DC IN THE ’80s ISSUE!
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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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“Marvel Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” In-depth exploration of Marvel’s GIANT-SIZE series, plus indexes galore of Marvel reprint titles, Marvel digests and Fireside Books editions, and the last days of the “Old” X-Men! Featuring work by DAN ADKINS, ROSS ANDRU, RICH BUCKLER, DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE GERBER, STAN LEE, WERNER ROTH, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by JOHN ROMITA, SR.!
“Batman AND Superman!” Bronze Age World’s Finest, Super Sons, Batman/Superman Villain/Partner Swap, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane go solo, Superman/Radio Shack giveaways, and JLA #200’s “A League Divided” (as a nod to Batman v. Superman)! Featuring work by BRIAN BOLLAND, RICH BUCKLER, GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, GEORGE PÉREZ, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by DICK GIORDANO!
“Comics Magazines of the ’70s and ’80s!” From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!
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“Bronze Age Adaptations!” The Shadow, Korak: Son of Tarzan, Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Worlds Unknown, and Marvel’s 1980s movie adaptations. Plus: PAUL KUPPERBERG surveys prose adaptations of comics! With work by JACK KIRBY, DENNY O’NEIL, FRANK ROBBINS, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, FRANK THORNE, MICHAEL USLAN, and sporting an alternate Kaluta cover produced for DC’s Shadow series!
“Eighties Ladies!” MILLER & SIENKIEWICZ’s Elektra: Assassin, Dazzler, Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), Lady Quark, DAN MISHKIN’s Wonder Woman, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS and ADAM KUBERT’s Jezebel Jade, Somerset Holmes, and a look back at Marvel’s Dakota North! Featuring the work of BRUCE JONES, JOHN ROMITA JR., ROGER STERN, and many more, plus a previously unpublished cover by SIENKIEWICZ.
“All-Jerks Issue!” Guy Gardner, Namor in the Bronze Age, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson, DC’s Biggest Blowhards, the Heckler, Obnoxio the Clown, and Archie’s “pal” Reggie Mantle! Featuring the work of (non-jerks) RICH BUCKLER, KURT BUSIEK, JOHN BYRNE, STEVE ENGLEHART, KEITH GIFFEN, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and many more. Cover-featuring KEVIN MAGUIRE’s iconic Batman/Guy Gardner “One Punch”!
“Bronze Age Halloween!” The Swamp Thing revival of 1982, Swamp Thing in Hollywood, Phantom Stranger team-ups, KUPPERBERG & MIGNOLA’s Phantom Stranger miniseries, DC’s The Witching Hour, the Living Mummy, and an index of Marvel’s 1970s’ horror anthologies! Featuring the work of RICH BUCKLER, ANDY MANGELS, VAL MAYERIK, MARTIN PASKO, MICHAEL USLAN, TOM YEATES, and many more. Cover by YEATES.
“All-Captains Issue!” Bronze Age histories of Shazam! (Captain Marvel) and Captain MarVell, Captain Carrot, Captain Storm and the Losers, Captain Universe, and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. Featuring C. C. BECK, PAT BRODERICK, JACK KIRBY, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, BILL MANTLO, DON NEWTON, BOB OKSNER, SCOTT SHAW!, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover painting by DAVE COCKRUM!
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“Indie Super-Heroes!” NEAL ADAMS Ms. Mystic interview, Continuity Comics, BILL BLACK Captain Paragon interview, Justice Machine history, STEVEN GRANT/NORM BREYFOGLE Whisper “Pro2Pro” interview, and the ’80s revivals of Mighty Crusaders and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Featuring BUCKLER, DEODATO, ELLIS, GRINDBERG, GUSTOVICH, ISABELLA, REINHOLD, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, and more. Cover by NEAL ADAMS!
“Creatures of the Night!” Moon Knight’s DOUG MOENCH and BILL SIENKIEWICZ in a Pro2Pro interview, Ghost Rider, Night Nurse, Eclipso in the Bronze Age, I…Vampire, interviews with Batman writer MIKE W. BARR and Marvel’s Nightcat, JACQUELINE TAVAREZ. Featuring work by BOB BUDIANSKY, J. M. DeMATTEIS, DAVE SIMONS, ROGER STERN, TOM SUTTON, JEAN THOMAS, and more. SIENKIEWICZ and KLAUS JANSON cover!
“Marvel Fanfare Issue!” Behind the scenes of the ‘80s anthology series with AL MILGROM, interviews and art by ARTHUR ADAMS, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, STEVE ENGLEHART, MICHAEL GOLDEN, ROGER McKENZIE, FRANK MILLER, DOUG MOENCH, ANN NOCENTI, GEORGE PÉREZ, MARSHALL ROGERS, PAUL SMITH, KEN STEACY, CHARLES VESS, and more! Cover by SANDY PLUNKETT and GLENN WHITMORE.
“Bird People!” Hawkman in the Bronze Age, JIM STARLIN’s Superman/Hawkgirl team-up, TIM TRUMAN’s Hawkworld, Hawk and Dove, Penguin history, Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, Condorman, and CHUCK DIXON and SCOTT McDANIEL’s Nightwing. With GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, GREG GULER, RICHARD HOWELL, TONY ISABELLA, KARL KESEL, ROB LIEFELD, DENNY O’NEIL, and others! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ.
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Volume 1, Number 98 August 2017 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks
Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!
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COVER ARTIST Romeo Tanghal (Commissioned illustration from the collection of Rodolfo Payro Balboa.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Todd Klein Jim Baikie Paul Kupperberg Rodolfo Payro Paul Levitz Balboa Elliot S. Maggin Mike Baron Brian Martin Mike W. Barr Dan Mishkin Terry Beatty Doug Moench Rick Burchett Michael A. Burstein Alex Nino Luigi Novi Ed Catto Chuck Patton Gerry Conway Amanda Powers Denys Cowan Tom Powers Peter David Bob Rozakis DC Comics Beau Smith Mark Evanier Anthony Snyder Russ Garwood Dan Spiegle Mike Gold Joe Staton Grand Comics Roger Stern Database Len Strazewski Alan Grant Rik Sunn Steven Grant Robert Greenberger Rick Taylor Roy Thomas Mike Grell Mark Verheiden Heritage Comics Trevor Von Eeden Auctions Mark Waid Dan Johnson Greg Weisman Kelley Jones Marv Wolfman Dan Jurgens Barbara Kesel
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FLASHBACK: Their Lives Were an Open Book: Secret Origins (1986–1990). . . . . . . . 2 New takes on old stories, with recollections from the series’ five editors BEYOND CAPES: Thriller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 DC had high hopes for this offbeat title. Why did it fail? PRO2PRO: Gerry Conway and Dan Jurgens’ Sun Devils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The writer-artist team in an exclusive interview revisiting this sci-fi maxiseries FLASHBACK: DC Challenge: It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time. . . . . . . . . . . 34 Bob Greenberger, the project’s editor, explores this quirky round-robin series with many of the series’ creators PRINCE STREET NEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Cartoonist Karl Heitmueller, Jr. tackles continuity conundrums OFF MY CHEST: The Prestige Format. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Former DC production guru Bob Rozakis’ guest column about the development of DC’s upscale format INTERVIEW: Does Doug Moench Still Dream of Electric Warrior?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 An intimate portrait of the Electric Warrior writer, with commentary from artists Jim Baikie and Denys Cowan and editor Barbara Kesel FLASHBACK: Action Comics Weekly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Nineteen creators take us behind the scenes of DC’s ambitious weekly late-’80s anthology BACK TALK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Reader reactions
BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 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, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $73 Economy US, $88 Expedited US, $116 International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Romeo Tanghal. Nightwing and Robin TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2017 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing, except for Prince Street News, TM & © Karl Heitmueller, Jr. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1
There is a school of thought that the origin story is a necessary evil, hardback was published in 1976 as a response to the hit Origins of a preamble to get out of the way before the real fun begins. There’s some Marvel Comics volume of 1974. Significantly, 1977’s DC Super-Stars #14 truth in that, particularly in an age when endless film and comics reboots abandoned the reprint model for a new trio of stories featuring superseem concerned with nothing but origins at the expense of moving villains. It was followed in short order with a pair of similarly original forward. And yet, there’s an almost primal need on the part of superhero specials keyed to heroes (1977’s DC Super-Stars #17 and 1978’s DC fans to know how their favorite character started out. Lee Falk realized Special Series #10). Secret Origins returned to its…well, origins in 1979 that early in his 1930s Phantom newspaper strip, introducing a concise, with the first of several reprint digests (DC Special Series #19) alternately oft-repeated recap of the hero’s roots “for those who came in late.” keyed to either heroes (DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5, 9, and 22) or At DC Comics, the Spring of 1948 seems to have been the point villains (Best of DC #10; DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #15). Bonus new when the publisher realized that such things might have commercial stories devoted to Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and the Penguin appeal. Batman #47 and Superman #53 each cover-featured opened the earliest editions. “the origin of…” their respective leading men, expanding and revising details from the late 1930s’ accounts. During SECRET ORIGINS, REVISITED the 1950s, “origin” stories—i.e., tales actually using By the summer of 1984, the last of those digests was more than two years old and writer-editor Roy Thomas that word—also popped up at other publishers, was formulating a new take on the old title. “While on a but none did more so than DC. It seems to have been writer-editor Robert Kan6000-mile drive with my wife Dann around the western igher who decided those episodes could be spun in half of the US,” he wrote in The All-Star Companion #4 (2009), Thomas wondered, “Why couldn’t we redraw a more sensational way. Hence, the “Secret Origin of Wonder Woman” in WW #105 (Apr. 1959), a provocative and re-dialogue—and even, where necessary, re-think— title that almost commanded kids to pick up the issue those fabled stories from the 1930s and 1940s? That so that they, too, could be privy to facts known to would avoid the stigma associated in some readers’ minds with simply reprinting old stories.” no one else. A scant four months later, “secret origin” There was also the fact that several of those early was used again on the cover of All-Star Western #108’s roy thomas costumed heroes never had origins at all, instead Johnny Thunder reboot. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. DC cemented its association with the phrase in debuting fully formed with no explanation of how they 1961 when it published Secret Origins #1, a gloriously over-stuffed got there. Thomas was, in fact, working on a story that was a virtual 80-page collection of reprints featuring the likes of the new Flash, prototype for what he envisioned for the new Secret Origins. Noting that the new Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, the Superman/Batman team, Starman had debuted in 1941 with no real backstory, Thomas built on and more. Kids of the day ate it up and a sequel—“More Secret details that had taken place back in Adventure Comics #61, added a retroactive sequence involving Phantom Lady, and plotted a proper Origins”—eventually followed in 1965’s 80-Page Giant #8. Secret Origins returned late in 1972 as an ongoing reprint book, origin that ran in All-Star Squadron #41 (on sale in October 1984). one that benefited considerably from having DC expert E. Nelson Managing editor Dick Giordano and DC’s higher-ups approved the Bridwell as its editor. Supplementing the vintage material, Bridwell also proposal with one revision. Despite the success of Thomas’ World War IIincluded a text page in each issue that briefly laid out the history of based All-Star Squadron title, the reality was that period books were a the sometimes-obscure characters featured in its pages. A nationwide tougher sell to young readers than books set in the 1980s. Consequently, paper shortage prompted the title’s cancellation after seven issues, every third issue of Secret Origins would feature a Silver or Bronze Age hero. To that end, Thomas decided on Adam Strange and the Elongated but the name was far from retired. Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-39 (1975) and C-45 (1976) were each Man for his initial post-1940s heroes and respectively assigned Gerry devoted to “Secret Origins of Super-Villains,” while a hero-centric Conway and Mike W. Barr to write the scripts. 2 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
by J o h n
Thomas otherwise intended to spotlight Golden Age heroes in the order in which they first appeared… with a few exceptions. Although he’d been preceded by the long-lost Dr. Occult, Superman was the unquestioned choice to launch the new Secret Origins. In an inspired touch, Thomas approached the long-retired Wayne Boring to pencil the story. The 80-year-old artist had originally been a ghost artist for Superman co-creator Joe Shuster before becoming the defining illustrator from the late 1940s through the 1950s. In Secret Origins #1, Boring’s work was given a modern polish courtesy of inker Jerry Ordway (who also revised Superman’s “S” shield throughout to match the classic early 1940s design). “I think Boring liked the idea of doing Superman again,” Thomas remarked to Jim Amash in Alter Ego #100 (Mar. 2011). “In addition to inking, I had Jerry fix up the Earth-Two ‘S’ on Superman’s chest. Boring’s didn’t come out quite right. But I’m real proud of our retelling of the origin of Superman.” An expert in the art of the adaptation (including multiple Robert E. Howard characters), Thomas hewed close to the original material in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) and Superman #1 (Summer 1939) but sharpened dialogue and plot points throughout. That was also the case in his follow-up, the retelling of the original Captain Marvel’s birth (from 1940’s Whiz Comics #2). “All I tried to do is some re-dialoguing and to get inside the head (heads?) of Captain Marvel and Billy Batson with an eye toward the future as well as the paradoxes of the past,” the writer noted in Secret Origins #3. Striking a different tone than the original, Jerry Bingham illustrated the adventure in a more realistic style than C. C. Beck’s cartoony original. Like the Superman tale, the Captain Marvel episode violated Thomas’ chronological plan, a concession to Dick Giordano who specifically requested an early appearance by one of the 1940s’ most successful properties. By the time both stories were published in early 1986, much about the plans for Secret Origins had changed.
GOLDEN AGE GREATS AND DC TIE-INS
Rather than devoting every third issue to a non-Golden Age hero, DC now insisted on doing so in every even-numbered issue. Moreover, those more contemporary heroes needed to be characters who were prominent in DC’s mid-1980s line. “At this stage, it just didn’t make sense anymore for me to edit the whole series,” Thomas wrote in Secret Origins #1, “so it was decided that each
Wells
hero’s origin would be edited by the person who edited that hero’s regular mag.” Consequently, Julius Schwartz—nominally the editor of the new Blue Beetle title—oversaw Secret Origins #2’s Gil Kane-illustrated history of Ted Kord and his predecessor Dan Garrett. Scripted by Len Wein, the story established the underpinnings of the ongoing Beetle title that premiered in March 1986 and represented a secondary function of the new title. On several occasions during its run, Secret Origins became a promotional arm for the DC Universe, kicking off new series, tying into crossover events, and setting up situations that would pay off in other titles. There was none of that in Secret Origins #4’s Firestorm spotlight, but the story did provide a challenge for writer/co-creator Gerry Conway. Since the Nuclear Man’s debut in 1978, Conway had already done two lengthy origin recaps (1980’s Flash #289–290 and 1984’s Fury of Firestorm #22). Virtually all of them, though, had been told from the point-ofview of teenager Ronnie Raymond, so Conway took a fresh approach and made SO #4 all about the background of Firestorm’s other half, Professor Martin Stein. Although George Tuska penciled the origin itself, Firestorm co-creator Al Milgrom also contributed to the issue via an original cover. Up to this point, the material presented in Secret Origins was also culled largely from earlier issues, but issue #5 marked a notable departure. The Crimson Avenger was one of those heroes referenced earlier, a masked vigilante who was already in business when he premiered in Detective Comics #20. It was up to Roy Thomas and his wife Dann to come up with his origin, adding real-world background to soon-to-behero Lee Travis and adding depth to his Chinese partner Wing. “When I learned that the cover date of the Crimson’s first appearance was October 1938, I had no choice,” Roy declared on issue #5’s text page. “That was the date of the famous/infamous Orson Welles ‘Invasion from Mars’ broadcast that panicked half a nation and I felt compelled to set the Crimson’s origin in that context, even though the October-dated book, then as now, would have gone on sale at least a couple months before October.” Atmospherically illustrated by Gene Colan and Mike Gustovich, the story won raves from fans and critics alike, so much so that a 1988 miniseries was later greenlit to continue the story. A more immediate sequel appeared in issue #7, though, where the Crimson figured into the origin of the Sandman. Once again, the Thomases worked up an origin where none had existed before, this time built around the DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3
All covers and characters TM & © DC Comics.
TM
Direct Currents This purple-toned re-presentation of Jerry Ordway and Wayne Boring’s cover art heralded the coming of the new Secret Origins monthly in DC’s promo flier, DC Releases #23. Unless otherwise noted, images in this article are courtesy of John Wells. TM & © DC Comics.
thematic similarities of the suit-clad mystery men. Set at SO #6, already had Batman with Marshall Rogers art, so the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Mike Bair/Steve we could go a little softer on the second feature, which Montano-illustrated tale was peppered with cameos by led to shining the spotlight on Halo [from The Outsiders] future members of the All-Star Squadron. with Mike W. Barr.” The story also ushered in a new Only half-a-year old, Secret Origins was already look for the heroine when she adopted a new costume being retooled. Marketing was “somewhat alarmed at on the last page. “From there,” Greenberger concludes, how noncommercial some of the characters or “it was just a matter of seeing who else in the line creative teams appeared—especially so early needed the love.” in the new title’s run,” Robert Greenberger As noted, Halo shared the issue with tells BACK ISSUE. “Someone, either Batman, but not the version she’d worked Bruce Bristow in marketing or Paul Levwith in the Outsiders. This was the itz, decided to protect Roy and bolster original Earth-Two Batman, and Thomas the title’s chances of survival by makfound room to play even after incorpoing it a double-sized book [to ensure rating material from the Dark Knight’s that a modern-day character would 1939 debut and origin (Detective Comics be cover-featured every month], which #27 and 33). The formative Bruce Wayne had the benefit of accelerating Roy’s had a fiancée named Julie Madison, but no chronological run and allowing us to one had ever explored the background support it with characters who needof that relationship until SO #6. The ed to be reintroduced post-Crisis on budding romance of college students robert greenberger Infinite Earths. Bruce and Julie added a fresh, human “As with all things involving the touch to the traditional Batman origin. new continuity at the time,” Greenberger continues, Thomas also scored a coup by reuniting the acclaimed “I seemed to be the go-to guy, so Dick [Giordano] invited Marshall Rogers/Terry Austin art team—best known for me to take half the book and work with Roy. He had their work with Steve Englehart in 1977’s Detective Comics Greg Weisman as his NY-based assistant editor, so we #471–476—to draw the story. only talked schedules and creative teams. Dick and I Englehart himself led off issue #7, demonstrating banged around some characters, figuring our first issue, that he—like Thomas—had a knack for weaving strong stories out of earlier plot threads. In this case, the subject was Guy Gardner, the adversarial Green Lantern whom Steve and penciler Joe Staton had revived to great success in 1985. Joined by artists Ernie Colón and Rodin Rodriguez, Englehart built on Gardner’s handful of earlier appearances to create a more sympathetic portrait of a character that contrasted with his mid-1980s bad-boy image. In terms of background detail, Paul Levitz had even less to work with than Englehart when it came to detailing who Tasmia Mallor was before she became the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Shadow Lass. Consequently, SO #8’s backstory—illustrated by Tom Mandrake—was largely new, but LSH writer Levitz regularly sifted that series’ rich history for story hooks and details to build on, among them Tasmia’s cousin Grev. Elsewhere in Secret Origins #8, Roy Thomas penned his first adaptation of a hero from Quality Comics, a major publisher of the 1940s–1950s whose heroes were now owned by DC. Quality was well known for the—ahem— quality of many of its artists, and its heroes won the adulation of teenagers who soon broke into the industry themselves. Indeed, Thomas found himself lobbied by two veteran artists—and unabashed fans—when it came time to do the adaptations. “Both Gil [Kane] and Murphy [Anderson] loved Lou Fine and Reed Crandall and Will Eisner,” Roy remarked in Alter Ego #100. “They each wanted to draw all their heroes’ origins, so I divided them, with Murphy getting Uncle Sam and Doll Man and Black Condor, and Gil doing Jack Cole’s Spirit clone Midnight [and Firebrand] and the Ray. I had the impossible task of keeping two great artists happy.” Anderson certainly seemed happy about the SO #8’s Doll Man story, even adding a short love letter to the Quality heroes on the last page. The plot itself largely followed the events of 1939’s Feature Comics #28, including the detail that Darrel Dane’s girlfriend Martha Roberts knew that he was Doll Man. In the 1940s, she apparently “forgot” and rediscovered the secret nearly a decade later. Anyone reading the 1986 account could assume that Martha had known all along and that might well have been the case. In the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths, anything was possible.
4 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
SECRET ORIGINS IN CRISIS
That maxiseries had not been kind to Roy Thomas. All-Star Squadron was a World War II-era account of DC’s Golden Age heroes on the world of Earth-Two, but Crisis had rendered all such alternate realities null and void. In the singular new timeline, duplicate characters like the 1940s Superman and Batman no longer existed. Their origins and that of Captain Marvel had been allowed to kick off the series, but any further stories involving exclusively Earth-Two heroes were off the table. That specifically put the kibosh on a story about the Earth-Two Aquaman that Thomas had plotted with Jean-Marc Lofficier. “I acquiesced in the no-Aquamanorigin thing,” Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “but then included the Earth-Two [version] in one of the last issues of All-Star Squadron that starred the group, just to show that there had, indeed, been a WWII Aquaman. I recall hearing that some people at DC were not happy with this, but no one tried to change anything in that Squadron issue… probably because the mag was ending soon anyway.” Rather than abandon his and Lofficier’s concept entirely, Thomas reworked elements of it for the origin of Neptune Perkins in Young All-Stars #16 (Sept. 1988). Launched in March 1987, Young All-Stars was a refocused version of All-Star Squadron that continued the story of DC’s wartime heroes in the post-Crisis universe. Before it ended, though, the original Squadron book had become virtually a companion title to Secret Origins. Over the course of All-Star Squadron’s last seven issues in 1986, Thomas devoted five of them to origin spotlights on Liberty Belle (ASS #61), the Shining Knight (ASS #62), Robotman (ASS #63), Johnny Quick (ASS #65), and Tarantula (ASS #66). The Liberty Belle episode, in fact, predated Secret Origins and was one of two standalone stories that Thomas commissioned back in 1984 as inventory to be used for a deadline crunch. The other tale starred the Golden Age Flash and wound up in SO #9, illustrated by George Tuska and Jerry Acerno. Like several of the other 1940s origins, the story was framed as a personal recollection of Jay (Flash) Garrick that was being recorded by Jonathan (Tarantula) Law for a book on wartime heroes. Thomas noted in Alter Ego #100 that Silver Age Flash artist Carmine Infantino would have been a fitting choice to draw the story, but that George Tuska had specifically been looking for work when the script was finished. “Since it was easy to do that one in a hurry because the story already existed, I gave it to him.” Thomas also admitted that his first choice to draw issue #11’s Hawkman origin—ultimately done by Luke McDonnell and Tony DeZuniga—had been either Adam or Andy Kubert since their famous father Joe was so closely associated with the Winged Wonder. It wasn’t to be, though. Secret Origins #9, incidentally, had been a Roy Thomas double feature since its modern half—the Star-Spangled Kid, a.k.a. Skyman— was a member of the present-day Infinity, Inc. The Kid and his old
…In a Single Bound! The Metropolis Marvel in action. Original art from SO #1, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). TM & © DC Comics.
partner Stripesy had their roots in the 1940s, however, and the Tom Grindberg/Mike Gustovichdrawn account recreated their origin from 1943’s Star-Spangled Comics #18. (The duo had actually debuted in 1941’s first issue, but no one got around to explaining their backstory for a year and a half.) Roy sat out the following issue but not by choice. “It was presented to me as a fait accompli,” he tells BACK ISSUE, “which did not endear my fellow comics producers to me. I would have been amenable, but I strongly disliked what I felt was a high-handed attitude toward the guy who had, after all, launched the new series.”
HIGH CONCEPTS AND RETCONS
Secret Origins #10 was, in fact, the series’ first concept issue. By October 1986, DC’s newest crossover series—Legends—was underway and one of its featured players was the Phantom Stranger. Part of the character’s mystique was the fact that no one actually knew who he was or how he came to be. In an inspired touch, SO #10 maintained that aura of mystery by presenting four distinct origins without endorsing any of them as binding. Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo’s opener depicted the Stranger as the mythical Wandering Jew, Paul Levitz and José Luis GarcíaLópez portrayed him as an ancient barred from Heaven, and Dan Mishkin and Ernie Colón imagined the character as the last survivor of an old universe. Joined by veteran artist Joe Orlando, the red-hot Alan Moore closed the issue with an account that claimed that the Stranger was an angel stripped of his wings and left on Earth. “As we were brainstorming Legends tie-ins,’ Robert Greenberger tells BI, “it was Paul Levitz who suggested we do the four origins of the Phantom Stranger. Once we approved the notion, I got to assemble the creative teams giving me my one and only shot to work with Alan Moore. The entire package came with one of Ed Hannigan’s best cover designs,” brought to life by Jim Aparo. Having published its first choose-your-own-origin edition, the book broke more new ground in issue #11 with its first replacement origin. The subject was Power Girl, a heroine created in 1975 to be the Supergirl of Earth-Two. In the new world order, Superman was emphatically the sole survivor of Krypton and there was no way that the blonde Kara could be his cousin. In the 1986 account, the heroine learned that she’d actually been transported from the distant past and was really the granddaughter of Arion, Lord of Atlantis. A small detail revealed that Kara had left behind a brother Khater, whose name was a fusion of Khufu and Katar. The subtle in-joke suggested that the boy DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5
New book by MICHAEL EURY, editor of
HERO-A-GO-GO!
Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this all-new collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, DELL’S SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the “Split!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, SpiderMan), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more!
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TM
by E
d Catto
You’d think that a 1984 visit to a warehouse full of comics would have excited a young comics fan-turnedprofessional like Mike Gold. It was a business trip and he was representing independent publisher First Comics. They were touring the warehouse of an industry distributor, Capital City. But there was one part of that visit that was particularly depressing. Mike recalls that their Madison, Wisconsin, warehouse was a cavernous place subdivided into many smaller rooms. One room was referred to as the “Thriller Room” because it was filled with unsold copies of the DC Comics maxiseries Thriller. Capital City had wildly over-ordered, expecting it to be a big hit. Thriller had been marketed with great expectations, but fans and retailers quickly rejected it. “Seriously,” Gold remembers, “it couldn’t have been more depressing if bats were flying out of the room. We all made a bunch of cheap jokes at everybody’s expense, but the reality was that there was a lot of money on that floor and I’m sure that didn’t help anybody.” There were lots and lots (and lots) of copies of the early issues of Thriller in that room. Most were still packaged in their original boxes from the publisher. How could it all have gone wrong? Thriller burst onto the comic scene with great promise and bravura. In 1983, there was a vibe of experimentation and an expectation that the clever new series would change comics as we knew it. That’s exactly what would soon happen with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. But just before those titles debuted, the industry in general and DC in particular was ramping up with precursors like Camelot 3000 and Ronin. Thriller was billed as a new reading experience that would combine the robert loren fleming best of the old pulp heroes, new superhero teams like the X-Men, and Photo by mgrabois. tomorrow’s headlines into a “must read” that would be fresh and different. Fresh new talent was celebrated in Thriller. It was their time to take center stage and show the world how it was done. Robert Loren Fleming was the writer and creative visionary. He was a novice writer recently published. Trevor Von Eeden was the artist. He was one of DC’s first African-American illustrators, having been recruited as a teenager to work on Black Lightning a few years earlier. His style had evolved to a point where his previous work on a Batman Annual and Green Arrow miniseries exploded with creative risks, non-traditional storytelling, and impactful compositions. Not a Michael Jackson Tie-in The DC marketing machine let the world know that Trevor Von Eeden’s mind-blowing premiere cover to writer Robert Thriller, the title character, “had seven seconds to save the world.” That sense of urgency was part of the series’ DNA Loren Fleming’s revolutionary series, Thriller, issue #1 (Nov. 1983). from the start. Fleming’s writing and Von Eeden’s art TM & © DC Comics. amplified this urgency to a fever pitch. Fans would soon DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 23
Greatest Spin-Offs Never Told Two unlettered original art pages from the aborted Salvo series scripted by Steven Grant, penciled by Pat Gabriele, inked by John Beatty, and edited by Michael Golden. Art photocopies courtesy of Anthony Snyder (anthonyscomicbookart.com). TM & © DC Comics.
walking into a hostage standoff at a grocery store, ostensibly because he needs ingredients for dinner and it’s the only one within walking distance of his house, and takes down a number of armed gunmen with a can of tomatoes. That description’s kind of guaranteed to get a ‘Huh?,’ but the story outlined his neighborhood and delineated his rather cavalier view of authority, his habit of wanting to immediately deal with any bad situation he runs across and his M.O. of confounding other characters’ expectations. That was what I found entertaining about writing the character, his congenital refusal to do what other characters expected of him, especially the villains. “But it wasn’t exactly cosmic material. I had six issues written and one, maybe more, drawn by Pat Gabriele when Michael left. His titles came under review after he left and Paul Kupperberg took over and, is often the case during editorial changeovers, unpublished projects were largely chucked. “My Salvo run with Mike and Pat was scrapped,” says Grant. “But Paul [Kupperberg] asked me to write a new #1, unrelated to the old series, with a more serious tone, which I did. Paul Kupperberg confirms Grant’s recollections. “I was handed the project when I was in Mike Gold’s Development Group in the early-1990s, but other than some art samples, penciled I believe (but don’t hold me to it) by Pat Gabriele. I have no memory of the direction the series took, or how far it had gotten,” recalls Kupperberg. “Ultimately DC decided to go in another direction, as they say,” continues Grant, “and that was the end of that. “I’m not terribly surprised DC passed on them,” Grant continues. “A lot of the silliness was rather obscure, like Latino heroes Tango Hombre and One-Ton Romero. That’s what I remember from the series; I don’t remember the plots at all. It’s one of those ‘neither fish nor fowl’ things that comics steven grant readers tend to take a dim view of. And there’s pretty much no ‘vigilante gunman’ series that isn’t a parody now, intentionally or not. “By the way, as far as I know the series didn’t have Robert Loren Fleming’s or Trevor Von Eeden’s blessing, if they were consulted or even knew about it at all,” adds Grant. “At one point I did ask if I could name the romantic interest Lauren Fleming—it was meant only as a nod, honest—and was told that was probably a very, very bad idea…”
WAS IT WORTH IT?
Trevor Von Eeden is very clear about how he views Thriller. “Frankly, I’m thrilled beyond measure that this particular series, which has so much of the best and the worst of my own psyche—my own artistic soul—is, for better or for worse, the one job of my entire 41-year career that the fans have fondly and consistently remembered since it first appeared,” he says. “There’s a lot in the later issues of the series that I still can’t look at without being reminded of a most painful time in my life and career—a creator’s appraisal of his progeny is always mostly a subjective one—but it makes me very happy to know that whatever its flaws, in the 30+ years since the series was first published, the fans seem to have really loved Thriller—warts and all. And that makes me very happy.”
THE MEN IN THE ARENA
Was Thriller a success that was ahead of its time? Or a beautiful idea that became a challenging, undisciplined mess? It’s all a matter of opinion, but Thriller’s promise and subsequent flame-out are both part of what makes it memorable and enduring. Teddy Roosevelt’s famous The Man in the Arena quote, from a 1910 speech, could have been explicitly written for Thriller’s creative team. He speaks to the man who is actually “in the arena” and realizes that if he fails, at least he fails by daring greatly. Thriller dared greatly. ED CATTO is a marketing strategist with a specialty in pop culture. As co-founder of Bonfire Agency, Ed is dedicated to connecting brands with the “Geeks of the World” in innovative and authentic ways. And as a “retropreneur,” Ed leads a team specializing in rejuvenating brands (including Captain Action) for today’s audiences.
30 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
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by D a n
Johnson
ary interview conducted Janu
2017
The ’80s were a wonderful time to be a DC fan. The company was starting to explore new presentation styles for their comics, including the prestigious Baxter paper format and the concept of the maxiseries. DC was also beginning to take advantage of the new opportunities that the direct sales market presented. Alas, this decade was also the last one where DC was willing to venture into different genres outside of superheroes on a regular basis. The ’80s were the last decade that DC regularly published war, Western, funny animal, and horror titles… but before closing the door on the science-fiction genre, DC and gave its readers something truly out of this world: Sun Devils by writer Gerry Conway and artist Dan Jurgens. This 12-part maxiseries, published between July 1984 and June 1985 (cover dates), followed the adventures of a space-born group of adventurers led by Rik Sunn who fought the good fight against the dread Karvus Khun, the leader of the Sauroid Empire. It was a rousing SF story presented by Gerry and Dan. In this BACK ISSUE Pro2Pro, we get the behind-the-scenes scoop on this maxiseries, straight from the men who sent us into orbit. – Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: How did the idea for Sun Devils first come about? What inspired the maxiseries? GERRY CONWAY: I was a fan of space opera, and particularly, a fan of the kind of space opera [DC editor] Julie Schwartz used to publish back in the 1950s and early ’60s in comics like Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures. It was also the era of Star Wars, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a major influence. JOHNSON: I was going to mention that at the time Sun Devils came out, science-fiction movies were huge. We had the last Star Wars film being released and Star Trek getting underway as a franchise. I was curious if that box-office success played a role in DC greenlighting the Sun Devils series. DAN JURGENS: I’m sure [the early-’80s SF craze] played a role in DC wanting to do it. CONWAY: I assume so! JURGENS: In a way, I found it to be a bit frustrating, because trying to capture the feel of ships moving through space on paper can be a very hard thing to do. It’s sort of like trying to do a car chase in comics. It just doesn’t have the same impact as it does on film, no matter what you do. JOHNSON: Roy Thomas is credited as a creator of this series. What was his role in the origin of Sun Devils? CONWAY: Roy and I talked over the idea as a possible film project, I think. That was the springboard, and Roy may have coined the name of the group. Or it could have been me—I was a fan of the Sea Devils comic, so “Sun Devils” sounds like something I might have come up with as a sly tribute to that book. Honestly, I don’t recall the specifics. Roy and I were collaborators in screenwriting at the time and did a lot together. Supposedly I helped create Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew, but I don’t remember making much of a contribution, if any at all, so who knows, really? JOHNSON: That is fascinating. I remember that you and Roy had worked on screenplays together in the early 1980s, and that you wrote Fire and Ice and Conan the Destroyer together. JURGENS: Don’t forget that the original name [of Sun Devils], Gerry, as you and Roy presented it to me, was Star Birds. I’d forgotten about that until I unearthed some old notes. JOHNSON: Dan, how did you come to be picked as the artist on Sun Devils?
’80s Space Opera The 12-issue run of DC’s Sun Devils (July 1984 through June 1985), featuring interlocking covers by then-emerging artist Dan Jurgens. TM & © DC Comics.
DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 31
“Can you solve it before we can?” That was certainly an interesting dare, one tossed before an unsuspecting comics readership in late 1985 when the much-ballyhooed DC Challenge was finally released. A 12-issue maxiseries, it was a round-robin featuring DC Comics’ biggest writers and artists, delving deep into the company’s character library, and in some ways, a palette cleanser of gonzo fun just as the very same creators helped disassemble the familiar DC Universe in the concurrent Crisis on Infinite Earths.
A CONVENTION CONCOCTION
It started, innocently enough, on the Executive Hotel’s roof as Len Wein, Mark Evanier, Gerry Conway, Bill Warren, and Bill Rotsler escaped a stifling Marvel Comics party during the 1983 San Diego Comic-Con. Marv Wolfman was separated from his friends and entered the elevator by himself, thinking he’d find his pals in the lobby, but somehow he wound up on the roof. With a perplexed look on his face, he studied his friends and asked what just happened. That moment of incongruity was a flash of inspiration to Evanier, who suggested the DC talent roster team-up for a round-robin story. “It was just one of those ideas that comes out of nowhere,” Evanier tells BACK ISSUE. “I have a lot of them and usually, ‘nowhere’ is where they should stay. I mentioned this one aloud to the writers around me and they all jumped on it.” Different creative teams would be selected, and each would write one issue of a longer story following only a handful of rules, then hand it off to the next writer with just a handful of plot threads and a kickass cliffhanger to work with. The next team would have to solve the immediate danger and propel the story forward, handing it off to the next mark evanier team. And so on, until it wrapped up. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. The company’s top 11 writers would be recruited, along with a dozen artists, with the plan being the 11 would collaborate on the concluding chapter. Everyone’s eyes lit up at the notion, and Conway coined it the DC Challenge and its marketing slogan. “I recall a lot of predictions that it would not do well sales-wise and that it would screw up production on other DC titles because we’d be yanking artists off other books,” Evanier says. As the posse ran into some of the very writers they needed at the con, everyone fell in love with the idea and agreed to participate. It was Roy Thomas who cautioned that while DC Challenge was a great idea, they needed executive editor Dick Giordano to bless it and get the project approved by Jenette Kahn, DC’s president and publisher, and Paul Levitz, the company’s manager-business affairs. By then, it was after 1:00 a.m., and since Dick was a notoriously early-to-bed guy, it would have to wait until morning. No sooner had Wein left an urgent note for Dick to join him for breakfast did the beloved artist/editor/executive walk into the hotel, up past his bedtime. The group whisked Dick up to the rooftop to set the stage, and maybe it was the late hour or the collective enthusiasm, but Giordano, normally a rational man, agreed to the project. Marv Wolfman recalls, “For some reason we decided to keep the answers to our cliffhangers to ourselves; the idea being like me in the elevator, nobody else would know the answer to how I got there. So writer A would set up a cliffhanger and writer B, not knowing what writer A had intended, had to
Tag… You’re It! A puzzle montage from the 12 covers for one of the most offbeat DC series of the ’80s—heck, of any decade— the writers’ round-robin maxiseries DC Challenge. TM & © DC Comics.
34 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
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by R
obert Greenberger
come up with their own solutions, then stick it to writer C to solve writer B’s These completed stories were sitting in inventory, which meant money cliffhanger, etc. I seem to recall the cliffhangers had to have real solutions was spent without a solid plan for recouping the expenses. the writer planted in their story; they just couldn’t come up with something Shortly after writing his script and the arrival of a fifth from Mike W. totally absurd. The idea was to challenge us, the writers, as well as the Barr, Paul put on his management hat and instructed this new editor to readers. It meant we had to figure out what another writer had set up prove that the project was still viable. I had to get three scripts (issues without having the foggiest idea what they intended. We tried to #6–8) written in a month or he’d scrap the entire maxiseries. use all the writers at DC that we could, and if memory serves >Gulp!< I made a quick series of calls to the writers who all everyone we approached thought it would be fun, too. said it could be done and sure enough, Levitz had three “I had done something like this previously in a vouchers to pay in time to keep the DC Challenge alive. crossover at Marvel between [Amazing] Spider-Man That was Summer 1984, and then it became a matand Nova where my Nova story had set up clues to a ter of getting things penciled, inked, lettered, and death and the Spider-Man writer had to figure out marketed. Design director Neal Pozner helped me come up with a cover treatment centering on the who the bad guy was based on those clues then write a story solving the murder.” Question Mark surrounded by that issue’s main players. Evanier adds, “When Dick Giordano okayed the It was a no-brainer for me to recruit Jerry Ordway, too idea—which he did in about ten seconds once he heard busy with Crisis to participate otherwise, to produce the it—he said that I, as the originator of the idea, had first cover. Todd Klein supplied our fine logo. By then to go first. There were several other writers present, it was decided that each issue’s letters column would so they were all included. Then someone made a list have the previous issue’s author share how he would marv wolfman have resolved the cliffhanger. and said, ‘So-and-so will be upset if he’s not included,’ and before long, we had a working list. A few names As it was, the publishing schedule didn’t really open went on and off it later due to availability. It was kind of a group decision.” up for something like this until late Summer 1985, so we definitely had Evanier spelled out the rules in the first issue’s letters column, some breathing room. We arrived on August 29, the same week as including the cliffhanger portion: Crisis #9, which I think is emblematic of the line’s flexibility back then. What follows is an issue-by-issue breakdown with commentary from as “That Writer must have a solution planted somewhere in his many of the creators involved as time, memory, and circumstance allowed. chapter, but the next Writer need not use that particular solution. You also have to end your chapter by naming the next chapter. The major characters of your chapter must not be any characters that you currently write for DC. The story can go anywhere in the DC Universe, but you cannot solve a story problem by declaring something a dream or a hoax or a hallucination. In other words, no cheating. “You must forward the plot and you must tie up some story threads left by those who have gone before as well as leaving new story threads for those who follow you.” Evanier recalls, “Selecting the artists was another group decision of whoever was present. We made up a list of artists and then I tore up some paper into scraps, wrote one artist’s name on each, and we had a drawing with proxies drawing for the writers who weren’t present. Later, a lot of that had to be adjusted because of schedules. I recall George Pérez wanted very badly to draw the last issue but that was not possible because of other things he was doing for the company.” The initial lineup included artists Joe Kubert and Don Newton, with the former unavailable as his turn drew close, and sadly, Newton passed away before his turn.
A PUBLISHING CHALLENGE
At the time, I was at San Diego on behalf of Comics Scene, and the following morning I ran into some of the perpetrators at breakfast and they were so giddy with excitement that I was sworn to secrecy and told all about it. It certainly sound ambitious and fun, just what they wanted to hear. Fast-forward 18 months. I was now now on staff at DC, and while sitting in Giordano’s office I saw the first issue of the Challenge on his desk, half-buried under other projects, memos, budgets, and submissions. He explained that work had begun with him as editor and he was swamped, barely paying attention to it. A month or two later, there were more papers atop the story, but by then, a second issue had been produced and work was underway on a third. As had become clear, I had time on my assistant-editor hands, so Dick asked me to help him with it, which rapidly became my taking it on to edit. I sat with the completed issues, and the notes that existed on issue #3 and realized months had gone by without much work getting done. Issue #4 was to be written by Paul Levitz, the keeper of the budget.
No Comic Shop Nearby? This mail-order house ad enabled DC’s newsstand readers to purchase the direct-market DC Challenge. TM & © DC Comics.
DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 35
Electric Warrior, a DC Comics publication that spanned a brilliant yet brief 18 issues, is one of those rare and overlooked science-fiction gems that could easily be rediscovered by a larger contemporary audience through a reprinting of the series. Doug Moench, a Bronze Age icon, is the caliber of writer whose major works for Marvel and DC (Master of Kung Fu, Moon Knight, Batman) still set the standard for superior comic-book writing. Together, this comic and its writer offer texts that are complex, nuanced, and most definitely intertwined. For the uninitiated, Electric Warrior is set in the future on a planet that may be Earth. One of the lead characters is Derek Two-Shadow, who escaped from the City years earlier to stay in the Wilderness, where the people who live there, the Primmies, have shunned the use of all technology. Meanwhile, 9-03, the other lead, is a Lek, a robotic warrior who defends the City for the Elites and finds himself suddenly gaining consciousness when he meets and falls in love with the elderly Zig woman known as Kinsolving, who lives below the City in the Warrens. In the first eight issues of the series, one watches the twin conflicts of Derek and 9-03 unfold until their storylines coalesce with issue #9 (Jan. 1987). With this plot refresher (or primer) in mind, please be sure to dive into your many long boxes and dig out those Electric Warrior issues (or visit your LCS and pick them up) as you prepare to read a tale that will provide you with greater insight into this daring comic book and its unique writer.
ELECTRIC LINES OF CONNECTEDNESS
Synchronicity—roughly speaking, psychoanalyst Carl Jung defines it as an acausal series of connecting events, or meaningful coincidences, that are not as random as they may initially appear to the person who experiences them. In Doug Moench’s view, the less you go looking for synchronicity to occur, the more it happens in your life, and I definitely agree with him as I feel like some sort of mystical energy field has connected me to this article. In other words, I believe that I was always destined to write it, starting several years ago during a challenging summer of doctoral coursework at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, when I curiously picked up all 18 issues of Electric Warrior at a nearby comic-book store. Immediately, I became enthralled with Doug and artist Jim Baikie’s story involving a robot who learns he has a soul, a longhaired dreamer outcast from the City, fearsome Genetrix mutants, pointy-headed Zigs, pretentious Elites, and terrible medical experimentations to create a cybernetic warrior who will supposedly protect them all from a mysterious otherworldly threat. Today, I realize that I was not only working on papers for my courses but prepping for this very article as well… Flash-forward several years later, and I am contacting Doug via the safe distance of email to request an interview. He soon agreed to a telephone conversation. However, when I saw his number, I recognized a local area code. Although I had heard years ago that Doug had lived somewhere in my area, I was still amazed to consider the fact that the man who wrote the poignant tale of Lek 9-03 and Derek Two-Shadow could exist so impossibly close to me. Feeling ambitious yet tentative, I asked Doug for a live interview, but he politely wrote back that he couldn’t grant me one right away as he and his wife Debbie were recovering from a serious bout with the flu. As I waited several weeks to contact him again, the synchronicity
Machine Man Jim Baikie’s electrifying cover to Doug Moench’s ’80s sci-fi saga, Electric Warrior. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.
50 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
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by T o m
Powers
continued between Doug and me as fellow comic-book fans told me, on several different occasions, that they personally knew Doug, went to high school with his son, or even gave him a helpful car ride once. Most notably, everyone said he was quite a lively, energetic, and eccentric guy, so one can imagine my excitement (and heart rate) rising as I contemplated what a face-to-face interview with the man himself concerning a complex sci-fi comic such as Electric Warrior would entail. Fortunately, Doug and I finally set a date for the interview, and, on one sunny, late December 2016 Friday, my wife Amanda and I took a pleasant afternoon drive to his house, navigating down country-like Pennsylvania back roads while munching on a bag of homemade Christmas cookies all the way to his beautiful residence. Talk about something out of Lord of the Rings, but Doug’s home is the type of dwelling where you would think a genius writer would be inspired to compose his wonderful stories: a mid-19th-Century farmhouse that he and Debbie have lovingly restored and expanded. Outside their home, Debbie greeted us with a kindly smile, welcomed us inside their delightful residence, and guided us to Doug, who was waiting for us in his study. Amanda and I then shyly stepped into that massive, warmly sun-lit room, which was filled with furniture and books, and we found Doug sitting in a quintessential writer’s pose while he was thoughtfully reading a book in his comfortable recliner. He then led us past his spacious kitchen, where he has a leather booth roomy enough to hold a party of ten, and brought us into another impressive room. In the center of that area, we all sat down upon his large brown leather couch, before which, appropriately enough, sits a glass table that is held up by twin stone gargoyles. And then there were the books: thousands of them, meticulously alphabetized along the many shelves surrounding us in Doug’s rec room, and the second floor, to which one can ascend to peruse even more books via his gorgeous spiraling oak staircase. Think of the dancehall scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast or the immense library in the Doctor’s time machine, as seen in the Doctor Who episode “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,” and you can begin to picture the immensity of Doug’s well-amassed collection that would put any reputable bookstore to shame. By the way, all of this comfortable splendor was developed by an architect working according to Doug’s inspired vision for the space. Certainly, he has crafted an area of knowledge, literature, and countless worlds to which one can escape, the type of setting that Kinsolving herself once worked when she was a librarian, as revealed in Electric Warrior #11 (Mar. 1987). In a relaxed fashion, a blue jeans and moccasinwearing Doug began lighting up the first of which would prove to be an endless array of cigarettes and began to live up to his reputation as a mighty raconteur. He then confirmed to us that this is the very home in which he wrote the entirety of Electric Warrior and where he and Jim Baikie discussed initial ideas and sketches for the comic. On this note, Doug revealed the backstory of how he first met Jim, who had traveled to New York from Scotland in order to visit the DC Comics offices. As they first talked, Doug found himself really liking Jim, appreciating his enthusiasm to make it into American comics and connecting with him on the fact that Doug’s mother is Scottish and he had spent time in that country when he was younger. Doug told us, “Since we were hitting it off, I invited him to leave the hotel where he was staying and come over to my house for several days, selling him on the prospect of it being a great adventure. At first, Jim was timid about staying at my place, but he came over anyway, and he was blown away.” As Doug swept up his arm toward
Eclectic Warrior (top) Doug Moench, as sketched by Amanda Powers, wife of this article’s writer, during the Powers’ December 2016 interview at Casa Moench. (bottom) Electric Warrior gets the cover spot on the May 1986 DC Releases comicshop newsletter. TM & © Doug Moench and Jim Baikie/DC Comics.
DC in the ’80s Issue • BACK ISSUE • 51
60 • BACK ISSUE • DC in the ’80s Issue
TM
by B r i a n
Martin
All covers and characters TM & © DC Comics.
It must have felt like a homecoming. Or at the very least the return to a familiar place. When comics began, most titles were anthologies and contained lots of pages. So when Action Comics underwent a metamorphosis with issue #601, it was really just going back to its roots. The difference was, this was 1988, not 1938. There were not a lot of superhero anthologies around in America, and not a lot of comics with this many pages (48 for $1.50, in this case). And none of those were published weekly. “At the time ACW was proposed, all we had was New Talent Showcase as a recent example of an anthology,” begins Bob Greenberger, one of the team of editors on the project. “It didn’t really count considering its mandate to introduce and hone new talent.” DC executive editor Dick Giordano was certainly interested in the anthology concept. In fact, “Dick and I tried a weekly comic for the Charlton characters and we did a dummy issue, while many weeks of certain features had already been written and drawn,” confides Greenberger. (The title was to be Comic Cavalcade Weekly, and was covered in BACK ISSUE #79.) The weekly anthology idea remained of interest to Giordano, however, and gained another proponent when editor Mike Gold arrived at DC. After the success of the weekly Millennium crossover miniseries, Gold was instrumental in convincing DC’s powers-that-be that it was time to explore the idea of a weekly comic. Over time, the idea metamorphosed into Action Comics Weekly. Almost. The idea itself was “an experiment,” according to supervising editor Gold, but it could have had a different title. “Originally, it was supposed to be Adventure Comics and ad-free,” reveals Gold. “Action was having deadline trouble, so the publisher thought it best to switch over to ACW. I still wish we went with Adventure. Action Comics carried certain expectations and had a certain weight.” Once the decision to begin was made, “I distinctly remember Brian Augustyn, Barbara Kesel, and I being called into Dick’s office with the news that Action was going weekly and would contain multiple features,” recalls Greenberger. “It was clear we’d all be editing stories for the book but spreading the wealth so no one editor was overwhelmed.” Greenberger then did some research into a venerable British weekly comic. “I took a big stack of 2000 ADs and did an analysis,” Bob tells BACK ISSUE. “I determined how their lineups worked, including cover slots. Given my broad range of artist contacts via Who’s Who, Mike Gold asked that I take on [editorially managing] the covers.” Gold adds, “Bob and I would get together and toss around ideas based upon which feature was up for cover treatment, with preference given to new launches.” For Greenberger, the assignment for the first issue was a simple one. “Dave Gibbons was always getting the first cover since he did the Charlton dummy cover for me [for Comic Cavalcade Weekly] and I felt I owed him something higher profile,” Bob states. “We began prioritizing which characters got which covers, going obviously with the most recognizable first.” The character most associated with Action, the big “S,” would have to wait a bit, “so as not to confuse readers with the previous incarnation of the title.” The title also pulled another idea from across the pond. When writing letters to the book, readers were asked to rank the features as well. Mike Gold liked the idea since it was “an old comic and pulp tradition that I think 2000 AD did for a while as well.” Bob Greenberger doesn’t feel the rankings were ever taken as gospel, but “more of a scan to get a feel for what people responded to and which ones were not connecting.” Content-wise, there were several what could be considered experimental features in Action Comics Weekly. The choosing of those features came down to Mike Gold. His criteria? “My whim. Totally. I wanted a variety and to spotlight new
things as they came on board.” When it came to those “new things,” it was announced in the text page of #601 that there would be a series-within-the-series called “Showcase.” These were to be four-issue previews of an upcoming series or miniseries. As the weekly schedule began, the editorial team even knew what the first Showcase feature was. After that… well, we’ll see how that worked out a little later. As with most experiments, there had to be a control element or two. In the case of Action Comics Weekly, those controls would come in the form of proven stars Superman and Green Lantern, even though GL’s career had its ups and downs. One final thought on content: Action Comics Weekly was an early mainstream title published without the Comics Code seal. “Dick Giordano and I had a real commitment to ignoring and destroying the Code,” says Mike Gold. “I just didn’t like the Code, so I took the opportunity to bypass it. I was still reeling from a fight I had with the Code in the 1970s about why Swamp Thing didn’t wear pants.” Now that we’ve achieved lift off, let’s take a look at how each individual feature fared. To keep things neat and tidy, we’ll look at each feature in the order it first appeared. With the exception of Superman. There has to be some reward for being there first!
AT THE CENTER OF THE ACTION
Bronze Age. At first, Stern was sorry to learn that Beatty was leaving the strip, saying, “That was too bad, because John had been doing a nice job and I hated to lose him.” Roger’s consternation was shortlived, though, because, “[Superman editor] Mike Carlin said that Murphy was going to be taking over, and I started doing the happy dance. (Sorry, John. No offense, but we’re talking Murphy Anderson here.) As a team they couldn’t be beat, and for several months I got to write for that team.” The Superman story begins in #601 (May 24, 1988) and continues all the way until #638 (Feb. 7, 1989), and commences with our hero rescuing a man from what appears to be a mob hit. Things get more complicated when the assailants would rather die than be captured. The crux of the story comes to light when the intended victim, Bob Galt by name, reveals that he is a member of a cult that worships Superman as a god! A graphic depiction of this adulation (and Superman’s reaction to it) adorns the cover of issue #606. As Superman investigates this turn of events, he gradually uncovers the roots of the cult, and the extent of the reach of their enemies. He also finds out that Bob has some extraordinary powers himself: He can project any scene he has witnessed. Bob believes this power is a gift from Superman himself. Around this time, Stern ran into a bit of a snag. He tells BACK ISSUE, “Midway through the run, my schedule was getting more and more frantic. At one point I was writing three books a month—Superman, Starman, and Power of the Atom—and was scripting Steve Ditko’s Speedball [at Marvel]. I was younger then, but even so, I was starting to run a little ragged.”
Since its very inception, Action Comics always had Superman as its centerpiece. It only took him until the 19th monthly issue to take over the cover spot permanently. When the title went weekly, the Man of Steel took that “centerpiece” designation literally. Throughout the weekly run, Superman was featured in a two-page spread that was almost always placed mike gold just after the middle of the magazine. This presentation was reminiscent of the comic-book format’s comic-strip origins. (Superman’s first-ever appearance was made up of repositioned pages from a proposed newspaper strip.) The Action feature’s writer, Roger Stern, would soon begin writing the regular Superman title, taking over for John Byrne. This weekly series was a bit different, though, but Stern came in with his eyes open. “That was the assignment I was offered—two pages of Superman per issue,” Stern tells BACK ISSUE. “I don’t recall whose idea it was that we should do it as a two-page spread, but it worked out well. I just did my best to emulate the Sunday comics of my youth.” (As an aside, a two-page Superman strip was to have been featured in the aforementioned Comic Cavalcade Weekly, though for that magazine it was planned to be a reprinting of the World’s Greatest Superheroes newspaper strips, not original stories.) Tapped to pencil these stories was Curt Swan, THE Superman artist of the Silver and Bronze Ages, just two years after entrusting the character to John Byrne and Jerry Ordway. Roger Stern describes working with this legend: “It was absolutely wonderful. He was always so damn good. Curt took everything I wrote for him and made it better. His Superman, of course, was wonderful—but he was also a master of depicting everyday people. Visually he created a very real world for all the people in the story to inhabit.” Swan also proved to Stern that he was more than just a wonderful artist. “One of the biggest highlights of my career came just a few weeks after I had been writing the strip,” Roger reveals. “Curt called to tell me how much fun he was having drawing the story. Hearing that left me momentarily tongue-tied. I had always loved Curt Swan’s Superman, and now Curt was telling me he liked my Superman. I don’t recall my exact words, but I managed to stammer out something about how fantastic he was making the series look, and how much I’d always loved his work. The series made us co-workers, but his call made us friends as well.” John Beatty inked the first 12 episodes, but with #613, Murphy Anderson took over, reuniting the iconic “Swanderson” team of the
Step Aside, Superman DC’s Direct Currents newsletter, touting Action’s new weekly format. TM & © DC Comics.
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