or something, [laughs] and he said, “I think it’s time you went to Marvel and tried it on your own,” so I started going every week to Marvel. The only way I could get in was for the receptionist to hit the magic little button to get you through the doors. They had a tendency to send janitors out to the waiting room to check your artwork out and get rid of people. It was pretty wild! [laughter] So I got in by saying, “Hey, I’ve got a pile of stuff from Mike Ploog here he wanted delivered,” [laughter] so they let me in to hand it to Marv Wolfman, and I said, “Hey, I do stuff, too!” and I’d show him. CBA: What was Orb? Jim: That was before I went down to the States. Orb was a magazine I contributed to in which I did a character called The Northern Light—because of which my work is in the National Archives of Canada and the National Library as one of the six or seven Canadian super-heroes—whom I didn’t create, but recreated. Meaning it was the kind of character that really wasn’t going anywhere, and again, I asked if I could play with the character a bit, change him, make him a little more macho, and they said, “Sure,” and then it took off after I changed it. But in Canada, numbers are different, we didn’t then have the audience to buy the stuff. CBA: Did you have any specific influences in your style? Jim: A lot. In fact, when people say “style,” I’m probably the last guy to admit that I have a style, although I have a lot of people say that Jim Craig, they can tell my style—I guess I can, too, because I know I did it [laughs]—I would say anywhere from Wrightson, Ploog, Adams… I used to mimic Ploog very well… John Buscema was a big influence, I loved his stuff. Even John Romita, not drawing but more in storytelling, I guess. CBA: Would you say Kirby? Jim: Oh, yeah, Kirby. Definitely, I think that’s part of the way I learned to draw, I’d draw a rock or something, or look at a comic to see how they drew a rock, and I’d close the comic and try drawing it myself, then I’d open the comic and see how they drew it and correct myself. It was kind of a neat way to learn, doing it by memory. You start picking up styles, whether your remember it or not. There’s little bits where I can tell my Wrightson’s coming through, I can tell my Buscema’s coming through, I can tell… it depends on the situation. CBA: What was your reception at Marvel? Jim: They kept saying, “Next week, maybe there’s this. Next week, maybe there’s that.” That went on for a long time. They finally gave me some ads to do, so again, I think my first ad was in one of their black-&-white kung fu books. I also did an ad in their black-&-white Planet of the Apes—this is after Ploog—and they kept saying, “Next week, there might be some inking, there might be some of this, there might be some of that,” and I got to the point where I just said, “Guys, I’ve got five dollars in my pocket, and that might get me back up north, maybe. I’ve got a hole in my shoes, it’s November, it’s raining, just give me a yes or a no, no more maybes.” In the beginning, they don’t want to hurt your feelings, and you don’t want your feelings hurt, but after a while, you get pretty tough and say, “Yes or no? Are you going to give me a job or not? If you’re not, I’m going home.” At that point, I’d had enough of them. And they said, “Well, maybe next week,” again, and I said, “Fine, I’m going across the street to Atlas. I know Marvel inside and out, I know your stuff, I know your characters, and I only wanted to work for you guys, but I’ll go across the street.” So I went across the street and did the same thing, put my foot up on the guy’s desk, said, “I’ve got a hole in my shoes and five bucks in my pocket, don’t give me any crap, just tell me if you want to use me or not!” and they gave me two books. CBA: [laughs] Was it Larry you dealt with? Jim: Larry Lieber and Jeff Rovin, I believe. I started with Jeff, but spent most of my time with Larry Lieber. He used to give me Jack Kirby lessons for hours. CBA: What was Atlas like? Jim: It was neat to go into their office, because they also did Swank magazine, so it was cool to go by all the light boxes and see all the slides of their pin-up girls. It was an odd office, as opposed to Marvel. Marvel looked like a very artsy place inside, a lot of drawing boards and guys working away. Atlas looked more like an accountant’s office, or a normal business office, small, clean, you know, on the 18th floor of some building. It was literally across the December 2001
COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16
street from Marvel, when Marvel was on Madison Avenue. It was around the corner. It was a strange place where everybody wore suits. It was different, I guess, from Marvel, where everybody was having trouble keeping their pants up and stuff like that. CBA: [laughs] Did you get to meet Martin Goodman? Jim: Oh, yeah. Martin Goodman, older fella. He didn’t have too much to say, he seemed to be a very business-type guy. He was pleasant, but so was Stan Lee. (I met Stan Lee a year later, and he said, “Yeah, you do good work.” I don’t think he’d ever seen my stuff, it was just the standard stock answer, whatever he had to say! [laughter]) Yeah, I met him, but I dealt mostly with Chip Goodman. Because I was on a visa, I needed some kind of permit to stay in the States longer. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but to stay there you should have a work permit, and the Goodmans looked into it for me as a favor, and Chip’s answer was, “Marry one of our Swank models.” [laughter] Of course, being 20 years old, I was pretty stupid back then, I could kick myself now… “No, I don’t want to get married!” [laughter] CBA: Well, you’d get a honeymoon out of the deal, anyway! Were you given full-script assignments right off the bat? Jim: Yep. I think Scorpion #3 was the first one.
Above: This b-&-w stat of Wulf the Barbarian #4’s cover appeared in Deadspawn #1. Art by Jim Craig. Courtesy of Mark Burbey. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.
89