godzilla, but I was not interested in doing a project that had to be penciled in a month. I had been doing that for too long on Swamp Thing.”

THE PLOT THICKENS

Petting Not Recommended (left) Some of Stephen Bissette’s character roughs for Godzilla beasts. (right) The Special of 1987 was reprinted—in color—in Dark Horse Classics: Godzilla, King of the Monsters #1 (July 1998).

Art © Stephen Bissette. Godzilla © Toho Co., Ltd.

40 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Eventually, Stradley convinced Bissette to take on Godzilla. “One of my conditions was, I wanted to write and draw [Godzilla],” says Bissette. “Well, Randy, this was his baby. He was the one who convinced [Dark Horse publisher] Mike Richardson to do a Godzilla comic. I understood Randy wanting to write it, but I just really wanted to write and draw a comic so I could take three or four months and do the best job I could, but I caved on that point.”

A compromise was struck, and Stradley and Bissette agreed to co-plot the one-shot together. “By December of 1986, Randy and I had had extensive co-plotting conversations,” says Bissette. “We both had ideas we wanted to bring to the table. Much as I love the Toho Godzilla movies, I have also been reading science fiction since I was five, and I was a big fan of Nigel Kneale, the British television and short-story writer, who was best known for writing the Quatermass films. I wanted to bring an aspect of Kneale’s conceptual work to the Godzilla mythos. My idea was lifting from Quatermass and the Pit. Let’s introduce that there is something buried in the Earth that basically activates the monsters. It’s like a homing beacon, and Randy liked that idea. Both Randy and I were into the idea that the old monsters were here before man, so it

Breathtaking A 2009 Godzilla illo

by Bissette, from the artist’s Comic Art Fans gallery.

Art © Stephen Bissette.

Godzilla © Toho Co., Ltd.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 41

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (top left) Mark A. Nelson’s cover to Godzilla #1 (May 1988), presenting Kazuhisa Iwata’s Godzilla manga. (top right) The manga, now in color, was reprinted in Dark Horse Classics: Terror of Godzilla #1 (Aug. 1998). Cover by Arthur Adams. © Toho Co., Ltd.

was kind of a Lovecraftian mythos we were putting together. That fit hand in glove with what Toho had already laid down, piecemeal, film by film.

“Randy’s scope was that he and I, in co-plotting the one-shot, were also laying the groundwork for the Destroy All Monsters comic that Randy was going to script and others were going to draw,” Bissette continues.

“That meant the monsters I was going to create, that Randy was going to name, and who were going to appear in the one-shot, were going to be our surrogates for the Toho Monsters that Dark Horse did not have licenses for. It became my job to create [them] and make them different enough that they wouldn’t be actionable and they wouldn’t be a legal issue for Dark Horse.”

HE HAD THE LOOK

In discussing designing new monsters, Bissette brought up an aspect of the project that greatly concerned him. “One of the points of confusion that by the spring [of 1987] had become a point of contention [was Godzilla’s appearance],” says Bissette. “[Randy and I both understood this], and in our first phone calls we must have addressed which Godzilla we were going to use. They built a new suit for every movie, so no two Godzillas look alike. I had a clear idea of which Godzilla I wanted to draw, and it goes back to Godzilla vs. the Thing. That’s still my favorite of the Showa Era Godzillas. It was a great outfit, [Godzilla] looked believably like an animal to me, and it didn’t have the big puppy dog eyes that they fabricated from 1965 on. That was Godzilla to me. That version of Gojira was the one that was believable to me to draw, and it was very important to me. If I was going to draw it, Godzilla had to be a believable animal to me and not some guy in a suit.

“But there was never an agreement about what he was going to look like. I did at least 12 drawings, different versions of Godzilla, and

Give ’em hell, boy!

Cover to Dark Horse’s second Godzilla Portfolio, released in March 1989. Its plate rendered by Mike Mignola double-timed as the package cover. Courtesy of Heritage. © Toho Co., Ltd.

42 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Randy sent me tracings of what Mike Richardson wanted, but he also sent me tracings of [what he wanted]. So right from the start there were too many cooks in the kitchen, and I didn’t have any idea who the master chefs were because I was not privy to [whoever] it was that Dark Horse had to deal with in getting approval.”

Even with Bissette’s hopes to bring his version of Godzilla to the comics page, things were changing behind the scenes that began to quell his enthusiasm for the project. “Once I began turning in penciled pages, I didn’t see the inks,” says Bissette.

“In fact, I didn’t see a lot of the inked pages until the comic came out, but I remember getting a phone call from [inker] Tony Salmons at one time, and they were having him change Godzilla’s face as he was inking, deviating from what I had penciled, and it really sucked the wind out the sails. Right until the end, if you look at that one-shot, Godzilla is not consistent from page one to the end of the comic, and that was perhaps reflective of the chaos behind the scenes, and I don’t know how much of that was reflective of [the licensor] changing its mind.

Their current film was Godzilla 1985, so they were like, ‘We should only follow the Godzilla from the 1954 film and this 1985 film.’ That was their edict. Even then, those are two different animals. They don’t look like the same monster.”

THE MAN(GA) FOR THE JOB

After the one-shot was released, the Godzilla saga that Stradley was hoping to fully launch was still a few years away.

In 1988, Dark Horse Comics was able to release two projects that kept the Big G in the spotlight.

First, the company acquired the rights to release a translated version of The Return of Godzilla manga by Kazuhisa Iwata, which was an adaptation of the film by the same title, originally released in Japan in 1985 by publisher Shogakukan under its Tentomushi Comics label. The manga, split into six issues (July–Dec. 1988) and published as Godzilla, featured cover art by Mark A. Nelson. This miniseries is notable for being one of the first manga released by an American publisher. While popular worldwide today, back in the 1980s manga was fairly unknown to Western readers, the most successful Americanaudience manga at that time being First Comics’ Lone Wolf and Cub the previous year.

Second, in June 1988, The Godzilla Portfolio #1 was released. This featured ten 10” x 15” arthur adams black-and-white plates featuring Godzilla with artwork by the likes of Arthur Adams, Kevin © Luigi Novi / Eastman and Peter Laird, Alan Moore, Doug Wikimedia Commons.

Wildey, Paul Chadwick, Hilary Barta, Mark Badger, Cynthia Martin, Bill Wray, and Mark A. Nelson. In March 1989, The Godzilla Portfolio #2 was released, with more blackand-white plates by Rick Geary, Chris Warner, John Workman, Keith Giffen, Charles Vess, Jim Bradrick, Hilary Barta, Mike Mignola, Harrison Fong, and Stephen Bissette.

Awakened!

Two of Godzilla’s mega-fans—artist Arthur Adams and writer Randy Stradley—joined forces for one of the coolest comics of Summer 1988, Godzilla Color Special #1. © Toho Co., Ltd.

UP AND ADAMS!

The next big Dark Horse Godzilla project was Godzilla Color Special #1 (Aug. 1992), written by Randy Stradley and co-written and illustrated by Arthur Adams. In Modern Masters vol. 6: Arthur Adams, the artist discussed his love of Godzilla with George Khoury and Eric Nolen-Weathington.

“On that first Godzilla, I wrote most of it,” said Adams. “But I was having trouble with writing some of it, so I think Stradley ended up writing about ten or 15 pages of it. This sounds silly, and certainly reading my own stuff I don’t think I’m a particularly good writer, but what I found was that it was surprisingly easy.

I think the hold-up for me when I started scripting Godzilla was that, for some reason, I thought I should type it, and I ended up taking, like, one whole day to type one page.”

Adams would draw inspiration from sources near and dear to him when writing this Godzilla comic. “One of the monsters Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 43

Hissy Fit Arthur Adams became a go-to Godzilla creator for Dark Horse after the Color Special. (left) Adams’ original art to Dark Horse Classics: Terror of Godzilla #3 (Oct. 1998), and (right) the cover’s published version. Original art courtesy of Heritage. © Toho Co., Ltd.

in it is based on a monster called Majin, Monster of Terror,” said Adams. “But that was a monster that was owned by another company, but it was a monster that I always liked. So, yeah, it was an original story in that it’s inspired by other things, but it’s, for the most part, an original story.”

Adams would also have a hand in creating some characters that would be featured throughout the rest of the Godzilla comics—and this is where his love of comic books came into play. “I also wanted to have some characters that were kind of like the Fantastic Four or the Doom Patrol, so that’s why I came up with G-Force.”

After the Color Special, fans didn’t have to wait too long for Godzilla’s next appearance. An all-new, two-part story was featured in Dark Horse Comics #10 (May 1993) and 11 (July 1993), written by Randy Stradley with art by Bobby Rubio and Brian Garvey.

Although Godzilla had to share this anthology book with the Predator and James Bond, he did manage to land the Arthur Adams–illustrated cover for issue #11.

HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES

In 1992, Nike released a commercial that featured Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo; he encounters a giant-sized Charles Barkley and loses to him in a oneon-one basketball game. Inspired by this matchup, Dark Horse released a special one-shot, Godzilla vs.

Charles Barkley (Dec.1993), written by Mike Baron and illustrated by Jeff Butler and Keith Aiken. “Godzilla vs.

Barkley was Mike Richardson’s idea,” says Baron about his one Godzilla project. “Mike is the Dark Horse publisher.

He’s six feet six inches tall and has always played basketball. He is also a great admirer of Phil Knight, the Nike CEO, which is also located in Portland. It’s just one of those crazy ideas that would only work in comics.”

In the commercial, the action was centered in Tokyo, but in the comic, Baron gave Barkley the homecourt advantage and set the action in California.

“I asked Mike if I could write it,” recalls Baron. “I’m not a basketball fan and have never played, but the absurd juxtaposition appealed to me. I was on my own in writing this project. I could do anything I wanted.

But of course, it had to be about basketball. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen basketball and attended my high school basketball games. I know how it’s played, but I couldn’t cite chapter and verse.” Besides being a unique concept for a Godzilla comic, the one-shot also holds the distinction of being the only Dark Horse Godzilla that has never been reprinted.

GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN

The two-part story from Dark Horse Comics would be reprinted as Godzilla #0 (May 1995). And with that, at last, the Godzilla series Stradley had long envisioned finally came to be. And what better way to launch all new stories than with one written by Kevin Maguire?

The artist who had made a name for himself on Justice League would script Godzilla #1–4 (June–Sept. 1995).

Artwork for the first issue was provided by Brandon

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Big Bang-Ups A double feature of mid-’90s knockdown, drag-outs! (left) The Godzilla vs.

[Charles] Barkley one-shot (Dec. 1993). Cover by Dave Dorman. (right) Godzilla versus Hero Zero (July 1995). Cover

by Arthur Adams.

Godzilla® © Toho Co., Ltd. Barkley © Charles Barkley Enterprises, Inc. Hero Zero © Dark Horse Comics.

McKinney and Keith Aiken, with Scott Reed joining McKinney for the other three issues. Covers once again were provided by Arthur Adams.

In scripting these issues, Maguire used a trick he had picked up from his work at DC. “[Kevin] gave me layouts for pages for most, if not all of his four issues,” Brandon McKinney, who penciled Maguire’s script, tells BACK ISSUE. “They were very similar to what he received from Keith Giffen when they worked together on Justice League. It was great training, as I was still quite young and relatively new to comics.”

At the same time the regular Godzilla series was launching, Dark Horse released another one-shot called Godzilla versus Hero Zero (July 1995). This comic, written by BI’s own Michael Eury with artwork by Tatsuya Ishida and Mike Miller, was the only time Godzilla interacted with any other Dark Horse Comics characters, in this case Dark Horse’s Ultraman homage, Hero Zero. “The concept of the Godzilla vs. Hero Zero one-shot was that it was set at the 1995 San Diego Comic-Con,” says Eury. “So in a way, Comic-Con—in the era when it was still a mega-comic show and not yet dominated by Hollywood and merchandising—was the star. Arthur Adams—legendary as a Godzilla fan and chief among Godzilla comic artists—had a cameo as himself in the convention scenes. Hero Zero’s

Hooray for Hollywood (inset) Arthur Adams’ cover for Godzilla #1 (June 1995). (right) Inside that issue, Big G’s in good artistic hands courtesy of writer Kevin Maguire and artists Brandon McKinney and Keith Aiken. © Toho Co., Ltd.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

Godzilla Down!

The King of Monsters apparently met his end (yeah, right) after a battle with Cybersaur on this cliffhanger last page of Godzilla #2 (July 1995).

Original art scan courtesy of penciler Brandon McKinney.

Inks by Scott Reed. © Toho Co., Ltd.

alter ego is attending the con and having a blast when Godzilla attacks—which is inadvertently the result of his playing around as Hero Zero earlier that day and awakening and infuriating the big G.” If you have ever wondered how a writer plans out a fight for a big battle scene in a comic book, Eury explains how he went about it. “It was fun visualizing the battle between the two when scripting,” says Eury.

“I acted out the battle with toy props—an Ultraman figurine as Hero Zero and a plush Dino Flintstone as Godzilla!” As fun as that must have been to stage, the book does hold one bittersweet memory for the writer. “There’s a chilling scene where Godzilla lumbers between two twin skyscrapers and they crumble as a result,” recalls Eury. “This was years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Since the World Trade Center was destroyed, I can’t look back at that scene in our comic without feeling blue.”

ALL MONSTERS ATTACK

Arthur Adams would return to script Godzilla issues #5–8 (Oct. 1995–Jan. 1996). For the first two issues, artwork was provided by Tatsuya Ishida and Daniel Rivera. Justin Bloomer and Jasen Rodriguez joined the art team for the final two issues with Mike Wolfer replacing Ishida on the last issue. Switching things up this time, the covers for these issues were created by Maguire and Adams together.

Throughout the run, the credits for this series reads like a who’s who of comics pros. “Some people we reached out to, like Kevin Maguire,” says Randy Stradley when asked about assembling creators for this series.

“But others approached us, like Bob Eggleton, film director Alex Cox, and many others. There were many artists and writers who were excited to work on Godzilla—myself and Arthur Adams included.”

McKinney would return as the penciler for the next four-issue run in Issues #9–12 (Mar.–June 1996). This time he would team up with Alex Cox, the director of such cult classics as Sid and Nancy and Repo Man and the screenplay writer for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. By the end of the book, McKinney would pencil nine of the 17 issues of Godzilla. “I knew who Godzilla was, of course, but I don’t know that I ever watched any of the movies all the way through,” McKinney admits to BACK ISSUE. “My friend and comic-book inker Keith Aiken helped me with a ton of info and reference. And at the time, the new Toho Godzilla films were coming out but were hard to get ahold of—no streaming services in the mid-’90s. So I went to Kinokuniya bookstore in San Francisco and was able to get some really cool reference material. And I got a couple beautifully sculpted toys, which helped a ton.”

GODZILLA: FINAL WARS

The last five issues of Godzilla were all done by different creator teams, indicating that the series was beginning to wind down. Issue #13 (June 1996) was written

by Stradley, with artwork by Scott Kollins and Barb Kaalberg. “At the time I was doing mostly work for DC, and a little for Marvel and Malibu,” says Kaalberg. “I was known for making deadlines, however, and I got a call out of the blue from Dark Horse to do a fill-in for Godzilla, which I happily took. I ended up doing a couple of other one-offs (fill-ins) for Dark Horse on other projects that needed to be brought back on track, schedule-wise, but was mainly committed to DC projects at the time.”

Issue #14 (July 1996) featured a story by Eric Fein, with artwork by Gordon Purcell and Andrew Pepoy.

“Dark Horse had put out a great special issue that Art Adams drew, so I used his designs, especially with the human crew, photos and a toy model to base the story on,” says Purcell about his one issue of Godzilla. “Editor Randy Stradley—a huge Godzilla fan—lent me a photo book from Toho for some reference—this was before the internet and all the reference you find there!”

Issue #15 was written by Ryder Windham, with artwork by Brandon McKinney and Andrew Pepoy.

“Randy Stradley contacted me [about doing this issue],” says Windham. “I had worked at Dark Horse Comics as an editor and left on good terms. I started doing some freelance work and Randy explained that he was looking for a fill-in issue, almost a standalone story for Godzilla. My recollection is that they only had a few issues left [before the book’s cancellation]. I asked him for information about what happened in the issue that would precede the one I was working on, just so I could get a sense of continuity. There was this team of humans that were tracking Godzilla, and I wanted to know where did they see him last. Based on the 46 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

War with the Cybersaur Godzilla vs. a mecha-foe, produced by Brandon McKinney for a Sac-Con (Sacramento, California) promotion. Also shown are image roughs. All, courtesy of Brandon McKinney.

Art © Brandon McKinney.

Godzilla® © Toho Co., Ltd.

brandon mckinney

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 47

information Randy gave to me, I looked at a map and I found Lord Howe Island, and I just cracked up at the name. It sounded like some kind of expletive, ‘Lord Howe’!”

Windham expressed a great appreciation that he got to have a helping hand in creating this issue, not just writing the script, but also contributing to the artwork and the design of the monster in this issue. “I worked up some designs and sent those to Randy, and he approved everything,” says Windham.

“I don’t remember any complications or challenges. I wound up drawing thumbnail sketches for the entire story, layouts for the whole issue, and the artist was fairly faithful to them, which was gratifying.”

Besides creating the appearance of the monster for this issue, Windham had a very specific look in mind for his issue’s villain, Dr. Yamazaki. “I created the villain and remember one specific instruction I had with her is that we never see her right hand in the issue,” says Windham. “In the first few pages, when she is introduced, she has these long, bulky sleeves, and we see her left hand reaching up to remove her eyeglasses.”

The final issue of Godzilla, #16 (Sept. 1996), was written

by Stradley with artwork by Bob Eggleton and Andrew Pepoy.

“Randy wrote the issue that came immediately after [mine], and he was going to wrap up the series,” recalls Windham.

“He was curious about Dr. Yamazaki and he said, ‘What’s the deal about her hands? Why don’t we reveal them?’ I told him I was hoping to get a shot at writing another issue, and I did have a backstory in mind. Randy apologized and told me he was working on the script [to conclude the series]. Because Randy’s a pal, I told him, ‘Why we don’t see her hands, and the traumatic story of what happened to her as a child,’ and he incorporated that into his issue.”

RIDING OFF INTO THE RISING SUN

Walking Tall (top) Original art to the splash page from Godzilla #14 (July 1996), courtesy of penciler Gordon Purcell. Inks by Andrew Pepoy. (bottom) Writer Ryder Windham’s sketch for the leviathan from issue #15. Courtesy of Ryder Windham.

Sketch art © Ryder Windham.

Godzilla® © Toho Co., Ltd.

48 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Even after Dark Horse Comics ended the monthly Godzilla comic, they retained the license for the character until 1999.

Their final project was Dark Horse Classics: Terror of Godzilla (Aug. 1998–Jan. 1999), which reprinted Iwata’s manga in full color and sported covers by Arthur Adams.

After just over a decade, Godzilla’s time at Dark Horse Comics came to an end. At the time of the writing of this article, Dark Horse held the American comic-book rights to the character longer than any other publisher.

Looking back on that time, there are only a few additional things Randy Stradley wishes he could have done.

“I would have loved to [have done] a series with Toho, revisiting and reimagining some of the monsters and situations from their movies, but as I remember, perhaps incorrectly, after the 1998 Tri-Star movie, interest in Godzilla— including Godzilla fandom—seemed to dissipate. After that, I could never interest the Dark Horse licensing department in going after the license with Toho. Needless to say, I was jealous when IDW licensed directly from Toho and got to use the other monsters.”

Even if the public at large may not all be fans of the King of the Monsters, he will always have his loyal followers. Efforts by publishers like Dark Horse Comics help to insure new fans are born every day that all love the Big G. “We had a super-loyal fan base,” says Stradley, “sometimes getting as many as 30 fan letters per issue, and some of the fans continued to send letters for years after our publications finished.”

DAN JOHNSON is a comics writer and pop-culture historian. He is a co-founder, editor, and writer for Empire Comics Lab (empirecomicslab.com) and Old School Comics. Dan has written for Antarctic Press, Campfire Graphic Novels, Golden Kid Comics, InDELLible Comics, and ACP Comics, and is a writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

by S

tephan Friedt

Take one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th Century, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (October 15, 1888–February 14, 1975), KBE [Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire—ed.], commonly known as P. G. Wodehouse… the creator of Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves; the loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr. Mulliner, with a variety of tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls. Mix his humor style with sentient dinosaurs and you have the title and lead story for the short-lived, three-issue series Dinosaur Rex (1987) from Upshot Graphics, an imprint of Fantagraphics.

“I’ve never killed a dinosaur in my life… In fact, I rather like the brutes. As a child, I used to fantasize about befriending one—taking a thorn from its paw or saving it from agonizing death in the tar pits.” With that we are introduced to our “hero” Hempsted Wallop, cousin Flavia Sipp, and dinosaur butler Duubadah, and we begin a journey through English manors, lost fortunes, and an adventurous expedition.

P. G. Wodehouse authored more than 90 books, 40 plays, 200 short stories, and other writings. Between 1902 and 1974, P. G. would often have multiple works in progress at the same time and take up to two years to build up a plot and scenario of 30,000 words… and then he’d start writing the book. For many of us, he was the companion to Mark Twain in our reading stack, and often our first introduction to the fanciful life of upper-class Englishmen. Dinosaur Rex author Jan Strnad was no exception.

Artwork on Dinosaur Rex was provided by comicbook newcomer Henry (Hank) Mayo. Henry had cut his teeth in the movie field as a storyboard artist and concept artist on many films, starting with Dune (1984). After his short foray into comics, it was back to the film industry for Mayo, with work including Jumanji

Dinoton Manor Meet Hempsted Wallopp, Flavia Sipp, and mandinoservant Duubadah, on the cover of Upshot Graphics’ (a Fantagraphics imprint) Dinosaur Rex #1 (1987). Scans accompanying this interview are courtesy of Stephan Friedt, unless otherwise noted. © Jan Strnad and Henry Mayo.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

Man of the House (top left) Author P. G. Wodehouse, in an autographed postcard. (right) Wodehouse’s 1954 novel, The Return of Jeeves. Both, courtesy of Heritage. (bottom) From Strnad and Mayo’s Dinosaur Rex #1, the only issue of the threeissue series published in color. © Jan Strnad and Henry Mayo.

(1995), Men in Black (1997), Tarzan (1999), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (a TV miniseries documentary). He would return to comics for a one-shot in Creeps Magazine #4 (Winter 2015–2016), then head back to films. With over 30 credits on live-action and animated movies, comics take a backseat to his time and efforts.

Jan Strnad also has over 30 credits to his name in films and animation in dozens of cartoon shows like Darkwing Duck, Talespin, and Goof Troop for Disney, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series and X-Men: The Animated Series for Marvel, to just name a few. When it comes to comic stories, Jan started publishing his own fanzine, Anomaly, in 1969. The Grand Comics Database lists over 264 stories by Strnad in US publications alone. Collaborations with the late Richard Corben like Mutant World, as well as The Miracle Squad, Dalgoda, and Sword of the Atom are just a few examples.

I recently shared emails with Mr. Strnad and asked him about the Dinosaur Rex series.

– Stephan Friedt STEPHAN FRIEDT: I’m intrigued by how your appreciation of P. G. Wodehouse and dinosaurs became Dinosaur Rex. What was your impetus to do this story? Do you have a favorite Wodehouse book?

JAN STRNAD: What kid didn’t grow up loving dinosaurs? I had the books, the plastic models, I loved the movies, The Flintstones, the dinosaur on the Sinclair Oil sign. I still own dinosaur models that I’d have out on the shelves if I had more shelves, and I still love dinosaur movies, especially those featuring stopmotion animation. O’Brien and Harryhausen… wow.

Danforth. But even second-tier stop-motion dinosaurs put a smile on my face.

And P. G. Wodehouse… my God, what a hoot to read his stories. He invented the butler Jeeves, and Bertie Wooster, and a whole pantheon of hilarious characters.

There’s never been a funnier writer on the face of the planet than P. G. Wodehouse.

Mashing up Wodehouse’s style, as best I could imitate it, with dinosaurs was a collision waiting to happen, like driving in Albania.

My favorite Wodehouse book would be the thickest one with the most words in it.

jan strnad

FRIEDT: I assume the story ended up at Fantagraphics due to your long association with them. How did you get paired with Holden (Hank) Mayo as the artist?

Did you work closely on the project?

STRNAD: I was working for Fantagraphics at the time. I’d made my escape from Wichita, Kansas, with 50 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

my wife Julie, and we were living in [Fantagraphics publisher] Gary Groth’s garage while working in the office. Julie also worked for Fantagraphics as circulation director. I pitched them the idea and [Fantagraphics editor] Kim Thompson suggested Hank Mayo as artist.

It wasn’t a terribly close collaboration with a lot of back and forth, but we got along fine until we didn’t.

Dredd movie after writing a treatment, I felt that comic books were dying, I had no interest in writing video games, and we were on the verge of having to move back to Kansas.

Kim Thompson was always wonderful, and he was a talented editor. I don’t remember specifically turning the reins over to Kim, but he would have been the natural choice.

FRIEDT: In his editorial in the second issue, Kim Thompson refers to “production problems and personality conflicts” that caused problems for the series. Care to elaborate or give us a behind the scenes on the difficulties in publishing back in those days? Were those difficulties the cause behind your relinquishing duties as editor of the book, after the first issue, over to Kim? STRNAD: The problem was a gradual falling out with Gary Groth over a period. It was a painful process of disillusionment and disappointment.

I felt desperate at the time with very little money and no clear career path and feeling not at all in control of my life. I was in my mid-30s, and you’re supposed to have things figured out by then, and I didn’t. I was full of myself and prideful with little to be prideful over. I needed to provide for my wife and justify her giving up her family and friends in Kansas to accompany me to California. Things just weren’t working out. I’d been fired off the Judge

FRIEDT: Hank supplied a piece of art that was intended to be the cover of the graphic novel… considering the dismal state of the market back then, and the lighter sales of the series, was that the reason we never saw the graphic novel? Were there more Dinosaur Rex stories in the pipeline?

STRNAD: The reason for the absence of a Dinosaur Rex graphic album was sales, or lack thereof. The series didn’t sell well, so, end of story. Nope, there were no more stories in the pipeline.

FRIEDT: It’s no secret that I’m a long-time fan of your work—from the collaborations with Richard Corben, to my all-time favorite series, Dalgoda, to the Sword of the Atom work with Gil Kane, to my appreciation of Darkwing Duck and the other Disney animated series you worked on. You’ve worked in several different mediums… Do you have a favorite? Is there a difference in the approach you take in writing for comics, versus animation, versus prose?

Time Is Running Out Mayo’s covers to the Strnad-scripted Dinosaur Rex #2 and 3. With issue #2, economics drove the series to becoming a black-and-white publication. © Jan Strnad and Henry Mayo.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 51

A King-Sized Discovery An encounter with the “Tyrannicorn” rex, from issue #2 (1987). (opposite page) Courtesy of Henry Mayo, the cover painting for an unrealized Dinosaur Rex graphic novel.

Art © Henry Mayo. Dinosaur Rex © Jan Strnad and Henry Mayo.

STRNAD: I must admit that I’ve found the novels to be the most satisfying medium. The story flows straight from me to the audience. There’s no intermediation of an artist involved. This is good and bad.

The comics artists I’ve worked with have always made me look good, which is wonderful! On the other hand, comics are an artist’s medium, and I have this weird notion that the writer should be close to invisible. I want to tell the story visually as much as possible. I try very purposefully not to call attention to myself with the prose, which I always try to keep to a minimum. I try to write to the artist’s strengths and give the art room to breathe. I hated covering up any inch of Gil Kane’s art, for instance, when it came time to place the word balloons!

And I must face it: I’m not Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman, and I’ve never worked consistently for a long period of time on any single superhero character, which is the way to establish an identity in the comics world. I had the chance to take over The Atom after Sword of the Atom, but I turned it down because I didn’t want to do a monthly book— stupid career decision!

With the novels and short stories, it’s just me on the tightrope. No artist to bail me out if I falter,

52 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

but also no one competing for the spotlight. Plus, they’re done-in-one. I’m not a fan of ongoing monthly continuity where, as Stan Lee said, you don’t get real change, but the illusion of change. It seems to me that a real adventure should change a person, and monthly comics don’t lend themselves to that kind of change.

Dinosaur Rex’s backup feature was “The Dragons of Summer,” written by William Messner-Loebs with art by Dennis Fujitake. But that’s another story…

Haunting the wilds of Oregon and now semi-retired so he can devote even more time to uncovering the gems of comic-book history and empty-nesting with his wife, STEPHAN FRIEDT helps with entries at the Grand Comic Book Database at comics.org, deals with database entries at comicspriceguide.com, and provides editorial consultation and an occasional writing assist for the new Defective Comix Studio at defectivecomix.com.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 53

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Who doesn’t love a little (actually, a lot) of humor along with their gun-toting dinosaur stories? Well, that’s just what readers got with Dinosaurs for Hire (DFH). The 1980s comic provided readers with action aplenty as well as satire galore. And, of course, dinosaurs with heavy weaponry!

BACK ISSUE takes a takes a look at these locked-andloaded dinos, the series itself, and its strange connection to the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.

ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

by E d

Lute

DFH was a comic book about three (later four) anthropomorphic dinosaurs that work for the US government as freelance agents with itchy trigger fingers, but it’s actually much more than that.

The three main characters are Archie (who resembles a Tyrannosaurus rex), Lorenzo (who appears like a triceratops, but wears a Hawaiian shirt), and Reese (who looks like a one-eyed stegosaurus and likes heavy weapons). Although they look like dinosaurs, they are actually aliens. They happened to crash-land on Earth and are mistaken for smaller, talking versions of the prehistoric mammoths.

So where did the concept for this unusual title just come from? Writer/ creator Tom Mason tells BACK ISSUE, “My friend [comic-book writer] Jan Strnad, myself, and another writer, Mike Valerio, were kicking around ideas one afternoon. We were either at lunch or at Jan’s apartment in tom mason Hollywood. We all lived within six Storyhive. blocks of each other. Jan had written comics for DC and Marvel, had most recently created Dalgoda, and now had a publishing company called Mad Dog Graphics.

“Mike pitched this idea about Elvis as a private eye/ cop/detective that made us howl. Jan said he’d publish it, Mike said he’d write it, and I said I’d read it. That’s where we left it. Mike eventually dropped out—he was stuck for an idea and couldn’t get started, and he had a really busy job as a producer at NBC. But Jan still thought it was a good idea, and Mike graciously let me pick up the ball.

“No one would ever consider me a writer back then, and I wasn’t interested in becoming a writer, but I did think the idea was fun in a very over-the-top kind of way. Jan said he’d help me, which was a big boost.

So I did a first draft of a script, and then I sat with Jan for an afternoon, and he gave me notes and really taught me how to make a story in comics. I’m sure I still have a printed copy of that draft with his original notes on it. Then I rewrote it, and Jan liked it.

Armed and Dangerous From Eternity Comics, Tom Mason’s Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 1 #1 (Mar. 1988).

Cover art by Bryon Carson and Scott Hanna.

Dinosaurs for Hire TM & © Tom Mason.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 57

“Jan reached out to Don Lomax, who did some artwork for it, and that stuff looked great. Don really captured the physicality of late-stage Elvis. There was a cover and at least two or three continuity pages. There was also a promotional article written about the comic book in the Los Angeles Times. But then Jan got worried that the Elvis estate would come after him, and he cancelled the book. I still owned the script, however.”

That’s a nice story, Tom, but what does Elvis have to do with dinosaurs that are armed to the teeth? He continues, “So, jump ahead a little bit. Dave Olbrich had pitched Scott Rosenberg on the idea of starting Malibu Comics, and Dave would be the publisher.

Scott greenlit the company, and Dave brought me in to help out. We were kicking around ideas for new titles to fill out the schedule, and Dave knew about the Elvis comic book, probably because I wouldn’t shut up about ‘the comic that might’ve been.’ Dave suggested that I pull out that script and change the Elvis character into something cool, like, perhaps, dinosaurs. Ding!

“And that was it. I think I had a weekend to get the script revised and find an artist so it could be [ready] at the time when Malibu needed a new book on the schedule. I spent a couple of days reworking the script and changing Elvis into three distinct dinosaur characters.”

When the fictional Elvis was changed into three dinosaurs, surely the comic became vastly different, right? Not according to Mason.

“A lot of the script stayed the same… The setup, the structure, even some of the jokes were identical.

The supporting cast is the same... even a bunch of jokes are the same.”

But what about the original Elvis version? “I don’t know what I’ll ever do with the original Elvis script,” Mason reveals. “I still think it’s a good idea, and I still fiddle with it from time-to-time, but Elvis has faded from the pop-culture conversation. It’s a little like doing a Dean Martin, Private Eye comic now. Who’s the audience and what problem does that book solve for them?”

DINOSAUR VICE

With the script completed, the next step was to secure an artist. That artist was Bryon Carson.

According to Mason, “Dave and I knew Bryon because he had done a couple of series for Malibu Comics before Dinosaurs for Hire. He felt like a natural fit, and when I talked to him about the series, he said he’d always wanted to draw dinosaurs.

“That was it, that’s all it took. He did the initial character designs that were really terrific.” Artists Scott Bieser, Chuck Wojtkiewicz, Mike Roberts, and Terry Pallot all contributed to the book as well throughout its original nine-issue run.

Dinosaurs for Hire #1 (Mar. 1988) not only introduced our dino heroes to readers but also to their handler, Professor Tyrell, and their robotic female companions that keep them… *ahem*… entertained during the downtime. The story had Archie and pals face off against drug smugglers, but it was the humor—with

To Here from Eternity (top) From Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 1, covers for: issue #2 (by Carson and Hanna) and 4 (by Scott Bieser and Mike Roberts). (bottom) Splash page from issue #1.

TM & © Tom Mason.

58 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

some NSFW [Not Safe For Work] humor sprinkled in— that helped to make it memorable. Lines like “chicken tasting just like pterodactyl, only tougher” and topical quips about Sean Penn brought a fun, light-heartedness that was missing from many comic books of the time.

With the first issue based on an existing script, how did Mason develop the rest of the series? “It got easier, but it was difficult early on because the Elvis script was supposed to be a one-and-done. There was no plan to ever continue it, so there was no story bible or episode guide or pitch material or rejected plots to pull from. I’d lived with that first script for nearly a year, and suddenly I needed a second script. I think the second issue suffers from my inabilities, but then it got better as I figured things out.”

As with the first issue, the stories for the rest of the run were good, but it was the humor that brought them to the next level. Jokes and one-liners about France, The Beatles—which even received a hate letter in issue #6 (Feb. 1989)—the rise in the comic-book prices, the shadiness of some comic-book dealers, and McLean Stevenson’s career as well as plenty of sight gags were generously sprinkled throughout each issue.

While some of the comedy was dated (McLean who?), much of it still holds up.

Tom Mason discusses his writing process for the title.

“I had a full-time job at Malibu Comics, so all of this was freelance, and I had to do it off-site and outside of office hours. First, I had to come up with some stupid idea,

usually a fun villain that the dinos could interact with—a ghost; a vampire; government conspiracy; some version of the Predator; a parody of Turok, who was a hot Valiant character at the time. I’d bounce a lot of this off of Dave and Malibu’s editor-in-chief Chris Ulm. “Then I’d have to noodle that into a story. I never had to write up an outline or pitch something to anyone.

I would just go right to full script. It was the luxury of my schedule, my job, and having a creator-owned book.

I wrote every morning before leaving my apartment, and if I did a little bit each day before going to the gym, I’d have a full script written in a couple of weeks.

“Being immersed in comic books all day at the office was a tremendous help. I was reading tons of comics, all the trade publications, talking comics with everyone in the office and people on the phone, talking to fans, going to conventions. Everything rolled around in my head until I could shake out a story.”

Dinosaurs for Hire ended with issue #9 (Jan. 1990).

In a 2021 interview with J. C. Vaughn for Previewsworld. com, Mason revealed, “I was approaching some serious creative burnout, and I just couldn’t maintain the hours that I was putting in. Writing in the morning, going to work, then writing more in the evenings. It was just a lot. Issue #9 was a standalone issue that was essentially a fill-in by Scott Benefiel. Chuck [Wojtkiewicz] had left for another gig, so if the series was to continue, I had to find yet another artist to do #10 as I was writing it, and I was just too tired.”

Big Guns From Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 1, covers for issues (left) #5 and (right) 9 (both, by Dale Keown).

TM & © Tom Mason.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 59

GUNS N’ DINOSAURS

Archie, Lorenzo, and Reese returned with a new Dinosaurs for Hire title (now in full color) a few years later, and this time they were joined by Cyrano, who resembled a pterodactyl. The book was also moved from Malibu Comics’ Eternity imprint to the Malibu one.

However, the return wasn’t simply because Mason had more stories to tell. The writer reveals to BI, “The second series only got launched because Sega had licensed the comic book for a video game, and Malibu’s co-presidents wanted a tie-in comic book to support the game and prove to Sega that we cared. There was a belief at the time that the game and the comic would have synergy, and one would help the other, but that’s not the case—they’re very separate audiences. But it was about massaging the Sega relationship. Malibu co-president Bob Jacob ran Malibu Interactive, the division of Malibu that made video games under contract for Sega

and others, and everything was connected. So, my comic book was relaunched.”

Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 2 premiered with a first issue cover-dated February 1993, launching with penciler Mitch Byrd and inker Bruce McCorkindale. How did this new book compare to the original one?

According to Mason, “The first series, the blackand-white one, I just wrote on the fly. I didn’t really understand how to write ongoing comics with regular characters, so I was learning on the job, trying to apply all the things that Jan Strnad taught me. I owe him everything for teaching me how to write a comic book.

I got input from Dave and Chris, and I just did whatever popped into my head that seemed reasonable.

“On the first series, it was me writing and sort of editing, and I was trafficking the art between the pencilers, inkers, and letterers, with Chris Ulm and Dave

‘Wonderfully Grotesque’ (left) An ad for Eternity’s Dinosaurs for Hire.

This image by penciler Ben Dunn and inker Doug Hazlewood, which also appeared as the cover of DFH #8, was inspired by Japanese manga illustrator Kazuhiko Kato— a.k.a. Monkey Punch—creator of Lupin III. (right) Paul Gulacy provided the cover art and painted color for 1989’s Guns ’n’ Lizards graphic novel, which reprinted issues #1–3.

Scan courtesy of Dave Lemieux.

TM & © Tom Mason.

60 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

DINOSAURS FOR HIRE: THE (ALMOST) MOVIE, TV SHOW, AND ANIMATED SERIES While there was a Dinosaurs for Hire video game released exclusively for the Sega Genesis, that wasn’t supposed to be the only media adaption of the comic. There was almost an animated series, a live-action show, and feature film! How did these projects come about, and why weren’t they released?

DFH writer/creator Tom Mason reveals the story behind the animated series that almost was. “Well, Fox had acquired the rights. This was before I realized that I had some power and had the right to throw some weight around. So, they had the rights, and I wasn’t involved. In defense of my ignorance, I was at the time writing the comic book, co-writing Prototype with Len Strazewski for the Ultraverse, working on staff full-time at Malibu Comics, where I was editing comics and running the marketing department, and I was married. I was running in a lot of different directions.

“Fox developed the show without me, and, frankly, I never thought anything would happen with it. Lots of stuff goes into development and never comes out as a show. There was never an offer on the table to pay me to be involved at a creative level, and I wasn’t aware that I could make that happen by pushing for it. It turns out that they were looking for a show like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, something that would hit that same audience and be another generator for toys and stuff. But Dinosaurs for Hire isn’t that.

“It didn’t stop Fox, though, and they aged it down in development, but then they didn’t like it because it wasn’t funny like the comic book (well, duh). They called me in for a meeting because they wanted my crazy sensibility to apply to their kid-ified version of Dinosaurs for Hire. It was a ‘How can you fix this for us?’ kind of meeting. We had some conversations, but my sensibilities were not in line with what they wanted, and the series never got out of development.”

DFH also almost became a motion picture. “On the second [comic] series, the full color one, I knew more, but I was defiant, probably to my financial detriment,” Mason admits. “I didn’t really care if Dinosaurs for Hire became a Olbrich looking over my shoulder. The office was very small then, with just four of us in the building. By the time the second series came around Malibu Comics was huge, well over 125 people in two buildings, the book was in full color, the video game was coming out, and Chris was the launch editor. Chris was very busy as editor-in-chief of the Ultraverse, though, and so he edited the first issue kind of as a favor to keep me from going too crazy creatively, and Roland Mann subsequently became my editor.

“Roland will tell you, correctly, that I’m a pain in the ass because I’m always writing, always adjusting things. On the first series, I’d write full script, the art would come in, and before I sent the pages to the letterer, I’d punch up the script, indicate balloon placement, and adapt the dialogue to work with any adjustments the artists had made to better tell the story. On the second series, the company had grown a lot and was more corporate and less freewheeling. I wanted the same flexibility, though, on the new series. We had our own letterer in-house, we had artists on staff who could be called on to do touch-up work, so I had the ability to rewrite my stuff at the pencil stage, after the inks were done, and on the first pass after coloring. So, I was and still am a pain in the ass.

movie or a TV show because I couldn’t see how anyone could do it. The guy who did The Last Starfighter, Jonathan Betuel, really wanted to do it. This company called Funnybook Films had a low-budget option on DFH, and even had a script written that I didn’t realize they were doing, but it wasn’t that good and the project died. Betuel eventually made Theodore Rex with Whoopi Goldberg.”

But wait, there’s more. “About ten years ago, there was a big-name producer who had a successful series on the air, and he was interested in it as a TV series,” Mason recalls. “He wanted to option the rights to [Dinosaurs for Hire], but he didn’t want to pay me a reasonable amount of money, and he didn’t want me involved in any way.

He gave me that great story about how it would make me famous, and my name would be on the screen and blah, blah, blah. But I was smarter then and said I would need more money, and I’ll need a role as a consultant and an episode commitment to write at least one script per season. Well, he was hoping I was just a comic-book guy that he could squeeze with some showbiz BS, but I’d learned over the years, and I had a series on the air as we were talking. So it never happened.”

Why was there such a push to make the DFH projects?

“Malibu’s co-president Bob Jacob kept envisioning Dinosaurs for Hire as a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Mason says. “The animation studios kept wanting to age it down for that TMNT feel; [the] movie people were all, ‘Well, this is very expensive, and the technology doesn’t exist to make these characters, so what if it’s only one dinosaur and he’s in a rubber suit like a small Godzilla?’ Everybody was like, ‘Where are the toys? What kind of vehicles can we put them in for the toy company?’ And Bob was running around thinking he was going to pressure me to do whatever it took to expand the company’s empire.

“I thought all of that was stupid, and I wasn’t interested.

I had a vision for the comic book that didn’t include those things. I found all of these folks highly amusing. I just wanted to write my funny little comic book, and some of these people and events found their way into my work.”

“I would love to say that I did this because I was ‘totally like protecting my work from the Man and preserving my integrity as an artist!,’ but that’s not really the case. I just kept looking at the art and getting inspired to come up with better jokes, and the artists, especially Mitch Byrd but not just Mitch Byrd, kept doing fun stuff. They’d add a panel, throw something into the background, arrange the action in a much better way, all with my encouragement, and that would give me new ingredients to play with. I was a very good team player on other stuff, and participatory and helpful. Just not on Dinosaurs for Hire.”

In addition to Byrd and McCorkindale, artists Kiki Chansamore, Terry Pallot, and Leonard Kirk helped Mason to bring the funny to readers.

The new series, which lasted 12 issues plus an ashcan edition, contained the same NSFW humor of the original run. Parodies of Jurassic Park, Calvin and Hobbes, comic-book sales gimmicks, and the Punisher were only some of the ideas that populated the title this time around. “The original series just reflected the times in which I was living in and the stupid, funny things I wanted to say,” Mason reveals. “The jokes and opinions are dated, and Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 61

possibly full of cringe, so that stuff doesn’t travel.

I’ve grown a lot as a person and a writer, but I’m still angry and opinionated. What does travel is the attitude, my belief that stuff exists to be made fun of, and dinosaurs should have guns. So, I don’t think the exact series could be published, but there’s plenty of room for dumbass opinions spouted by gun-toting five-fingered dinosaurs.

“The takeaway for me is that I loved it. I loved working with all the artists. I love making comics. I was part of a big company, I had a large support staff of truly creative people in my corner, there was an advertising and marketing budget to support it, and I was grateful to be riding on the coattails of the Ultraverse. My early exposure to places like Fox and Sega helped me transition to writing books and TV shows, and I’m a footnote in comic-book history.”

ARE THE DINOSAURS STILL FOR HIRE?

Volume 2, and a Game for You! From Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 2, covers for: (top left) issue #4 (by Jerry Bingham) and 5 (by Leonard Kirk and Bruce McCorkindale); (bottom) issues 10 and 11 (both, by Kirk and McCorkindale). (inset) Sega’s licensing of Mason’s Dinosaurs for Hire as a video game led to Malibu Comics’ revival of the series. The DFH Sega Genesis cartridge repurposed the Jeff Remmer– painted artwork from Malibu’s Dinosaurs for Hire vol. 2 #1 (Feb. 1993).

Dinosaurs for Hire TM & © Tom Mason. Sega Genesis TM & © Sega.

62 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Readers haven’t had a new DFH story since the end of the second series, or even a contemporary collected edition of the original material.

“I have all the rights to Dinosaurs for Hire,” Mason says. “Malibu Comics had limited publishing rights at the time that Marvel Comics bought Malibu, but I had retained the other rights and the control.

I had gotten smarter. Then Marvel’s inherited publishing rights to DFH expired, and I got them back. A friend of mine, Jeffrey [J. C.] Vaughn from Overstreet [Gemstone/Diamond], made sure to remind me when Marvel’s rights had lapsed. I have a letter from Marvel somewhere and a copy of the agreement. Fortunately, this all happened before Disney bought Marvel, so they reverted to me without any difficulty.”

Will readers ever see a collected edition of Dinosaurs for Hire? According to Mason, that seems unlikely. He tells BI, “Nothing is ever simple. First of all, is there even an audience for a collection of a comic nobody has seen for a bunch of years?

More importantly, though, the original film negatives are long gone. The original black-andwhite series was printed from film, not digitally, so the film negatives can never be found again or recreated in some way. Artwork was returned to the artists, and sold by them and scattered, and photocopies don’t exist. The color comics were colored digitally, but who knows where those files ended up.

I could scan from the printed comics but paying someone to clean them up and make them suitable for reproduction is quite an undertaking for nearly 500 pages of comics.”

So, fans of the series or those that want to check it out after reading this article will have to search for the original books in the back-issue bins of their LCS. Happy hunting!

Elementary teacher ED LUTE loves all kinds of dinosaur comics, but has a special place in his heart for the gun-toting kind.

He was happy to be able to revisit this series and share it with BACK ISSUE readers, and thanks Tom Mason for his invaluable assistance with this article.

Now Ed is going to read the other articles in this issue, because he really does love dinosaur comics. ROAR!

by D

o n Va u g h a n

Collector cards are a unique aspect of popular culture.

Among the most prolific manufacturers is Topps, which made its reputation with sports cards and later expanded into other areas of card collectability, including motion pictures, television, and products such as the extremely popular Garbage Pail Kids.

One of Topps’ most controversial products was Mars Attacks, a 55-card set released in 1962 that sold for five cents per pack. The cards depicted a Martian invasion of Earth in gruesome detail, with the Wally Wood–inspired Martians and their various minions engaging in horrific acts of violence and mayhem before being driven back and their home world destroyed. Young people loved Mars Attacks, but their parents and teachers did not. Condemnation was swift and vociferous, and the cards were quickly withdrawn. Today, a complete set in good condition will set you back thousands of dollars. [Editor’s note: See issue #8 of our sister mag, RetroFan, for a Mars Attacks history.]

In 1988, Topps returned to the well with Dinosaurs Attack!, a 55-card set conceived and written by longtime Topps employee Gary Gerani, that was both an homage to Mars Attacks and an effort to reclaim the gory glory of that initial effort. Gerani wrote the story, conceived every image, and designed the unique card backs. Herb Trimpe, assisted by George Evans and John Nemec, penciled the art, which was then painted by Chet Darmstaedter (a.k.a.

XNO) and Earl Norem. The set’s 11 stickers were drawn by Paul Mavrides and Harry S. Robins.

Gerani got his start at Topps in 1973 as a result of his work with The Monster Times, which debuted in January 1972 [see RetroFan #18— ed.]. Gerani specialized in humorous yet factual monster “biographies” that caught the eye of Len Brown, Topps’ director of new product development. Gerani’s first project was writing gags for the company’s Creature Feature card set, and he would go on to work on hundreds of products over a nearly 50-year career.

Gerani collected the Mars Attacks cards as a kid, and desperately wanted TM & © Topps. to produce a similar science-fiction painted-card product of his own at Topps. “In the 1970s, I proposed something called ‘The Colossals,’ which were gelatinous monstrosities from beyond the stars,” Gerani tells BACK ISSUE. “It was basically the kind of mayhem the Martians were doing in Mars Attacks, but with these giant Lovecraftian things.” Topps declined, telling Gerani that painted science-fiction cards didn’t sell. Brown even pulled out the sales sheets for Mars Attacks to prove his point after Gerani proposed a sequel to the original.

Live! From New York!

The Statue of Liberty is under siege on Earl Norem’s cover to Dinosaurs Attack! #1 (1991), from Eclipse Comics.

Dinosaurs Attack! TM & © The Topps Company, Inc. (Topps).

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 63

A decade later, however, things had changed dramatically. Dinosaurs were suddenly very popular, which gave Gerani an idea. “I sat down with Art Spiegelman and Len Brown and a few others and proposed another Mars Attacks, but with dinosaurs. This was right after the Garbage Pail Kids, which had proved extremely popular, so they were thinking positively about the potential of self-created properties like this.”

Gerani brought his artists onboard and got to work on the story. Unlike Mars Attacks, in which the rather flimsy story was secondary to the gruesome art, Gerani crafted a detailed narrative featuring “temporal physicist” Elias Thorne, who has developed a device aboard a massive space station that can reveal moments in Earth’s distant past. His goal is to confirm with certainty what killed the dinosaurs, but the experiment goes horribly wrong when the device opens a portal to prehistoric times that allows giant dinosaurs to enter our world.

As the dinosaurs wreak havoc on a global scale, killing and maiming people in all manner of horrific ways, it is revealed that they are being guided by the Supreme Monstrosity, a kind of dinosaur deity that wants dinosaurs to take over the modern world.

Thorne and his associates work frantically to reverse the portal and return the rampaging dinosaurs to their own time. When the situation is at its most dire, Thorne sacrifices himself to the Supreme Monstrosity so his wife, Helen, can finally end the horror. The time portal is reversed, and all of the dinosaurs are gruesomely torn asunder as they are flung back in time.

Gerani had a great time conceiving crazy ways for dinosaurs to kill people, including the cards “Nuptial Nightmare” (bride and groom impaled on the horns of a triceratops), “Crushing a Canine” (dog squished while its young owner looks on), “Rock Concert Carnage” (dinosaur pulling the bloody scalp off a rock singer), and “Coasting to Calamity” (roller-coaster cars flying into the mouth of an enraged Gorgosaurus).

The vast majority of the cards were painted by Chet Darmstaedter, who imbued them with a wonderfully garish look. “Chet’s earlier portrait work really knocked me out,” Gerani says. “I thought, wow, if we could get these faces, within the context of these incredible dinosaur attacks, that could be a really interesting, jarring thing. So Chet wound up becoming our main painter, and he was wonderful.”

Darmstaedter and Norem painted small, Gerani adds. Most of the paintings were 8x10 inches in size, perhaps a little smaller. Darmstaedter and Norem were each able to produce a painting a week on average, so the entire set took a few months to complete.

Gerani assisted by taking photographs of everyone who worked at Topps. Some photos were used as reference by the artists, while others were setups to be used on the backs of certain cards. The back of “Rock Concert Carnage,” for example, is a photo of the “scalped” musicians and a journalist, who comments, “Apparently the plant-eating creatures mistook the hair of these rock performers for the tops of trees they fed upon a hundred million years ago!”

And You Thought the Martians Were Bad… Those towering, tromping, toothy terrors!

A trio of Dinosaurs Attack! trading cards.

TM & © Topps.

64 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Norem Could Floor ’em!

Original painted artwork by Earl Norem for the first issue of IDW’s Dinosaur Attacks!

2013 reissue.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) The published version.

TM & © Topps.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 65

A Bronto Beam-in Pandemonium reigns (and why wouldn’t it??) on this page from Dinosaurs Attack! #1.

Image from the IDW publication of 2013.

TM & © Topps.

Other photo-backed cards include “Day of the Duckbill,” in which a reporter interviews two fishermen who witnessed the death of a friend; “Meltdown!!,” in which journalists react to dinosaurs invading the newsroom; “Wrestling Riot,” in which two announcers comment on a wrestling match between a dinosaur and six wrestlers; and “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” which features a photo of Elias Thorne as he perishes in flames.

“I ran around the offices with my camera and got everyone in on it, including the president of the company, all screaming like lunatics,” Gerani recalls. “I wound up using myself as Professor Elias Thorne, which made sense since I was the one who started the project to begin with. I told the makeup man to make my burns look like Christopher Lee in a Hammer Dracula movie.”

In addition to photographs, the backs of many Dinosaurs Attack! cards advance the narrative through the use of mock newspaper articles, US Army dispatches, a desperate note for help from people trapped in a basement, a radio report, logs from the Prometheus Space Station where the time portal originates, and even a blood-spattered wedding invitation.

66 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Topps put its full support behind Dinosaurs Attack!, and even produced a television ad promoting the project, Gerani notes. However, sales were flat, so a proposed second set was cancelled. Nonetheless, Dinosaurs Attack! was hugely popular among fans who were in on the joke, such as renowned paleo artist William Stout, who says he either saw the cards at his local comics shop or was told about them by his friend, artist Pete Von Sholly.

“As a collector of the Mars Attacks cards—and a dinosaur lover—I couldn’t resist getting them all,” Stout tells BACK ISSUE. “Dinosaurs attacking MiddleAmerican culture—what could be more fun to watch?!

And introducing the public to dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures that weren’t the usual Tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops, and brontosaurus helped a little to expand the number of species that the public was aware of. But what most appealed to me was the evocation of the spirit of the Mars Attacks cards and that whole aliens/dinosaurs-versus-humanity popculture subject matter. The artists understood the visual storytelling aspects and did a fine job of resurrecting that trading card genre.”

While the cards may have failed to catch on with the public, they definitely caught Hollywood’s eye.

In fact, Dinosaurs Attack! was optioned twice as a motion picture, first by Joe Dante and later by Tim Burton.

Sadly, nothing came from either effort. The reason? A little book called Jurassic Park.

According to Gerani, when Michael Crichton’s bestselling novel was published, every director in Hollywood wanted to helm the movie adaptation.

“Joe Dante went after it, even though he had already optioned Dinosaurs Attack!,” Gerani says. “Obviously, Steven Spielberg was a more powerful producer, and he got it. So even though Dinosaurs Attack! was announced in The Hollywood Reporter as a new film coming out from Warner Bros., Jurassic Park killed it.”

Later, Gerani says, Tim Burton optioned both Mars Attacks and Dinosaurs Attack!, with the intent of making Dinosaurs Attack! first. However, he too became intimidated by the Jurassic Park juggernaut and decided to make Mars Attacks first.

Gerani is a fan of both directors, but now feels that their approaches to Dinosaurs Attack! would have been lighter and more comedic—á la Burton’s Mars Attacks adaptation—than the property deserved.

“For those of us who grew up on the original Mars Attacks cards, there was no such thing as campy humor,” he explains. “To us, the Mars Attacks cards were as devastating and straight as you can imagine.

It was the most powerful alien invasion story kids had ever experienced because it was happening in their own back yard.”

Though the proposed movies died on the vine, Dinosaurs Attack! did live on in another form—as a comic book. In 1991, Eclipse Comics published the first issue of a three-part series, but failed to publish the remaining two issues. In 2013, IDW revived the title with a five-issue series that reprinted the first issue published by Eclipse, followed by four new issues.

Gerani scripted the series, which allowed him to expand a bit on the story told through the card set.

The art was a combination of traditional illustrations by Herb Trimpe, and panels painted by Earl Norem, who also painted the gloriously gory covers. “We did our best to pull everything together and fill in some of the gaps in the story,” Gerani says.

The combination of penciled-and-inked art and painted panels wasn’t especially complicated, Gerani recalls. Gerani laid out each page and provided simple

pencil designs for Trimpe to follow, with gaps on the The first issue necessarily contains a lot of expopage for Norem’s painted panels. sition, as Professor Thorne is introduced, the TimeScan “Once the pencils were done, it was simply a matter explained, and a mysterious mental connection of sending those sections that required Earl Norem’s between Thorne and an evil reptilian entity suggested. painted work,” Gerani says. “I would send the stuff Trimpe’s comic art is nicely complemented by Norem’s off to Earl, and he would paint up the pages and evocative dinosaur paintings. return them in the mail. It was so exciting to Over the next four issues, Thorne and get a new package of his finished work.”

Helen work frantically to stop the TimeScan Dinosaurs Attack! #1 (July 2013) begins while dinosaurs attack, mangle, and on Space Station Prometheus, where maim pretty much everyone and Professor Elias Thorne has constructed everything they encounter, often in a TimeScan that can “unfreeze” the comical scenarios. Issue #2 (Aug. history recorded on Earth’s temporal 2013) is almost nothing but dinosaur planes and play back moments and attacks, many of them taken directly sequences on a large screen. Various from the card set. Gerani’s love of researchers and dignitaries, including movie monsters, which he wrote Thorne’s ex-wife, Helen Chambers, are about frequently in the pages of The on hand as the TimeScan is activated Monster Times, is especially evident in the hope of viewing the prehistoric in this issue, with appearances past. Images appear of a misty swamp by the fictional rhedosaurus from herb trimpe 300 million years previous. Moments The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, later, evil reptilian eyes appear on the © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. the brontosaurus from The Giant screen, similar to those Thorne has seen in disturbing Behemoth, Godzilla, Gorgo, Rodan, and even Winsor dreams, then slowly fade away.

McKay’s Gertie the Dinosaur.

Later, the TimeScan mysteriously activates and In issue #3 (Sept. 2013), Thorne is visited in a envelops the Earth. Huge dinosaurs suddenly begin dream by a benevolent humanoid dinosaur who teleporting across the planet, killing people in all calls himself a saurian. The creature explains that manner of horrific ways. In addition, humans caught in the most important difference between dinosaurs the transference instantly age until they are dead. and humans is that humans understand the difference

The Supreme Monstrosity (left) All eyes are on this hideous Big Brother in issue #1. (right) The trouble with Harry shocks his buddies in issue #3.

TM & © Topps.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 67

Get Me the President (for Lunch) Gleeful pandemonium from painter Earl Norem on the 2013 covers of IDW’s (top) issues #2 and 4 and (bottom) issue #5.

TM & © Topps.

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between right and wrong and have a soul, whereas dinosaurs were incapable of moral choice and became savage predators.

They had an all-powerful presence watching over them, the Supreme Monstrosity, whose eyes appeared on the TimeScan screen when it was first turned on. This creature, explains the saurian, doesn’t want the dinosaurs returned to the past; it wants them to conquer the world anew.

As Thorne and his crew struggle to stop the dinosaur onslaught, the military and civilians begin to fight back, though the dinosaurs prove to be formidable foes. In one scene, a group of children pick up a bazooka and use it to kill the dinosaur that attacked a soldier who was taking them to safety. Landmarks are destroyed, cities ravaged, and people literally rendered in half.

In the final issue (Nov. 2013), Thorne and Helen work together to halt the TimeScan and return the dinosaurs to their own time.

But the six-eyed Supreme Monstrosity has plans of his own, and snatches Thorne by reaching through the TimeScan screen.

With time running out, Thorne instructs Helen to finish the final sequence that will close the connection, even though he too will perish. Helen tearfully pushes the button, which shifts the dinosaurs back to their own time so violently that, as in the trading cards, their skeletons and organs are literally ripped from their bodies.

The world is saved, but the destruction of the TimeScan also threatens to destroy Prometheus. As the man-made satellite begins to disintegrate, Helen races to the remaining escape shuttle and safely returns home.

Herb Trimpe was missing from issue #3, replaced by Flint Henry on pencils. “That drove me crazy at the time because the comic book was already a potpourri of so many different things and I didn’t want that to be yet another weird thing that wasn’t consistent,” Gerani says. “They were all fine artists, but I wanted consistency. If memory serves, Herb Trimpe simply wasn’t available at the time, so we improvised and hoped for the best.”

Gerani is uncertain how well the comic-book series sold.

“I didn’t ask,” he says. “I do think it sold well enough that they weren’t sorry they did it. And then Dinosaurs Attack! was reborn at Topps.” Not another series, but a 2015 five-card subset titled Mars Attacks vs. Dinosaurs Attack! William Stout was a contributing artist to that set, painting three cards: a cave girl, Martians and a Dimetrodon, a Martian riding a T-Rex, and Martians being attacked by a mosasaur.

Like Mars Attacks before it, the Dinosaurs Attack! cards and comics gleefully delivered gore and violence by the bloody bucketful.

Did Topps receive any pushback? “They did transfer one irate mother to my extension at Topps,” Gerani recalls. “I explained that kids are powerless, and live in a world where they kind of feel helpless, so they live vicariously through giant monsters. They’re getting out all of their frustrations when a giant monster stomps on a car or a building. It’s a kid getting back subconsciously, and it provides good therapy. And she bought that. These are fantastical, made-up things that could never really exist the way we’re showing them, so it’s a fantasy that’s good for kids.”

Gerani has fond memories of the Dinosaurs Attack! cards and comics, even if they didn’t light the world on fire. At its core, he says, Dinosaurs Attack! was the kind of subversive fun enjoyed by young people everywhere. “Topps had a relationship with kids that was truly unique and quite wonderful,” Gerani states. “We created products that they could hide in looseleaf binders and fool their teachers.

“Things like Mars Attacks, Dinosaurs Attack!, and Garbage Pail Kids are over-the-top, outrageous, and engaging to the fan who is into it, in a way that’s very, very special,” Gerani continues. “And Dinosaurs Attack! specifically is a wild parody of everything. It was incredibly exciting to be able to have that freedom when you’re working on creative products.”

My sincere thanks to Gary Gerani for his thoughtful insight into the creation of the Dinosaurs Attack! cards and comics. Gary is the author of Fantastic Television: A Pictorial History of Sci-Fi, the Unusual and Fantastic From Captain Video to the Star Trek Phenomenon and Beyond (Harmony, 1999) and several books on various Topps card sets. He co-wrote the cult horror film Pumpkinhead. Check him out on Facebook.

by M a r k

Arnold

Like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Dino-Riders was yet another animated TV series from the 1980s based upon a children’s toy line, this one launched by Tyco. Fourteen episodes were ultimately produced, and three of these were originally released direct-to-video in 1988 and then aired on television for the first time on October 1, 1988. Animation for the series was by Marvel Productions.

Dino-Riders originally aired as part of a programming block called Marvel Action Universe, which also showed animated versions TM of Robocop and Pride of the X-Men, as well as airing repeat segments from 1981’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, 1986’s Defenders of the Earth, 1982’s The Incredible Hulk, 1983’s Dungeons & Dragons, 1978’s The New Fantastic Four, and 1979’s Spider-Woman. Basically, they re-aired every Marvel Comics animated series produced up to that point except for their cartoons produced during the 1960s.

Also like G.I. Joe and He-Man, there was an extensive backstory tied to the toy line concerning a battle between the Valorians and the Rulon Alliance set during prehistoric times. The Valorians were superhuman beings, while the Rulons consisted of various types of animals including ants, crocodiles, snakes, and sharks.

The two fighting forces both came from the future from the planet Valoria and were transported back in time to the age of the dinosaurs on the planet Earth.

At first, the Valorians escaped to the past via their spaceship equipped with their time machine device called S.T.E.P., also known as the Space Time Energy Projector. The Rulons followed, as they were already locked onto the Valorians with their tractor beam.

The two warring factions utilized the dinosaurs in different ways. The Valorians became the dinosaurs’ friends, while the Rulons would brainwash the dinosaurs.

After the Valorians ultimately defeated the Rulons, the Valorians renamed themselves Dino-Riders.

For those looking to this series for historical accuracy, please look elsewhere. Various species of dinosaurs co-exist during the same time periods on this show and its comic book despite scientific evidence that many existed at distinctly different times and eras.

As far as the toys go, there were four series of Dino-Riders toys produced. Series One debuted in 1988, Series Two in 1989, and Series Three and “The Ice Age” (Series Four) both premiered in 1990, after which the toy line ran its course. The toys appeared in various sizes and some had a motorized walking action. The toys were so highly detailed in their body shapes and coloring that the Smithsonian Institution actually contacted Tyco to make similar dinosaurs for a dinosaur exhibit they were doing.

All Aboard!

Marvel’s Dino-Riders #1 (Feb. 1989) brought the new toy and animation concept to the comic-book spin rack. Cover art by Don Perlin and Danny Bulanadi.

TM & © Mattel, Inc.

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Artist and cartoonist William Stout was credited for the elaborate dinosaur designs for the show, and Donald F. Glut was one of the writers for the animated series.

Stout, interviewed elsewhere in this issue, has a lengthy pedigree in drawing and designing dinosaurs among his other various projects over the years.

Glut is best known for writing the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back. He is also a motion picture film director and screenwriter. He made over 40 amateur films growing up and that caught the attention of Forrest J Ackerman and his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. This early fame led to Glut becoming a screenwriter for a number of children’s

don glut

Donglutsdinosaurs.com.

Prehistoric Playthings (top) Writer-artist Paul Kirchner produced these two Dino-Riders comic books that were inserted into select product. (bottom) Samples from Tyco’s Dino-Riders toy line.

TM & © Mattel, Inc.

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TV shows such as Shazam!, Land of the Lost, Transformers, Challenge of the GoBots, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, DuckTales, Tarzan, G.I. Joe, X-Men, and He-Man. For comic books, Glut wrote scripts for Chilling Adventures of Sorcery and Madhouse for Archie; House of Mystery and House of Secrets for DC; Ghost Manor, Ghostly Haunts, and Ghostly Tales for Charlton; The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor, Dagar the Invincible, and Tragg and the Sky Gods for Gold Key; Captain America, The Invaders, Kull the Destroyer, Star Wars, and What If? for Marvel; Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella for Warren; and is currently working for Warrant publications’ Shudder (formerly The Creeps) and Vampiress Carmilla.

He’s also written a number of books about dinosaurs and famous movie and literary monsters.

He scripted three episodes of the animated Dino-Riders series and graciously answered some questions about it on January 8, 2022.

Glut remembers getting the job to do the Dino-Riders series. “At the time I was going through an incredibly costly divorce and having a very difficult time getting work in TV animation,” Glut tells BACK ISSUE. “My writer and artist ‘friends,’ with whom I’d worked at Marvel Productions on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, were getting director, producer, and story editor positions at other shows, but none ever called me. When I called them, they’d tell me that it was too late, that all the writing slots were already filled. When I heard about Dino-Riders starting up, and being rather desperate for money, I called up and asked for the story editor, who was Larry Parr.

“I assume Larry knew my name from earlier shows that he’d also worked on, like Transformers.

Larry gave me the opportunity to write some scripts, and that’s how it all happened. In short, Larry needed scriptwriters, and I needed the work, and everything worked out fine. I am so grateful to Larry for bringing me on board the series.

“As I recall, the toys were either already out or about to hit the market at the time. I worked off the show’s ‘bible,’ which had descriptions of the characters and the basic story premise.”

Harness the Power of Marvel Artists (left) Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com), original artwork to issue #1’s cover. (top right) DinoRiders #2 (Apr. 1989). Cover by Jose Delbo and Danny Bulanadi. (bottom right) Issue #3 (May 1989). Cover

by John Romita, Jr. and Bulandi.

TM & © Mattel, Inc.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 71

When Dinosaurs Rulon-ed the Earth Interior pages from Marvel’s DinoRiders #3, written by George Carragone, penciled by Kelley Jones, and inked by Danny Bulandi.

TM & © Mattel, Inc.

When asked if he had any type of guidance for his scripts for Dino-Riders, Glut responds, “None, as I recall, other than I was aware that the main reason for the show’s existence was to get kids to buy the toys. Luckily I knew a lot about dinosaurs, as well as how to write for animation.”

In response to whether he got any rejections for his scripts, “I really don’t remember, but I believe I got no rejections. I think I sold them everything I wrote.

I don’t remember having any co-writers for the series.

It’s possible that Larry Parr provided me with the basic story premise, from which I wrote the script. I can’t say for certain. It was just a job like so many others, and they sometimes tend to run together. But I believe, as with Transformers and other toy-based cartoon shows, I was told what toy to push—which character was to be emphasized in a particular episode.”

In 1988, there were two issues of a Dino-Riders comic book produced by Tyco and packaged with Dino-Riders toys. These featured art and writing by Paul Kirchner.

Marvel Comics published a three-issue DinoRiders miniseries cover-dated from February to May 1989. George Carragone wrote the adaptation, with interior art by penciler Kelley Jones and inker Danny Bulanadi. Covers were illustrated by Don Perlin (#1), Jose Delbo (#2), and John Romita, Jr. (#3); Bulanadi inked all three covers. Free from the con-

72 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

strictions of the typical children’s television cartoons at the time, Marvel gave these stories a darker tone than what appeared on television, including one story involving a murder. A Dino-Riders annual later appeared in the UK, compiling the three issues into one hardcover book.

When asked if he worked on any of the comic-book versions of Dino-Riders, Don Glut answered, “No, my only involvement was writing scripts for the episodes that got made.”

The Dino-Riders haven’t been completely forgotten because as recently as 2020, Mattel released an Entertainment Earth exclusive called the Rulon Warriors Battle Pack.

As for the animated series, Disney+ has the rights to stream the series, as they have for other Marvel Productions cartoons, but as of this writing the series is in limbo. The closest is an unrelated series called Dino Ranch.

MARK ARNOLD is a pop-culture historian with over 15 books to his credit on subjects ranging from The Monkees, The Beatles, Underdog, Pink Panther, Cracked, Disney, Dennis the Menace, and more.

He is currently at work on another Disney book and a book on the history of MAD.

TM

by B i l l

DeSimone

Peek-A-Boo! Covers for Topps Comics’ Jurassic Park #1 (June 1993): (left) the main edition with cover art by Gil Kane and George Pérez; and (right) a Dave Cockrum variant.

Jurassic Park © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

“It was really nice of them to put all that merchandising and a movie out to promote our comic.”

Said no one with a straight face. Ever.

After 20 years at Marvel, Jim Salicrup became the editor-in-chief of the Topps Comics line. In 1992, in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview #115, Salicrup discussed with Charles S. Novinskie plans for the line, including the Dracula movie adaptation with Roy Thomas and Mike Mignola, Mars Attacks, and tying in the comics with Topps’ specialty, trading cards. Jurassic Park was to be their first newsstand comic, and he hinted at direct-sales versions, sequels, and spinoffs.

About the comics: SALICRUP: …We haven’t announced who will be doing the book yet, but for the people that follow comics, they’ll know that there are a few creators that have a big love for dinosaurs.

CHARLES: So you’re saying Walt Simonson will be doing JURASSIC PARK?

SALICRUP: I’m not saying anything, you said that [laughter].

Walter Simonson not only scripted Topps’ Jurassic Park book, he did art for four trading cards, a wraparound cover, and the introduction for the first collected edition. But he wasn’t the only name from Salicrup’s contact list. Gil Kane, George Pérez, Tom Smith, John Workman, and Dave Cockrum all worked on the series itself, and the cards and collected editions added creators like Arthur Adams, Frank Brunner, Howard Chaykin, Michael Golden, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Joe Quesada, Mark Schultz, Kent Williams, and Al Williamson.

The amount of merchandise for the movie led Simonson to write, “…I did wonder briefly if even I would be sick of dinosaurs…”

(Spoiler: He wasn’t.) But this project has a second purpose, not just to provide another thing to sell: it keeps these artists’ work attached to a movie franchise, still active after almost 30 years, waiting for the next generation of fans to find.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 73

JURASSIC COMICS

Newsstand, Direct, Special Collectors Edition, Amberchrome™. It was the ’90s.

Since Dracula was an R-rated movie, Jurassic Park was thought by Topps to be a better choice for newsstand release: no sex (human, anyway), and very little on-screen gore. The newsstand comics show Salicrup’s Marvel influences. Under Cockrum covers, they are a fun package.

The inside front cover has an Arthur Adams “frontispiece” of the Tyrannosaurus rex [“T-Rex” in Jurassic Park lingo, instead of the scientific designation T. rex—ed.], with the linework in white and light gray, and the contents of the linework in purple blending into green.

Each issue runs its chapter without interruption. All the ads are after the story and on the back cover. Also after the story is a two-page “Exploring Jurassic Park” feature on making the movie with text, movie stills, and behind-the-scenes info.

The real Marvel/Stan Lee tribute is the last page: “Toppside,” like the old “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins”; “Salicrup’s Section,” by Jurassic Jim Salicrup, after “Stan’s Soapbox,” by Smiley Stan; a checklist, not as long as the Mighty Marvel Checklist, but all of Topps’ output at the time: Jack Kirby’s Secret City Saga, Jason Goes to Hell, Jurassic Park, and Satan’s Six. The covers for Jurassic Park #1 and 2 are done straight, but #3 and 4 have some fun with the material.

“Face-to-face with T-Rex” is the cover copy for issue #3 (late July 1993), blatantly describing what Cockrum drew on the newsstand edition. “T-Rex Attack! Are Tim and Lex about to become a Dino-Meal?” on Kane’s collectors edition cover for #3, winking at McDonald’s Dino-Sized Value Meal.

The Cockrum cover for the newsstand #4 asks, “Is this the humans’ last stand?*” with the asterisk leading to a text box, “*Hey, if you’re one of the 12 people who haven’t seen the movie yet… we’re not telling!”

There are at least two versions of each issue in the floppy format. The Cockrum newsstand covers aren’t reprinted in the later collections. “THE SPECIAL COLLECTORS EDITION” (sic) has the Kane and Pérez covers, polybagged, with some generic JP logo and images on the lower part of the bag. This edition had a special coupon for the AmberchromeTM edition of #1, which promised, if you were one of 500 lucky winners, a numbered limited edition signed by the creative staff with a foil cover. But also contained in the bag were the “exclusive Jurassic Park trading cards, including newly created art by Walt Simonson.”

JURASSIC CARDS

As you might expect from a baseball card company, trading cards also figured into Topps’ Jurassic Park campaign. There was a “hobby card” series of stills from the movie, which included ten comic art cards as a bonus.

On the reverse, the cards included short bios about the artist.

The ten cards are by: · Arthur Adams: the T-Rex image used for this card is also on the inside front cover of the floppies, and as a promotional card for the comics, trading card series, and movie souvenir magazines. · Frank Brunner: dilophosaurus (spitters), because he figured everyone else would pick the T-Rex and raptors. · Howard Chaykin: While most of the cards show these magnificent creatures in a pastoral landscape, Chaykin shows a raptor splattering some human’s brain on a biohazard sign stating “WARNING BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL.” Good one. · Jeffrey Catherine Jones: triceratops, as it wasn’t prominent in the movie. · Nelson: a triceratops vs. a van, a scene not in the movie, but one that allowed him to play with the shapes of the horns and body. · Mark Pacella: the T-Rex approaching the visitor center, which happens off-screen in the movie. · Jason Palmer: the raptors stalking the kids in the kitchen. · Joe Quesada: a spitter standing in front of the park entrance. · Mark Schultz and Al Williamson: brachiosaurs. Schultz’s own Xenozoic Tales/Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was popular around the same time [as we

The BIGGEST Event of the Year (top) A 1993 Topps ad touting its Jurassic Park products. Scan courtesy of Bill DeSimone. (bottom) The Kane/Pérez direct sales version of Jurassic Park #3’s cover. © The Topps Company, Inc. Jurassic Park © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

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explored earlier in this issue—ed.]. Williamson also inked Joe Quesada’s drawing. · Kent Williams: he painted a brachiosaur, as he did Havoc and Wolverine: Meltdown with the Simonsons and John Jay Muth for Marvel a few years earlier.

In addition to these ten, the Special Collectors Edition came with cards inside the polybag. The cards reprinting the Kane and Pérez covers omitted the logo and cover text.

There were four new cards penciled and inked by Simonson, with paints/colors by Richard Ory. These also show up in the Topps collection, first as a border for his introduction, and twice later in the book. A sketch and black-and-white line art for two of these are in TwoMorrows’ Modern Masters vol. 8: Walter Simonson.

THE COLLECTED EDITIONS

Topps’ collection from 1993 has a new wraparound cover by Simonson and Ory. The Kane/Pérez covers to issues #1, 3, and 4 are on the inside covers and between sections.

In his introduction, Simonson discusses the buzz around the movie, his story as a fan of dinosaurs, his almost-career as a paleontologist, and comics’ movie adaptations. After the story are reformatted “Exploring Jurassic Park” pages from the floppies.

The outside border for these pages is a column of detail from Simonson’s cards. The last section, “The Cards of Jurassic Park,” features the ten comics

artists’ cards with slightly expanded biographies.

Here Simonson’s card details are again used as a vertical border, only this time, the inks and colors are replaced by purple and green—historically accurate colors for dinosaurs, if I remember Barney and Dino Flintstone right.

IDW published Classic Jurassic Park vol. 1 in 2010.

This doesn’t coincide with any of the sequel movies, but a top executive for IDW at the time, Greg Goldstein, was involved with the Topps comics and collection. Only the story is included, no extras, but it does feature a new cover by Michael Golden with colors by Tom Smith, colorist for the original comics. Golden’s Tyrannosaurus rex is all menace, foreshortened, lunging straight at you from the water, with open jaw and teeth taking up half the cover— although with no explanation for the mini-pterodactyls lurking in the upper right corner.

FILM VS. COMICS NARRATIVE

If you read the comics adaptation looking for the same thrill you got from the movie, you’ll be disappointed, as you will if you look for a verbatim retelling of the film. Film uses sound, timing, motion, and acting to tell the story, and the viewer reacts. Comics uses layout, panel breakdowns, and still images, which the reader must mentally process.

If you just skim the words and glance at the drawings, you miss the craft. The selection of the

Do You See What I See? A frightful discovery, from the newsstand edition of issue #3, adapting a movie scene. George Pérez’s finishes brought Gil Kane’s generic characters more in line with the movie actors’ likenesses. © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 75

It’s in the Cards Jurassic Park trading cards illustrated

by Arthur Adams, Howard Chaykin, and Kent Williams.

Scans courtesy of Bill DeSimone. © The Topps Company, Inc. Jurassic Park © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

specific image, and how those images are arranged on a soundless page, is the comics’ version of sound, timing, and motion.

And since those images require page space, emphasizing the important story points means others from a film must be cut. Like Samuel L. Jackson’s severed arm, which shows up at the end of the movie, but not in the comic. Anyone looking for an exact retelling of the events of the movie with more backstory is better off with a paperback novelization than with comics.

You look at a comics adaptation to see how well the story is told as a comic. Do the layouts emphasize the right story points, or is there no change in visual impact page to page? Are the likenesses so precise the characters look like line art photos pasted on pages, or are they close enough to not interfere with the pace of the story? Do the words and pictures tell their share of story, or is it a novel with illustrations?

GIL KANE, PENCILS AND LAYOUTS

gil kane

The story doesn’t call for Gil Kane to display the same heroic anatomy he presented in Conan the Barbarian, Warlock, Green Lantern, Superman, etc., but his skills in layout create visual metaphors for both the movie experience and the subject matter.

Compare two of Kane’s pages to the same sequence of storyboards (from The Making of Jurassic Park by Don Shay and Jody Duncan). It looks like Kane mimicked the storyboards for a few panels, and this page of Kane’s could be described as “cinematic.” But then the act of turning the page reveals lightning, thunder, and the T-Rex in a single panel taking up a full page. In the storyboards, it’s just another image with zero impact.

Both storyboards and comics tell a story with drawings, but Kane makes up for the lack of sound and motion with how he uses space: he gives the dinosaur a panel the size of a full page when he introduces it.

The largest space in a comic is one panel across the open two-page spread. Kane does this five times in the first issue. First, when the scene shifts to Montana, he uses one horizontal panel across the top of both pages. Then, when the cast approaches the island, the entire two pages is one panel showing the helicopter, ocean, island, and clouds, with inset

76 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

panels showing the conversation inside the helicopter.

In the movie, closeups abruptly switch to a panoramic view; here, the view of the environment expands across both pages. The last three spreads are Kane’s visual metaphor. As the jeeps approach the closed gate, the gate dominates the panel. With the page turn, the gate opens and Kane switches to an overhead angle, making the gate smaller and expanding the jungle to most of the page. When they meet the brachiosaurus, the vehicle is almost unnoticeable; the brachiosaurus, the jungle, the mountains, the sky take up most of the two pages. With no threats from the dinosaurs to the main cast in this issue, Kane foreshadows the shift in power from humans to nature that the story is about to detail.

GEORGE PÉREZ, INKS, AND TOM SMITH, COLORS

For all his skill with layout, Kane was not known for likenesses or using photo reference. Greg Goldstein, the Topps/IDW executive, posted the original art for cover #4 by Kane and Pérez on his blog (greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/gil-kane-jurassic-jeopardy). After praising the project, he commented, “…what the hell kind of dino did Gil actually draw? …We sent him lots of photo reference… Only problem is, as I found out later on, Gil didn’t have much use for reference.” This isn’t an isolated observation. Scott Dunbier blogged of the WildC.A.T.S/Aliens crossover, for which Kane did the cover, that Kane drew a generic Bug-Eyed Monster alien, not the movie Alien.

So, how did much of the comics adaptation look like the movie? The clothes, hairstyles, cars, dinosaurs, scenery, are at least close, and each character is distinguished from each other. Colorist Tom Smith tells BACK ISSUE, “That was all George. Remember Ms. Marvel from the ’70s? That is who Gil drew for the Laura Dern character. George said, ‘We can’t put this out like this’ and redrew a lot.”

As expected from Pérez, the backgrounds are not sparse, unless there’s a specific story reason. Smith colored each item, even using different shades of green for different foliage. Recognizable objects ground a story. Revived dinosaurs may not be believable, but familiar settings allow the story to be relatable.

Now I Gotcha…

Gil Kane/George Pérez original art to a variant cover for Jurassic Park #4 (Aug. 1993).

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77

Simonson Draws Dinos! (top) Jurassic Park’s comic scribe, Walter Simonson, illustrated this wraparound cover for Topps’ collected edition of the four-issue miniseries adaptation. Colors by Richard Ory, scan courtesy of Bill DeSimone. (bottom) Original cover art by Dave Cockrum for the newsstand variant of Jurassic Park #3 (late July 1993). Scan courtesy of Tom Smith. © Universal City Studios LLC and Amblin Entertainment, Inc.

SCRIPT BY WALTER SIMONSON

Simonson—whose signature is a dinosaur— discussed working on Jurassic Park in the Modern Masters and more recently to Sean Rogers of the Comics Journal (July 19, 2011).

He described working Marvel-style with Kane, with the first two issues covering about half the movie, then realizing the third issue came up short, leaving a lot more story for the fourth.

He told Rogers: “…I actually went through and did a diagrammatic breakdown of every page, a little box for each page and then wrote what was supposed to walter simonson occur on that page…

“It was fun to do, especially as a writer.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki. I had the screenplay in one hand and Gil’s art in the other, and Gil was a good storyteller, so it made my job really easy.”

In #4, the two-page spreads are gone. It almost looks Manhunter-ish in its density on each page. Many panels, many actions, much dialogue. Compared to the first issue, with its single panels spread across two pages, it’s almost frantic. And while this might be practical, it evokes the pace of the movie as well, with its panoramic, slow-paced first half, and suspenseful thriller finish.

The final scene could have used the two-page panel. In the movie, as the survivors helicopter away from the island, the camera cuts to a flock of pelicans, then lingers on the helicopter, ocean, and horizon for about a minute. There’s no dialogue as the movie ends.

Simonson only has two small panels and uses one of his few narration captions: “And behind them, receding into the distance… Jurassic Park and the past are swallowed up in the gathering dark.” This phrase isn’t in the movie or novel.

There is a similar image suggested near the end of the novel (page 446): “…it seemed the entire island was glowing, a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night.” In the novel, the island is literally diminishing because the government is bombing it. In the comic, without the caption, the story just stops. With that one line, Simonson reminds us that the story is a cautionary tale about abusing nature with commercialized science. …Until the sequels, that is.

Which turn Jurassic Park into the amber for all the comics talent that went into this project.

BILL DeSIMONE wrote on Machine Man 2020 for BACK ISSUE #132 and the Jack Knight Starman in #133. He would like to thank Howard Chaykin, R. C. Harvey, and especially Tom Smith for their insights.

78 • BACK ISSUE • Dinosaurs Issue

Send your comments to: Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 112 Fairmount Way • New Bern, NC 28562

Find BACK ISSUE on

…then check out these previous editions of this magazine for more dino-comic coverage: · Devil Dinosaur (BI #21) · Dino, The Flintstones, and Teenage Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm (BI #129) · Flintstone Kids (BI #77) · Godzilla at Marvel Comics (BI #6, 116) · Korg: 70,000 B.C. (BI #43, 129) · Valley of the Dinosaurs (BI #129) · The Warlord (BI #25, 46, 69) · Xenozoic Tales in Death Rattle (BI #75) Also, you’ll find Scott Shaw!’s dino-articles in these editions of our sister publication, RetroFan: · Dinosaur Land amusement park (RF #2) · The Flintstones 60th Anniversary history (RF #8)

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Did you notice a bright red glow engulfing the mid-Atlantic States in late April? That was ye ed’s embarrassment over a hastily made edit in Dan Tandarich’s article, “Tales from Earth-U(slan): ‘Lost’ Stories of the DC Explosion,” in BI #134. On page 34, column 2, regarding the aborted plans for a Spectre/Dr. Mid-Nite team-up in Showcase, the copy reads: “Plans to team the Ghostly Guardian with the Spectre were dropped and the appeared solo in Showcase #60, 61, and 64.”

Not only does that sound as if there were plans to team the Spectre (a.k.a. the Ghostly Guardian) with himself, but a word is missing, as it should have read, “…and the Spectre appeared solo in Showcase…”

Sometimes, when managing tens of thousands of words under deadline pressures, mistakes happen, and my goof here also slipped past everyone in the later chains of production. Our apologies to Dan Tandarich and Michael Uslan—and I certainly hope we didn’t incur the wrath of the Spectre.

JIM APARO, A SUPER ARTIST!

Michael, just a short note to let you know how much I appreciated the article in BI #134 on Jim Aparo, surely one of the most underappreciated comic-book artists of all time. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that he spent the entirety of his mature career at DC Comics, where I think he was probably regarded as something of a workhorse, and rather taken for granted.

For me, collecting in the 1970s, his dynamic storytelling was only a shade below that of Neal Adams. The focus on his Superman work, a mere fraction of his Batman output, was fascinating.

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. TM & ® Marvel.

BACK ISSUE TM & ® TwoMorrows. All Rights Reserved.

TM & ® DC Comics.

IF YOU DIG DINOSAURS…

You mentioned that he seemed more at ease drawing Clark Kent than Superman himself, and I have found another Aparo rendition of Clark Kent… sort of… that you might have missed. In Adventure Comics #435 (Oct. 1974)—one of the classic Michael Fleisher– penned Spectre stories—a detective by the name of Earl Crawford becomes a recurring character. Crawford bears an uncanny resemblance to Clark Kent, and Jim Corrigan (a.k.a. the Spectre) even refers to him as a “mild mannered reporter” (see panels above).

As if that wasn’t enough, an unnamed cop says, “Clark Kent? Gee, are you really Superman?,” a word balloon that would have had continuity freaks, and especially E. Nelson Bridwell, having kittens.

As to who was responsible for the “Amazing Mom” artwork, I can see the deft hand of José Luis García-López in the Superman face, although I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if many hands hadn’t touched, and re-touched, this illustration.

Great issue, as ever… I never knew there was an album for those Leaf “Secret Origins” miniature comics. An impossible quest on eBay, no doubt!

– Simon Bullivant The Spectre rises… again!

While its perhaps a stretch to call that Spectre sequence an example of Jim Aparo’s Superman art—who am I to argue when it comes to sharing more of Aparo’s amazing artistry?

Next issue: Spies and P.I.s! Nick Fury, from Howling Commando to Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.!

Ms. Tree’s MAX ALLAN COLLINS and TERRY BEATTY reunite in a Pro2Pro interview, and MARK EVANIER reports on his Crossfire series! Plus: a Hydra villain history, WILL EISNER’s John Law, Checkmate, and private eyes Tim Trench and Mike Mauser. Featuring PAT BRODERICK, D. G. CHICHESTER, KIM DeMULDER, STEVE ERWIN, TOM GRINDBERG, TONY ISABELLA, DENIS KITCHEN, PAUL KUPPERBERG, DAVID MICHELINIE, JOE STATON, ROY THOMAS, MIKE VOSBURG, GREG WRIGHT, and many more.

Featuring a jaw-dropping Fury S.H.I.E.L.D. cover by DAVE JOHNSON! Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in thirty!

Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor-in-chief Dinosaurs Issue • BACK ISSUE • 79

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THE

CHARLTON COMPANION

by JON B. COOKE

An ALL-NEW definitive history of Connecticut’s notorious all-in-one comic book company! Often disparaged as a second-rate funny-book outfit, Charlton produced a vast array of titles that span from the 1940s Golden Age to the Bronze Age of the ’70s in many genres, from Hot Rods to Haunted Love. The imprint experienced explosive bursts of creativity, most memorably the “Action Hero Line” edited by DICK GIORDANO in the 1960s, which featured the renowned talents of STEVE DITKO and a stellar team of creators, as well as the unforgettable ’70s “Bullseye” era that spawned E-Man and Doomsday +1, all helmed by veteran masters and talented newcomers—and serving as a training ground for an entire generation of comics creators thriving in an environment of complete creative freedom. From its beginnings with a handshake deal consummated in county jail, to the company’s accomplishments beyond comics, woven into this prose narrative are interviews with dozens of talented participants, including GIORDANO, DENNIS O’NEIL, ALEX TOTH, SANHO KIM, TOM SUTTON, PAT BOYETTE, NICK CUTI, JOHN BYRNE, MIKE ZECK, JOE STATON, SAM GLANZMAN, NEAL ADAMS, JOE GILL, and even some Derby residents who recall working in the sprawling company plant. Though it gave up the ghost over three decades ago, Charlton’s influence continues today with its Action Heroes serving as inspiration for ALAN MOORE’s cross-media graphic novel hit, WATCHMEN. By JON B. COOKE with MICHAEL AMBROSE & FRANK MOTLER. NOW SHIPPING! (272-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $43.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-111-0

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THE TEAM-UP COMPANION examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics—DC’s THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and DC COMICS PRESENTS, Marvel’s MARVEL TEAM-UP and MARVEL TWO-INONE, plus other team-up titles, treasuries, and treats—in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes. Go behind the scenes of your favorite team-up comic books with specially curated and all-new creator recollections from NEAL ADAMS, JIM APARO, MIKE W. BARR, ELIOT R. BROWN, NICK CARDY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE GERBER, STEVEN GRANT, BOB HANEY, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, PAUL LEVITZ, RALPH MACCHIO, DENNIS O’NEIL, MARTIN PASKO, JOE RUBINSTEIN, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other all-star writers and artists who produced the team-up tales that so captivated readers during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s. By BACK ISSUE and RETROFAN editor MICHAEL EURY. (256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-112-7 • NOW SHIPPING!

THE LIFE & ART OF

DAVE COCKRUM

by GLEN CADIGAN

From the letters pages of Silver Age comics to his 2021 induction into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the career of DAVE COCKRUM started at the bottom and then rose to the top of the comic book industry. Beginning with his childhood obsession with comics and continuing through his years in the Navy, THE LIFE AND ART OF DAVE COCKRUM follows the rising star from fandom (where he was one of the “Big Three” fanzine artists) to pro-dom, where he helped revive two struggling comic book franchises: the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and the X-MEN. A prolific costume designer and character creator, his redesigns of the Legion and his introduction of X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Thunderbird (plus his design of Wolverine’s alter ego, Logan) laid the foundation for both titles to become best-sellers. His later work on his own property, THE FUTURIANS, as well as childhood favorite BLACKHAWK and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, plus his five years on SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY, cemented his position as an industry giant. Featuring artwork from fanzines, unused character designs, and other rare material, this is THE comprehensive biography of the legendary comic book artist, whose influence is still felt on the industry today! Written by GLEN CADIGAN (THE LEGION COMPANION, THE TITANS COMPANION Volumes 1 and 2, BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST) with an introduction by ALEX ROSS. (160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 • (LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-113-4 • NOW SHIPPING!

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ALTER EGO #179

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BRITMANIA

Celebrating the 61st Anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1—’cause we kinda blew right past its 60th—plus a sagacious salute to STAN LEE’s 100th birthday, with never-before-seen highlights—and to FF #1 and #2 inker GEORGE KLEIN! Spotlight on Sub-Mariner in the Bowery in FF #4—plus sensational secrets behind FF #1 and #3!

Also: FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, a JACK KIRBY cover, and more!

THE YOUNG ALL-STARS—the late-1980s successor to ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with first artist BRIAN MURRAY and last artist LOU MANNA—surprising insights by writer/co-creator ROY THOMAS—plus a panorama of never-seen Young All-Stars artwork! All-new cover

by BRIAN MURRAY! Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and beyond!

Explores when America went wild in the ’60s for All Things British! MOVIES (A Hard Day’s Night), TV (The Ed Sullivan Show), COLLECTIBLES (toys, games, trading cards, lunch boxes), COMICS (real-life Brits in DC and Marvel Universes) MUSIC (features interviews with the BEATLES, the ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, HERMAN’S HERMITS, the YARDBIRDS, the ANIMALS, the HOLLIES, & more! By MARK VOGER.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #84

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BRICKJOURNAL #74

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STEVE SHERMAN TRIBUTE! Kirby family members, friends, comics creators, and the entertainment industry salute Jack’s assistant (and puppeteer on Men in Black, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and others). MARK EVANIER and Steve recall assisting Kirby, Steve discusses Jack’s Speak-Out Series, Kirby memorabilia from his collection, an interview with wife DIANA MERCER, and Steve’s unseen 1974 KIRBY/BERRY cover!

KIRBY: ANIMATED! How JACK KIRBY and his concepts leaped from celluloid, to paper, and back again! From his 1930s start on Popeye and Betty Boop and his work being used on the 1960s Marvel Super-Heroes show, to Fantastic Four (1967 and 1978), Super Friends/Super Powers, Scooby-Doo, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Ruby-Spears.

Plus EVAN DORKIN on his abandoned Kamandi cartoon series, and more!

Amazing LEGO® STAR WARS builds, including Lando Calrissian’s Treadable

by JÜRGEN WITTNER, Starkiller Base by JHAELON EDWARDS, and more from STEVEN SMYTH and Bantha Bricks! Plus: Minifigure Customization by JARED K. BURKS, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, stepby-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK (including a LEGO BB-8), and more! Edited by JOE MENO.

STEVE BISSETTE career-spanning interview, from his Joe Kubert School days, Swamp Thing stint, publisher of Taboo and Tyrant, creator rights crusader, and more. Also, Part One of our MIKE GOLD interview on his Chicago youth, start in underground comix, and arrival at DC Comics, right in time for the implosion! Plus BUD PLANT on his publishing days, comic shop owner, and start in mail order—and all the usual fun stuff!

DON McGREGOR retrospective, from early ’70s Warren Publications scripter to his breakout work at Marvel Comics on BLACK PANTHER, KILLRAVEN, SABRE, DETECTIVES INC., RAGAMUFFINS, and others. Plus ROBERT MENZIES looks at HERB TRIMPE’s mid-’70s UK visit to work on Marvel’s British comics weeklies, MIKE GOLD Part Two, and CARtoons cartoonist SHAWN KERRIE! SANDY PLUNKETT cover!

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ALTER EGO #178

Golden Age great EMIL GERSHWIN, artist of Starman, Spy Smasher, and ACG horror—in a super-length special MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT by MICHAEL T. GILBERT—plus a Gershwin showcase in PETER NORMANTON’s From The Tomb— even a few tidbits about relatives GEORGE and IRA GERSHWIN to top it off! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and other surprise features!

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ALTER EGO #177

Celebration of veteran artist DON PERLIN—artist of WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, THE DEFENDERS, GHOST RIDER, MOON KNIGHT, 1950s horror, and just about every other adventure genre under the fourcolor sun! Plus Golden Age artist MARCIA SNYDER—Marvel’s early variant covers— Marvelmania club and fanzine—FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Cracked Mazagine, & more!