CBA Interview
Takin’ Ten with a Regular Joe Interview with the great cartoonist/editor/teacher Joe Kubert Comic Book Artist: In the mid-’60s, sales for Marvel were picking up and DC was dropping a bit. Did you personally feel the pressure to at least check out Marvel’s books and see what the appeal these books had? Joe Kubert: No. When I became Editor up at DC, my criteria for what I wanted to do was strictly based on what looked good to me and how I felt. It was intuitive. CBA: When you became Editor of the War books in ‘68, there seemed to be a sudden infusion of relevance. Oddly enough for a WWII book, you made it contemporary—“Stop the War, I Want to Get Off.” Joe: I felt very strongly about that, that’s all. I had been asked to edit books by Carmine Infantino. He had taken on the job of Editorial Director and asked me—we had known each other for a long, long time—and he was one of the few people that I had socialized with while we were growing up. So we knew each other pretty well. When he asked me to come in, one of my criteria was that I was free to do what I wanted. If I was going to be restricted, I wasn’t even going to start. There were other directions that I could have gone into that I was thinking of. At the time, I was just coming off the syndicated strip Tales of the Green Beret and there were other places that I was considering. Carmine said, “Joe, you can do anything you want.” As a sidebar, when I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” Carmine kind of pulled me over to the side and said, jokingly, “Y’know, Joe, now that you will be working here in an editorial position, maybe it’s a good idea to start wearing a jacket.” I’ve always dressed kind of slovenly, I guess, so I said to Carmine, very quickly, “If I have to dress in order to do this job, you can take this job and shove it.” Carmine said, “No, no. I was just kidding.” But that was my relationship with him so he understood that I could do pretty much what I wanted to do— that was the basis for my taking the job. What I did was those things that felt good to me. When I did the “Make War No More,” I felt that what I was trying to do in some ways was similar to what Harvey Kurtzman 52
had done. The Kurtzman War books had a feeling of realism and what a guy in the Army has to go through—closer than anything I had read before. To some degree, Sgt. Rock was always written that way by Kanigher, but I felt that it needed perhaps a little more of a definitive push in that direction.
CBA: Were you a reluctant editor or did you lobby for the job? Joe: Neither. I became an editor because Bob Kanigher (who had been the editor for a long time) became ill and was no longer able to continue in that position. Because of the fact that I had worked so long with him on the books—I knew the books so well—Carmine had asked me to take over the editorial chores. CBA: When you went to the syndicate job, did you really leave DC? Joe: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I had to stop at DC completely. Doing a syndicated strip is a completely time-consuming job in terms of deadlines. The pressures are absolutely extraordinary. That strip has to be in the newspapers every day. If you miss a day, it’s two days that you have to make up so you have to double up in order to be where you were before. Taking vacations? Forget about it unless you can get somebody to cover for you. I was doing the lettering, penciling, inking and coloring—everything—so it was a full time job. In comic books, the deadlines are stringent but nowhere near as severe as with newspaper syndication. You can sneak an extra day or two in bringing your work in late and still get away with it for comic books. But if your strip isn’t there in the paper when its supposed to be, you’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. CBA: Did the pressures get to you after a while? I noticed that Jack Abel did some inking in the later strips. Joe: Yes. I just couldn’t maintain the amount of work that I had and I asked Jack to do some inking when I went on vacation. CBA: When you left the syndicate, did you immediately go back to DC and request work? Joe: It was about that time when I left the syndicated strip that Carmine asked if I’d be interested. CBA: A small irony of your career is that Neal Adams suggested you for the syndicate job and your absence at DC opened up an opportunity for his comics work. Joe: I don’t remember how that worked out but it was funny because at the time that Neal had recommended me, we didn’t even know each other. It’s nice to have guys like that in your corner. CBA: Was getting to know Neal invigorating? COMIC BOOK ARTIST
Spring 1998