Comic Book Artist #20 Preview

JR

SR

& JR

JR:

No.20 July 2002

THE ROMITAS REMEMBER

$6.95 In The US

All characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

SPECIAL FATHER & SONS ISSUE

S P O T L I G H T I N G

NUMBER 20

T H O S E

CELEBRATING

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THE

R A M B U N C T I O U S

LIVES & WORK

OF THE

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R O M I T A S !

GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

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JULY 2002

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FATHER & SON: THOSE RAMBUNCTIOUS ROMITA MEN CBA ROUNDTABLE: JOHN SR. & JOHN JR. AND THE ART OF GRACE An exhaustive interview with John Sr. and John Jr. on everything from Marvel’s early days to Sept. 11, 2001 ....2 A FEMININE PERSPECTIVE: VIRGINIA AND THE JOHNS Courtesy of the forthcoming book, I Have To Live With This Guy!, Senior’s wife and Junior’s Mom talks! ........46

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW

FATHER & SONS: IN EASY COMPANY WITH THE KUBERTS We visit Joe and the boys at the Kubert School to discuss the past, present and future of comics ............FLIP US!

Cover Art JOHN ROMITA, JR., pencils JOHN ROMITA, SR., inks

Cover: With pencils by John Jr. and inks by John Sr., the Romitas draw us a nifty, all-new cover starring some of the best known Marvel characters drawn by father and son. Art ©2002 John Jr. & John Sr. Romita. Characters ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Above: Great Romita collaboration featuring good ol’ Spidey. Courtesy of JR Sr.©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Cover Color NICK DRAGOTTA

Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

Issue Transcriber JON B. KNUTSON Editorial credits on flip side

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published 10 times a year by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2002 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgements: Art ©2002 John Romita, Jr. & John Romita, Sr. All characters ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

John Romita Sr. & Jr.

A roundtable conversation with the talented father and Conducted Conductedby byJon JonB.B.Cooke Cooke Transcribed TranscribedbybyJon JonB.B.Knutson Knutson When I think of that class father and son team, the John Romitas, I think the term “Old School.” Not that their work isn’t modern or incredibly effective—it is—but there’s a quiet dignity about the guys on a personal level that makes me think of the good, old days when people treated others with proper respect and deference.

Senior and Junior (as we designate them in the following interview) not only possess a refreshing degree of modesty and, well, humility, but they’re talented as all get out and really nice human beings to boot. The following interview took place at John Sr. and Virginia Romita’s Floral Park, New York home on January 14, 2002 (which was edited by Sr. and approved by Jr.), while John Jr. was visiting from his San Diego, California digs. The Romitas treated Ye Ed not only to four hours of uproarious conversation, but Virginia also whipped up an authentic and delicious Italian pasta dinner. To set the stage, Ye Ed traveled by car over the Throg’s Neck Bridge to the Romitas, which affords a grand profile of Manhattan where a heart-wrenching void is glaringly evident in the skyline of the island’s southern tip, a grim reminder of a terrible year.

Comic Book Artist: [To Senior]Where’s your family from?

Senior: I was born in Brooklyn, raised there most of my young life until we moved to Queens. I went to a Manhattan high school, which was the School of Industrial Art. It’s a very innovative approach for a school, as they had practicing commercial artists on staff, instead of just theorists teaching art. They had an illustrator teaching illustration, two great illustrators teaching illustration— magazine and book illustration— and there were advertising artists conducting design courses. We studied mechanical drawing, photography, sculpture.

When I got out of school at 17, I got into the commercial art field, and all the things I used to think were a waste of my time—sculpture, photography, mechanical drawing, lettering, sign-&show card. All the things I thought I wanted to do—comic strips like Terry and the Pirates, Norman Rockwell illustrating— I thought the other courses were delaying me. Then I realized, when I got into the

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and the Art of Grace son Romita on their careers as top comic book artists

business, every single day of my career—to this day—I call on all those other things I learned—lettering, mechanical drawing, perspective—all of them. Even sculpture! When I first started, I used to sculpt my main character’s head out of clay to use as reference.

Junior: I didn’t know that!

Senior: I felt so inadequate that I wouldn’t know how to do a three-quarter back view, or a top view looking down, or looking up, so I used to make an actual clay sculpture—I’m talking about inconsequential characters, like a Western hero or female heroine, and I needed them for two or three stories, and then I gave it up, because it lost me valuable time.

I said the hell with that! It felt like such a crutch, but I also felt I had to do it. I had to learn how to do a down-view or an up-view. I was used to doing pin-ups!

CBA: Where are your parents originally from?

Senior: My father was born in Italy, in a town called Bari, “the heel of the boot.” It’s an Italian province. My mother was born in the United States, in Manhattan.

CBA: What was her maiden name?

Senior: Her maiden name was Agostino. My maternal grandparents came from Calabria, and after they moved to Manhattan, my mother was born, and then they moved to Brooklyn.

CBA: How old was your father when he came over?

Senior: He was about 17, I think. He was on his own, the oldest of about ten kids, and in those days of the Depression, people sometimes went out on their own at a young age, just to avoid their parents having another mouth to feed in the house. So, he came over to the States on his own, went straight to Gary, Indiana, and started working in a speakeasy when he was 19!

CBA: Did he have an apprenticeship or any kind of trade when he came from Italy?

Senior: No, he had lived on a farm.

Junior: I’ll always remember to thank Grandpa when I see him for not staying in Gary, Indiana.

Senior: Yes! [laughter] He was always threatening to take us out of town! He—his name was Vito—loved small towns. He wanted to open up a bakery near Albany, and envisioned me as a bakery delivery man.

Junior: Thank him for not doing that, too!

Senior: Thank your grandmother! My mother said, “No, sir! We’re not moving to Albany. We’re going to stay here!”

CBA: Was Vito entrepreneurial?

Senior: He was a very skilled baker, but couldn’t make a living at it. There just wasn’t enough money or weren’t enough jobs in Brooklyn at the time, so he became a furniture finisher, but in a bizarre twist, he ended up in a casket factory. National Casket, in Long Island City, doing this beautiful lacquer, high-polished shine on caskets. They were some quality caskets.

Junior: Didn’t he work on Babe Ruth’s casket?

Senior: I think he did, yes. At least, I think his department did.

He had something to do with it, but was not in charge of the whole thing. He worked there 25 years, and then left and did furniture July 2002

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finishing, chairs and things like that. He was a very interesting guy. When I was a kid, he used his skill with lacquer to laminate my drawings of Snow White, Pinocchio and Dumbo. Every time one of those animated movies came out, I did drawings of them. I did a shot of Dumbo in 1943, must’ve been 13, and he laminated it with lacquer on the board, so we had it for years. I drew every one of those dwarves individually and collectively, did Pinocchio quite often, and he would lacquer and laminate, mount them on wood sometimes. I would give my eyeteeth to get those back, but I have no idea where they disappeared to. My whole career, I have been very lax in keeping memorabilia.

CBA: Did your mother work outside the home?

Senior: No, she was a homemaker who raised five children. A lot of times, my father was making as little as $20 a week, not much to support five kids. We had a nice apartment in Boro Park, southern Brooklyn, and just before the War started, when I was ten, the landlord raised the rent, and we had to move, relocated to a tenement in Williamsburg, near Greenpoint, in Brooklyn. My mother was very upset that we were in a cold flat after living in a nice, steam heated apartment for the first nine of my years. So we moved into a cold flat, it was bizarre. There was a cold water faucet, no hot water. My mother told her husband, “We’re not unpacking! If we don’t find an apartment with hot water, that’s it!” [laughter] So, he turned things around, and we only stayed in that place a few months, but it was terrible. You couldn’t walk on the floor without shoes!

Junior: Was there a coal stove in the kitchen?

Senior: I used to go down to the basement,

Opposite page: Specially drawn father & son collaboration featuring many of the characters the pair are remembered for. Courtesy of the Romitas. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Inset left: Father and son at the recent Spider-Man art exhibit at San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. Courtesy of Andrew Farago. Below: Penciled

by John Jr. as he was being interviewed by CNN regarding the 9/11 projects, this piece was inked by JR Sr. and then auctioned off at a charity benefit for a lot of money.

©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. 3-B

Above: One of the Romita father and son collaborations (which were always Junior on pencils, Senior on inks), this was one for a North Carolina comic convention program cover in the mid-1990s.

Courtesy of the Romitas. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Inset right: The first two issues of Daredevil drawn by Jazzy John Romita, Sr., the title that finally made his boys sit up and take notice of what a cool job Dad had.

Senior’s covers to #12 and 13. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. 4-B

shovel coal into a bucket, and bring it up, we’d put it in the stove… I don’t know how the hell we did it.

CBA: Where do you stand amongst the siblings?

Senior: The oldest of five. We’re only three now; we lost one sister and a younger brother. Those were rough years. I remember, we used to get frost on our windows on the inside. You know how windows frost up? I used to draw pictures of cartoon characters in the frost.

CBA: What year were you born?

Senior: I was born in 1930.

CBA: Was your father born around 1900?

Senior: He was born in 1903. Same year as Bob Hope.

CBA: He came over in 1920 and had you 10 years later.

Senior: My mother was less than 17 when I was born. She was to be 17 in April, and I was born on January 24. I used to kid her that we grew up together and said we were going to go to the old folks’ home together, because she was barely older than me! [laughter] She used to get so much attention, she weighed about 98 pounds, was about five foot two, such a thin girl, and she had to hold me on her hip, because I was a big, chunky kid, and she was lugging me around, and people used to say, “Can I hold the baby for you?” She looked like she was going to pass out! [laughter] I remember seeing my mother jump-rope with her girlfriends outside our apartment.

CBA: She was only in her mid-20s, right?

Senior: I’m telling you, if I’m 3 years old, she was not even 20 yet!

CBA: As a child, were you exposed to anybody with any artistic inclination?

Senior: I did have some interesting, talented friends who would come and visit. There was a guy who was a house painter, who was the brother of a very good friend. He taught me how to draw Popeye when I was about five. He also taught me perspective. The damnedest thing you ever saw! He showed me a little trick to do a book on a table in perspective and how to draw that with a few lines. That lesson stayed with me for years!

Junior: That made the art come alive, right? A book in perspective!

Senior: It taught me perspective. He said you can make it look like you’re looking at the book from a long distance away by doing this and this and this, and it was a revelation to me! I think if I had any kind of natural ability that helped, it was an ability to understand what I was seeing. A lot of young people don’t understand what they’re looking at, don’t understand how it’s done, and don’t care. I was very inquisitive and knew immediately, at eight or nine years old, when I bought Superman #1, I knew that this comic was drawn by hand!

Nobody told me. When Jack Kirby’s Captain America came out, I was ten years old and telling my friends, “See what he’s doing here? See how he’s got the guy popping out of the panel?

He’s making it look like it’s coming out of the page!” And I used to notice things like how Jack would make sure that smoke curled in the right place, as not to interfere with the figures. When I started drawing, I was already aping professional tricks. I knew why background lines began and ended at certain places. I would tell my fellow artists—we used to have three or four guys in my school who were pretty good— “You know, what you want to do is, don’t make the line on the horizon go right across the top of the character’s head, make it break in the body, so you get depth.” Where the hell did I get that? I just got it from Caniff in his Terry and the Pirates, I got it from the early Superman comics. I still have the Terry and the Pirates Sunday pages from the Daily News in ’43, ’44 and ’45. Maybe even some ’46, when Caniff was really blossoming. Then I found out in retrospect that Noel Sickles was the guy I really was into, because he’s the artist who triggered Caniff into a beautiful run of stories.

Caniff was a storytelling artist who had marginal skills as an artist in the beginning.

CBA: So you really clued into the master cartoonists right off the bat?

Senior: I mostly had friends who were interested in comics, but I had nobody with any kind of skill or experience. I think I was making up this COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

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Spidey and the Mexican Princess John Romita, Sr. tells us: “This is a story I plotted myself. Stan used to always say that he wished we could get Spider-Man out of the city, so I wrote up an elaborate plot which took place in a rural Mexican estate, involving Indian folklore. I also intended to use an H.G. Wells kind of approach, using underground creatures that were like the Morlocks from The Time Machine. (There exists somehwere a few pages featuring those creatures.) I was working out a gimmick where either he was going to be in a mountainous region (where Spider-Man would climb a sheer cliff) or a giant, bottomless pit. So I schemed up this plot with an Indian Mexican princess surrounded by these huge bodyguards with SpiderMan trying to rescue a character who been taken down this bottomless pit by these creatures. Spider-Man was the only guy who could go down and save him.

“I only penciled about six or seven pages [four of which follow] and never even presented the plot to Stan, because I wanted to work out at least half the story in pencil. But that never came to pass. They laid in my files for years and I always had fond hopes but never completed the plotted pages. Only Mike [“Romitaman”] Burkey, an art dealer, showed any interest in the pages; he liked them and bought them from me. Maybe one of these days I’ll finish the job; maybe before I’m 90!”

Above: Cover layout to John Sr.’s aborted Mexican Princess story.

Inset is the splash page layout, repro’d from the 1996 Marvel book The Art of John Romita.

Courtesy of Mike Burkey. Art ©2002 John Romita. Spider-Man ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. July 2002

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Above and opposite bottom right: Amazing Spider-Man #108-109 contain what John Sr. feels one of his crowning achievements in comics, a Milton Caniff-style adventure entirely plotted by JR Sr. Here are the splash pages of both issues. Courtesy of Mike Burkey. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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don’t remember the World-Telegram stuff too much, except that I think somebody was doing Sherlock Holmes for a while in the WorldTelegram. I couldn’t afford more than a couple of papers. I did get the Journal on weekends, and the News and Mirror. The Mirror used to have Frank Robbins’s Johnny Hazard. I remember reading Lee Elias’s Beyond Mars… all the Caniff imitators, Alex Kotsky and Ray Bailey… all of those guys. Caniff asked me to send samples to him once, and one of the lines I remember he said on the phone was, “All of my playmates are busy,” and he was going to take a chance on me. But he needed a sequence before I was ready, and I never got the chance to do it.

CBA: Were you impressed with him, personally? While he was one of the most highly regarded strip artists in the world, there seemed a sweetness and likability to him.

Senior: He was a model of behavior. Maybe he’s the one who influenced me in not being arrogant. I met him at a cartoonists’ night, an annual sports dinner, where Caniff and Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey were attending… all the big fighters and baseball players. I was at one dinner where Yogi Berra and Milton Caniff both appeared. They were all on the dais together, baseball players, football players and cartoonists, and I went to it maybe three years out of five, and I have a picture of me with Yogi Berra, and I have a picture of me with Caniff, taken at one of these dinners. A moment after that picture, he was taken out of the room because he’d gotten sick to his stomach or something. He was very fragile, he had hemophilia, and was always constantly aware he

couldn’t have anything harsh for his stomach… any bleeding was going to be tragic for him.

CBA: Did you have much dealings with him?

Senior: No, just a few phone conversations. He called me up and told me he was keeping my samples, “if I don’t mind.” Shel Dorf told me he did keep the samples in his files, and I always harbored a wish that I would do the strip for him someday.

CBA: Did you recognize Al Capp’s abilities?

Senior: Capp as a very ingenious artist, too, because he had an interesting style. I learned from almost everybody. I learned how to do highlights on line work; Capp had this great trick of not connecting all his lines. The illusion was, when he’d do a nose, he’d not make the point of the nose inked in, it would look like a highlight, and it was very ingenious. I connect the lines too much, and I despise it. I should leave more open space. He did all the things I wish I could do.

I’ve never been free like he was. Only in my sketches am I free. In my finished art, I get much too tight. So, Capp was the kind of guy who had little tricks that I could see and used, but never used them direct, or as often as I wanted. I learned from Peanuts, Blondie and Dagwood, learned from everybody. Every weird comic, cartoony style, there was something I could learn. All through the years I’ve trained artists, I’ve told them, “Don’t look down your nose at anybody’s work.” A lot of young super-hero artists didn’t think much of Roy Crane, and I said, “If you look at Roy Crane’s stuff, you will see ingenuity, characterizations, storytelling, believability. His stuff was always solid. Roy Crane actually created tricky storytelling. Hal Foster created an illustration style in daily comic, and introduced dynamics.

Alex Raymond did polish and glamour, and Caniff brought movie storytelling into the dailies.” Whenever I teach a class, when I’ve talked to young artists, I’m always on the history, telling them, “You’ve got to see the derivation. You cannot ignore people like Foster, Raymond and Crane. Those guys created this whole industry!”

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Above and inset right: Sometimes after completing a penciled page, John Sr. would refigure the page and truncate or expand the action as needed. A good example is this page from Amazing Spider-Man #86 page featuring a revitalized Black Widow contemplating her past. As seen inset right, this page was scrapped and expanded into two for the final comic. Above art ©2002 John Romita. Characters and right pages ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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wanted to hire her. They brought her into the reprint department, then hired her to help somebody else who was on vacation, and every time she finished, somebody else wanted her, and before you know it, she was a secretary, traffic manager, and production manger.

She spent 20 years there. After coming in to help me with my files, [laughter] she had a 20-year career there!

CBA: Was that all right by you?

Senior: Oh, yeah! No problem at all.

CBA: You’d also work at home, too, right?

Senior: I went to work for Marvel on-staff in 1966, so between ’66 and ’74, I used to go in by myself, while she was still running the house and caring for the kids. When they were ready to move out on their own, she started looking for a job. I said, “Before you take a job locally, come in and help me.”

That was the end of her freedom! [laughter]

CBA: So you went in every morning together?

Senior: For the last 20 of my 30 years at Marvel. We’re going to celebrate our 50th anniversary in November of this year. I heard a remark from another couple, saying they consider that because they worked together at home, spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all those years, they should get double-time! [laughter] I consider that we’ve been married 90 years!

CBA: [To John Jr.] So you grew up in Queen’s Village?

Junior: Yeah, I was born in a Brooklyn hospital, because that’s where the doctor was based.

Senior: The pediatrician was in Brooklyn, so John was born in Brooklyn.

Junior: But I was raised in Queen’s Village until I turned nine, where I had to deal with bullies. [laughter] Dad, I always felt that’s why you moved out of Queen’s Village, because I was getting beaten-up all the time.

Senior: No, it was just a coincidence. The thing is, he’s always felt small because he was three years younger than his older brother, so he always felt small and behind everybody else.

Junior: I think that’s extended into my adult life. I always felt “less” than everybody else because I’m shorter—I’m still shorter, my wife is taller than me [laughter]. My son will be taller than me in a couple of weeks, he’s only five! [laughter] My brother was always taller, bigger, stronger, smarter, better looking… I always felt insecure.

And it really reflected my art education, because I didn’t want to show my father anything as I was growing up. I was ashamed of everything I did, because I’d look at his artwork, and look at the books he’d show me with art by Buscema and Kirby, and when I would draw, naturally, the results were embarrassing! Even in high school, there was always somebody in class who got more attention.

Not necessarily better artists, but they were freaky, which was “in” at the time. When I went to school, a lot of my teachers were ’60s flower children, they were peaceniks, and they wanted wild stuff from their students, and it went that way into college, too. The other kids in the class were much deeper thinkers than I was. I was a realist, my teacher, Mr. Sluinsky, used to call me Rockwell. [in a low, nasal voice] “Rockwell, you’re too straight! Rockwell!”

Senior: Like Norman?

Junior: Yeah! “You’re too straight, you’re boring! Go on, smoke a joint, come back and do some work!” Well, not seriously telling me to indulge, but just loosen up, and get with the rest of the guys in the class who had much more depth than me. I had my father—who’s a great artist—and my brother—who’s a brilliant student—and I was short. I always felt insecure about everything I did. I think that reflected to this day. I don’t feel any ego involved in what I do, because as somebody once said, “There’s always somebody better, bigger, stronger, smarter, and better than you are, so don’t let your feet get off the ground.”

CBA: Do you think that sense of humility can go to extremes?

Junior: Yes, I do. Maybe if I didn’t have such a good family, such a wonderful support system, it might’ve affected me adversely. It did keep me from getting too full of myself in any way. The guys I hung around with in school were big, strong, good-looking guys. We used to go out to meet girls….

Senior: That’s because your older brother was there, so you were always the youngest guy in the crowd.

Junior: I think it even gave me a speech impediment, because I would slur my words by speaking too quickly. I had to go to speech therapy for a while because I was trying to talk too fast. I still talk too fast. I still have my moments of anxiety and feelings of not being able to draw competently, and there are guys who are better artists than me, and I always compare myself to them. So I have moments, but it all started by being the small guy, getting beat up by bullies. I’d name them, but COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

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Above: After years as a rank and file Marvel artist, John, Jr.’s technique started to loosen up and become more distinctive commencing with his work on Spirits of Vengeance. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Pic of JR, Jr. Both courtesy of the Romitas.

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really something!” So I got critical acclaim from Punisher with Klaus’ finishes and Klaus’ inks over my stuff and it got a lot of attention. So I started getting adulation and critical acclaim from that, and the knock-out punch for me was The Man Without Fear. All of a sudden, it was, “Where have you been for the last ten years?”

CBA: I was never into The Punisher because it just seemed gratuitously brutal.

Junior: A lot of people were also turned off, but it sold extremely well, it was a number one, and Man Without Fear also did well. Then there was the speculation craze, so I made some money with that. Man Without Fear really cemented people’s opinions of me, and after I was through with it, I still continued to do Iron Man for a couple of years, then got a chance to get back on the X-Men again, for another three years, I think. Then I had a couple of personality problems with some guys, I got the worst treatment, the worst I’ve ever been treated was this period of time. After this one editor got fired, after I heard what he had done to me behind my back, it really ruined a lot for me. It took the fun out of it, and I was tempted not to go back to Marvel, but go to DC, as my contract was coming up. But when the artists went over to start Image and left Marvel with few big names, Marvel felt they had to ensure the remaining talent would stay, so they overpaid me. The Kubert boys, Bagley, Ron Garney all started at Marvel, and the company felt they had to cement us guys as

Marvel artists, and gave us great contracts. I was still working on X-Men, having a lousy time, with such a bitter taste in my mouth that I’ll probably never work on X-Men again. But now that those people are gone, who knows what’ll happen next? I’ve outlasted those editors, too! I’ve outlasted everybody who disliked me at Marvel! At least, I think so! [laughter] Who knows? There might be people who hate my guts at Marvel now, but don’t tell me. Knowing all the drinks that were bought for me at Joe Quesada’s party on Saturday night, maybe everybody likes me, I don’t know. [laughter] So, they took me off the X-Men to work on Batman/Punisher. They told me, “You’ll get a month off to do Batman/Punisher.” I get to work with Klaus and Chuck Dixon again. That was a lot of fun, but it was also the beginning of the downturn in sales. I thought there was going to be a gigantic hit, and it sold only 160,000 copies direct, and I said, “What happened?!? It’s The Punisher and Klaus!” “Well, things are getting tough all of a sudden, your stuff isn’t selling like it used to.” Then they wouldn’t let me back on X-Men again. Joe Madureira was put on The X-Men, and they said, “Sorry, we’ve got a hot guy on it.” I said, “Wait a minute, you said I could get back on The X-Men! What are you doing?” He said, “I can’t put you back on, sorry.” But I said, “Wait a minute, you guys stiffed me! You can’t do that!” “Well, we’ll give you something else, we’ll give you an X-Men fill-in project.” So I did some fill-ins, and they wouldn’t let me back on The X-Men again, and I was really upset with them, just disenchanted, because I had never, ever done anything except be loyal to these guys. Then, I was a man without a country at this point, you know? X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, were all taken! Ralph Macchio said, “As soon as there’s an opening… I’m willing to make some moves if you want, I’ll put you here, I’ll put you here.” I said, “I’m not going to have anybody taken off a book, I can’t do that to anybody.” Somebody could do it to me, obviously, but I can’t do that. I remember Ralph and Mark Gruenwald offering to make some changes. “I can’t do that!”

All of this coincided with my divorce, so it was a real low time in my life and career. I wasn’t getting full-time work, but they said COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

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there’s going to be an opening. Then, Web of Spider-Man opened up, and I got a chance to work that. This is in ’94. It also coincided with meeting my present wife, Kathy, and suddenly, things were okay with the world, and I was able to do Peter Parker, Spider-Man, although it was the weak sister to Amazing, but I stuck with it almost like I had to redefine myself in the industry again, after having this total slap in my face by Marvel. But I didn’t blame Marvel per se; I had to blame the people, because I knew it wasn’t anything I had done! I do blame those two people, and I will always, for treating me like that. I’ve been working on Spider-Man regularly since ’94 now, with Peter Parker and now Amazing the last several years, with Scott Hanna, who’s just been a great partner to work with, the man’s been with me every step of the way on Spider-Man. It’s been an absolute blast working with Scott. Howard Mackie was also a pleasure to work with, and I had a great time. They made changes, and I presently work with J. Michael Straczynski, the sales on the book have tripled! I don’t know if they tripled because of #36 [the September 11 issue], but the sales doubled immediately because of Straczynski’s influence on the book. My artwork’s improved because it’s been a revelation, the stories have been in a totally different direction… it’s just wonderful to work with him. I struggled at first because I’d never worked with a full script before, but his are different from the standard full script. This is not telling me what to draw; this is a script with dialogue that describes things. There are moments when he’ll detail some visuals to me, but never standing over me with a hammer saying, ‘You’ve got to draw this!” He’ll write some dialogue, describing some scenes. Some panels, he’ll say, “Dialogue,” and say, “John: Knock yourself out.” If it’s possible to have a script with a lot of room, this is what he’s done. I’ve never met the man, never spoken to him! [laughs] CBA: Where does he live?

Junior: He lives in California, where I am temporarily for two more years. My wife’s family’s out there, and I made a vow to finish up letting the boys get out of high school. My son is also going to school out there. It’ll be a couple more years before we can get back. If you’ve got to live temporarily anywhere, I guess California’s not a bad place to stay, but it’s miserable to me because I’m away from my family and friends. They talk so funny out in California; they get that funny accent. [laughter] So, working with Straczynski, the sales have picked up… unfortunately, the success of #36 is because of the World Trade Center tragedy. I didn’t want it to be that way. The book sold extremely well because of that story, but mostly because of the event, and that’s bittersweet.

CBA: Whose idea was that for the totally black cover?

Junior: The editorial people. Axel Alonso and Joe Quesada got together and worked it out. Now, there’s a book that took me twice as long to do than a normal book.

CBA: Was it the emotional aspect?

Junior: Yeah. Did you ever see the movie A Clockwork Orange?

The scene where Malcolm McDowell’s eyes are propped open to let

July 2002

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

him learn not to be violent? That’s what I felt like. I had my whole studio plastered with photographic evidence of the tragedy, completely covering the walls.

This is within a week of the tragedy. Initially, after discussing it with my father, I told Marvel that I didn’t want to do an issue dealing with the World Trade Center tragedy. They were already talking about doing the Heroes book and wanted me to do a pin-up for that, and I said, “I don’t want to, but if I have to, I will.” Then they said, “There’s a script that’s going to be coming through for Spider-Man about the World Trade Center.” This has been only a week after September 11 and I was still crying! I told my father—and he agreed with me—that I don’t want to do anything to do with minimizing it, that it couldn’t do the horror justice, and couldn’t Marvel just donate a month’s proceeds to the relief effort?

People are going to laugh at our effort, or say it’s disgusting that comics are trying to capitalize on all that death and destruction.

Anyway, I was still struggling with the event itself, as well as struggling with the thought of doing a comic book! But my wife, bless her heart, said, “Why not? You’re crazy, Marvel’s got to do something! You’ve got to do something! Why not this?” I said, “No. It’s going to be silly-looking! People are going to take it as us taking advantage of a horrible situation!” I remember her saying to me,

Above: But John, Jr.’s true breakout hit was his collaboration with writer Frank Miller on Daredevil: The Man Without Fear mini-series, where the artist truly stretched his creative muscles, launching his career into a new direction. Here’s the splash to #1. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Unused panel from the same mini-series, courtesy of the Romitas. Art ©2002 John Romita, Jr.

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Above and opposite page: As we’d be loathe to neglect John Jr.’s recent masterwork on the Bruce Jones-scripted Hulk, we’re including these delightful pages of Spidey romping with the big green guy from Peter Parker, Spider-Man #14, inked by Scott Hanna.

Courtesy of Cyrus Voris. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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frames. I don’t want that stuff looking over my house! I’ll keep them, and seal them hermetically.

Senior: You’d sacrificed enough already.

CBA: You guys are on the same wavelength a lot, right?

Junior: I think I’d be a better artist if I did. I’m not as good as him.

Senior: Actually, we have different tastes. He likes horror movies, I don’t.

Junior: I like scary movies. but not slasher movies.

Senior: But really, on an emotional level, we understand each other very well.

CBA: [To Junior] Do you count him as a friend?

Junior: I’ll put this as succinctly as I can: My father is my hero, my teacher, and he’s the best man I’ll ever know. It’s quite simple to say that.

Senior: You’re back in the will, kid. [laughter] CBA: Well, there that is, and it’s on tape! [laughter] When your father would come home frustrated with things at work, would you know it right off? [To Senior] Would you share your professional life with your family?

Senior: Yeah, I think so. Although, if I were struggling, I wouldn’t always be whining.

Junior: I never knew him to complain! He may have complained to my mother, but never to us.

CBA: When your father had to take over Fantastic Four after Jack left Marvel, did you know that it was agonizing for him?

Junior: No, I didn’t feel what he went through. He didn’t let it out.

I don’t think he wanted us to feel like he was weak at any point. If he had anxieties— Senior: I kept them to myself. A lot of times, I didn’t want to scare them.

CBA: Were you a comics fan yourself as a kid?

Junior: Yes. After finding out about DD #12, I started reading Kirby, Buscema and my father’s stuff, naturally.

Then I would go back and would read his run on SpiderMan. I would read it all through, every book, all over again. I’d put the whole stack down, sit in there and read through the comics, all the way through them. All of Kirby’s Fantastic Four run, his Thor run… I’d just take them all down from the closet and look through them, one by one. I became a fan all through high school, and into college I was a fan.

CBA: Did you want to meet the artists you admired?

Junior: Yeah! I got a chance, because I used to go up to the offices as a young teenager. On a summer day, when I was out of school, he let me go up to the office with him. In the late ’60s, he let me go. I remember being up with Herb Trimpe, John Verpoorten and Marie Severin. Stan was in the office, Stu Schwartzberg, Larry Lieber and Morrie Kuramoto was there. So I met those people. I didn’t meet many of the artists. I met Jack Kirby many, many years later in San Diego, but I met a lot of the artists as they would come through the office. I met Roy Thomas, Gil Kane… as long as I wasn’t too much of a pain in the ass, I could sit around and watch! In the summer days, when there was nothing to do, I’d go up to the office with him, hang out and back on the train with him, and it was all a thrill.

CBA: When did you say, “This is for me! This is what I want to do.”?

Junior: During high school, when I realized I didn’t excel at anything else. [laughter] My father insisted that I get some higher education if I wanted to work in comics. He said, “If you’re going to work in this business, you have to get at least two years of college.”

I said, “Okay.” The day of commencement, I was up at Marvel working instead of picking up my sheepskin. I was immediately under contract.

CBA: What school did you go to?

Junior: SUNY [State University of New York] at Farmingdale. I majored in advertising and illustration, and got my associate’s degree in advertising/illustration. It was a great curriculum: Design, anatomy, drawing, design and color painting.

One teacher, who called me too straight, was a ’60s love child who became a painting instructor, and got his master’s degree by writing that freaky paintings he did where done while on drugs. [laughter] He told me I should loosen up. I said, “You sound just like my high school teacher.” I did very well in school, but I didn’t know if I wanted to be an advertising guy right away, I wanted to see how comics went, knowing I could eventually get something in advertising. See if it didn’t work in comics, then I could get somewhere in advertising. I knew what I was doing. I designed sets, could paint and function as an illustrator. Still, I went to Marvel, and they gave me work, then more work, and I was having fun, and that’s it! Now it’s been 25 years! [laughter] How long had you been at Marvel?

Senior: Thirty years in the office.

Junior: How long before that?

Senior: I started in 1950.

Virginia Romita: I had 20 years on staff, and I don’t remember COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

Above: Regretfully, we don’t feature any pages of John Romita, Jr.’s outstanding work on Thor, but courtesy of Cyrus Voris, we did receive photocopies of JR Jr.’s art on the Amalgam Comics’ Thorion of the New Asgods, a rare peek at the artist’s superb pencils.

Art ©2002 John Romita, Jr. Thorian ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. and DC Comics.

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Junior: I did what I thought my father would do. I showed you my lack of initiative, I was more afraid of doing things for fear of messing up.

CBA: Have you ever gone through a period of not making much money? Of being without?

Junior: I always worked. I don’t know if I was ever as smart as he was with money. I had a good time when I had money.

CBA: [To Senior] You were afraid of being let go, afraid that you wouldn’t have any money.

Senior: That was always hanging over us.

CBA: [Referring to Junior] But that wasn’t hanging over him, particularly, was it?

Senior: We always felt the bubble was going to burst any minute!

We never dreamed it was going to last but it has, so far. The last ten years have been very comfortable for us.

Junior: I was always afraid of being without money, and I had a bad marriage.

CBA: How long were you married to your first wife?

Junior: About four or five years, and she really did a job on me.

CBA: Did you have any children from that?

Junior: Fortunately, no, but that’s a disaster that shows you how stupid I am. I hope she reads this! [laughter] I have since married

Kathy and we’re doing things the proper way now. I always feared I would be without money. I never overspent, but did get in hock with my first marriage for a while. I had to pull myself out of that. That was during the marriage, and I had to do it myself. And I did, because things got better at Marvel.

CBA: Would you ever be ready to take a risk, like those Image guys, with a creator-owned property?

Junior: Yeah. I don’t think I would ever take a risk unless I was given a guarantee. [laughter] I’m able to do one book a month, with enough time to be able to do some side work. Right now, while things might pan out in another field, I’ll never quit my day job. I’ll always keep my head straight with that. If I get invitations to do things, and any of the things I come up with get accepted, I will approach those half-cocked, so to speak, first, and if it’s successful, where I know I have something lined up, I’ll try it. But I’m not going to quit Marvel full-time until I know I’m guaranteed a good amount of work. And that doesn’t happen in Hollywood! You never get guaranteed work! But if you’re successful a couple of times, then you can pretty much make enough money once or twice a year that it’ll take care of you. In the meantime, I can still do Spider-Man or a monthly title.

CBA: [To Senior] You’ve plotted Spider-Man. Have you guys ever written scripts?

Junior: No, never.

Senior: And he could. I don’t think I could, because I would be changing it until the minute it was due.

Junior: Well, I think we’ve both written, but never dialogued.

Senior: He’s done some wonderful writing. Dialogue is something I haven’t tried much yet… although occasionally I wrote dialogue in the margins.

Junior: I enjoyed the creative writing courses I took in college, and I did well in them. Between reading novels on my own, and being around writers all these years, I probably could.

Senior: I think you could.

Junior: But I’d be amazed to find out how difficult it was, once I started it. I feel like I’ve been part of the writing process.

CBA: [To Junior] One thing I look at you as far different from most artists—certainly almost all artists of your generation—is you took a very systematic, practical, pragmatic approach to your art. You started off being—to me, as a fan—looking at it as very dense, a lot of panels to a page, and you’ve progressed to double-page spreads, and you’re more relaxed as a storyteller, you’ve really opened up.

You’ve paid your dues!

Junior: That’s fair enough to say that.

CBA: So what’s the difference between self-assuredness and tackling the written word?

Senior: You need to sharpen that skill. If you write as an artist in this business, you don’t get paid for it while you’re practicing, while you’re learning. They’re not going to pay him to learn how to write.

He’d have to be polished when he gets his first assignment. He could write on his own, in his spare time, start dictating to himself and start writing.

CBA: But polished is an impression.

Senior: It’s a knack. It’s not a simple thing. You can put too many words in, and find yourself cutting your own throat. To be economical with words, otherwise…. Chris Claremont puts a lot of words in his stuff, but I don’t think we could get away with putting so many words, and you wouldn’t want to.

CBA: Why would you want to?

Senior: That’s the thing! To have it flow out is not an easy thing.

You’ve got the rudiments of storytelling down.

CBA: Both of you’ve got the rudiments of storytelling down. It’s a visual medium!

Senior: He can conceive and execute writing, I am more adept at taking somebody else’s basic plot and making it better. That’s my forté.

CBA: The Marvel approach is vastly different than what was ever done in comic books before. Gil Kane would complain that he was doing twice the amount of work for only half the amount of pay, so to speak. You’re problem-solving details of the plot while you’re drawing. Isn’t that the writer’s job?

Senior: What Gil and I used to argue and I told him, “Yes, it is an COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

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A Feminine Perspective

Virginia’s View

Senior’s spouse and Junior’s mother (and a lot more!) talks

by Blake Bell [Editor’s Note: Comic Book Artist is proud to give readers a sneak peek at Blake Bell’s forthcoming examination of the perspective of comic book creators’ spouses, I Have to Live with This Guy!, due in August from TwoMorrows Publishing, with this look at the wife of John Romita, Sr., and mother of John, Jr., Virginia Romita, who was a respected staffer at Marvel Comics in her own right for many years before her retirement. This excerpt—as well as Muriel Kubert’s recollections in our flip section—were specially crafted by Blake for this “Father & Sons” issue of CBA, extracted from their respective sections in the writer’s book, and they appear here with the women’s permission. Along with Virginia and Muriel, the tome also features looks at the relationships between such couples as Ann and Will Eisner, Joan and Stan Lee, Adele and Harvey Kurtzman, Adrienne and Gene Colan, Josie and Dan DeCarlo, Lindy and Dick Ayers, Deni Loubert and Dave Sim, Eddie Sedarbaum and Howard Cruse, Jackie Estrada and Batton Lash, Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore, Julie and Dave Cooper and more! Now, let’s get on with the show!—Y.E.]

Above: Really fuzzy picture of Virgina, Victor and John Jr. lifted from the special John Romita, Sr. issue of FOOM, #18. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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John Salvatore Romita Jr. is born August 17, 1956—younger brother to the family’s first son, Victor—in the family’s tiny bungalow in Queens. “They never paid attention to what their father did, when he was doing the romance—never even looked. When he started doing Daredevil, John Jr. would just hang over his shoulder watching every stroke he made.

“That’s when Jr. decided that he was going to be an artist—he was nine. His father would be drawing at the board and Junior would be over in another corner somewhere with loads of paper pencilling, madly. He wouldn’t let us look at a single thing.

He filled up the trash up to the wazoo. But he wouldn’t let us touch it. He said that he wasn’t ready for anybody to look at it.”

Imprinted in Virginia’s mind is Avengers #23. John receives the Don Heck pencilled pages in the fall of ‘65, and the kids go wild.

John’s published work had been around the house before but this is different. “They just never looked at them until that Avengers book.

They then began to read every comic book that he brought into the house.”

Junior’s desire to enter the comic book field is unusually ferocious for a youngster. The artistic streak the youngest Romita exhibits is foreign to mother and father. “He was determined to work in comics. He took art classes when he was in school, and did very well. Of course, they thought he was too ‘comicy,’ but it just

blossomed. He got better and better.”

John Jr. may have a famous artist in the house, but he doesn’t follow his father’s style, and has little interest in his input. “Junior was crazy about John Buscema’s stuff,” says Virginia. “He preferred not to show his father anything. If he did, Senior would correct him, and he didn’t want to be corrected.”

The ’70s begin and father has become Stan Lee’s right hand.

Not only has Romita taken over from Steve Ditko on Amazing Spider-Man (as far back as the summer of ’66), but he has become the company’s de facto art director. He has permanent employment.

While Junior is in school, he accompanies his father to the office on off-days. “Little by little, he got friendly with the people there and Marie Severin offered him some work,” says Virginia.

Son is put on staff with father—a recipe for trouble. “His father didn’t recommend him for any position. He didn’t want anyone to think he was trying to push his son on Marvel. Junior actually was the last person that accepted the job. It was offered to many before he was put on staff.”

As to the quality of his son’s work, John has trouble believing his son is worthy. “His father never felt it was good enough. They kept this distance, between father and son. Jr. felt as long as someone at the office liked what he did, that was okay. He didn’t care, as long as he got in there.

“There were no hidden feelings,” says Virginia about father’s lack of push for his son at the company. “It’s not as if Senior tried to stop him from getting work. He just wouldn’t recommend him for any particular work. Despite all of that, a lot of his peers thought that he got in there because of Senior, which was not the case.”

Virginia had spent the ’50s and ’60s worrying about her freelancing husband not having enough work to survive, and now she has to experience the same fears with her own son. “I thought, ‘Well, this kid isn’t going to get any work. He’s gonna starve.’ But he just persevered.”

One of Junior’s strengths—also one of the obstacles he will have to overcome—is his social skills. “Comics was something for the weekday,” says Virginia, “and the weekend was just fun and games with his friends. He didn’t feel like his whole life was comics. There was this weekend long cruise in New York Bay and the ship had spread a net across the empty ship board pool. About a half-a-dozen or more of the Marvel people fell right into it! Luckily, they didn’t hit bottom! This big net supported their weight across this pool. I guess the ship wanted to make sure no one fell into the pool in a tipsy fashion.

“John now has a wife and son and works very hard. He set a world record for doing sketches to help with his niece’s medical bills.

We did that a couple of weeks ago in a New York hotel. He was up 48 hours straight.”

Now, a difference in approach to their art is noticeable to mother. “Junior is better. Junior works from early in the morning, sometimes into the night. Most times he tries to have his evenings free and his weekend free. His father was never that disciplined.

“Senior sees how Junior has improved. By the 1980s, Junior had become a good storyteller, but was doing ‘breakdowns’ to save time. The downside was that the ‘finishing/inking’ was not what he wanted. So, he decided, ‘If I do full pencils, the inking will be closer to my style.’ This meant longer hours and less income. He worked so hard to be a better penciller and it took years, but he did it. His father was thrilled because he thought Jr. might have become a ‘hack’ artist.

From then on, he just kept improving.”

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

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IN EASY COMPANY WITH THE KUBERTS $6.95 In The US

No. 20 July 2002

Sgt. Rock TM & ©2002 DC Comics

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EDITOR’S RANT: HIGHFATHER’S DAY Ye Ed talks about Will Eisner’s charity, living by example and the lessons of Jack Kirby’s life and work..............4 MICHELLE’S MEANDERINGS: CORSAIRS OF THE COMICS Comicdom’s favorite columnist looks at the pirate comics of Quality..................................................................6 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS, LETTERS, AND MORE LETTERS Where CBA does some Spring cleaning, and we print a boatload of missives on numerous different issues........8 FATHER & SONS: THE KUBERT LEGACY FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* It’s a family affair as Herr Hembeck chats about nepotism in comics with Hawkman and Spidey ......................15 IN THE EASY COMPANY OF THE KUBERTS A roundtable conversation with Joe, Adam and Andy Kubert on their lives together and careers in comics ......16 A FEMININE PERSPECTIVE: MURIEL KUBERT ON LIFE WITH THE GUYS Courtesy of the forthcoming book, I Gotta Live With This Guy!, Joe’s wife and Adam & Andy’s Mom talks! ....40 ADAM KUBERT INTERVIEW: ADAM’S AMAZING ADVENTURES From his start lettering for his dad to current work on Ultimate X-Men, Adam gives us the lowdown................42

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING GEORGE KHOURY Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON

ANDY KUBERT INTERVIEW: THE ORIGIN OF ANDY The superstar artist recounts his upbringing, development as an artist and new career as a teacher ..................50 FATHER & SON: THOSE RAMBUNCTIOUS ROMITA MEN An exhaustive interview with both John Senior and John Junior with tons of rare art ..............................FLIP US!

Cover Art JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT

Cover: As a lark, Joe and his boys jam on a cover depicting perhaps the crew Dad is most renowned for, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company! Only difference here is the Kuberts stand in for some of Rock’s men! Art ©2002 Joe, Adam & Andy Kubert.

Characters ©2002 DC Comics. Above: From left to right, Andy, Joe and Adam Kubert in Joe’s office. Photo by Chris Knowles.

Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD LONGBOX.COM STEVEN TICE (cont. next page)

Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

Cover Color PETER CARLSSON

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published 10 times a year by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2002 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgements: Art ©2002 Joe, Adam & Andy Kubert. Sgt, Rock & Easy Company ©2002 DC Comics. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

CBA Roundtable

In Easy Company A comfortable conversation with the talented Kubert Men, Below: While the photocopy of the original art credited 100-Page Super Spectacular #DC-16 as where this pin-up appeared, we suspect it originally debuted in a 1960s 80-Page Giant, judging from the art style and artist Joe Kubert’s signature. We’ve digitally edited the image to take out numbered call-outs which identified these, the combat happy Joes of Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company.

Courtesy of Andrew Steven. ©2002 DC Comics.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke with Arlen Schumer and Chris Knowles Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Joe Kubert is one of the true masters of comic book art with a career spanning back to the early days of the medium up to the present day. Always challenging, always striving to produce better work, Joe is that rare combination of inspired artist, astute businessman, and engaging teacher. His two youngest boys, Adam and Andy, are best called “chips off the old block,” each an exceptional artist in his own right, both dedicated to the form and the essence of storytelling. Ye Ed and associates Arlen Schumer and Chris Knowles met with the Kuberts on February 8, 2002, at the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Illustration, in Dover, New Jersey, where we were first joined by Joe and a bit later by his sons as we chatted in Joe’s office. We’ve put all of Arlen, Chris and Jon’s questions under the generic “CBA” identification for simplicity. This interview was copy edited

by Joe and Andy, and approved by Adam.

Comic Book Artist: Joe, where are you originally from?

Joe Kubert: The major part of my growing up took place in Brooklyn, New York.

CBA: Did you have any neighborhood kids who were also into cartooning?

Joe: Not really.

CBA: How did you get into it?

Joe: I have no idea! Like most of the guys in this business of my time, as a little kid, I used to draw on the streets with chalk, things like that. I’ve been drawing since I can remember, since I could hold a pencil.

Why I gravitated towards this kind of work?

What stimulated me was, early on, was seeing in the newspapers strips like Tarzan and Prince Valiant, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates. All of these were so incredibly stimulating to me, and the kinds of drawings seemed so immediate, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

CBA: Did you feel lucky to grow up in the Golden Age of adventure strips?

Joe: Who the hell knew about a Golden Age? I have felt lucky all my life. I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world! Even at this advanced age, here I am being able to do that which I love to do more than anything else, and they pay me for it! So how lucky can you get? [laughs] CBA: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Joe: I have four sisters. I was next to the oldest.

CBA: What kind of neighborhood was it you grew up in?

Joe: Good neighborhood, as far as I knew.

It was definitely working class East New

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with the Kuberts comics legend Joe and super-star sons, Adam & Andy York, in Brooklyn. I grew up in the late ’20s and early ’30s. It was a rough time, they tell me, but I never remember being hungry, I never remember being unclothed or cold or anything else. As far as I could tell, it was fine, it was a wonderful upbringing, despite the Great Depression that was taking place.

CBA: Did you listen to the radio?

Joe: All the time. Especially when I was working, I’d have the radio going, listening to all the different shows, the 15-minute dramatic programs on the radio… they were great. I really miss them. Every once in a while you can pick up some old tapes. They were terrific.

CBA: The theater of the mind?

Joe: Yes, of course. They had the half-hour adventure shows, The Shadow and all those kind of programs. They were extremely stimulating, and in retrospect for us guys who were drawing pictures, the shows fed our imagination. When I was working with Bob Kanigher, he had the ability to describe scenes and stories so I could create pictures so clearly in my mind, it was no problem drawing them! So, radio helped that process.

CBA: You were influenced by radio?

Joe: Absolutely. When I listened to the radio and heard these dramatized happenings—and I’m sure it was similar to most people at that time— I could see the pictures in my mind. It was an advantage, because I could imagine the heroes, the way they looked to me, and were acceptable to me, far different probably from anybody else.

So nobody was selecting the character to play the part for me, I was doing the selecting in my own mind, and they always were right on the button, and looked exactly the way I thought they should.

CBA: When you saw the illustrations by Edd Cartier of The Shadow in the pulps, for instance, did you look at them and say, “No, that’s not the way I see him?”

Joe: No, I did not. How I visualized the radio programs, I thought were quite different from how they were illustrated in the pulp magazines. But, they both satisfied me.

CBA: Did you have an affinity from the start with Hal Foster’s Tarzan?

Joe: Yes, definitely. That’s one of the strips that really was so inspiring to me, and I say this in retrospect. I know I felt good reading the stuff. I know when I opened up the Sunday New York Daily Mirror (which no longer exists), and the Tarzan strip appeared in a tabloid size, on the back page. When I started reading that strip, it was as if I was right there! The guy drew in such a way that I felt I was there, was taking part in whatever the adventures were. I’m sure most guys who were drawing who were my age felt very much the same way. That pulled me right in. To me, that was like magic, so that if I could simulate something like that with my own drawing, that’s what I would do. That’s why, when I eventually did Tarzan at DC, it was like really rounding the Horn all over again, and it was great.

CBA: Did you watch the MGM movies?

Joe: Yeah. Of course, Johnny Weissmuller probably came as close to what I envisioned Tarzan to be as anybody.

CBA: Did you have an affinity for the early films with Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, before they got campy?

Joe: Yes, I think so, but I guess we’re all a result of the age in which we live and the July 2002

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

Below: Though Dad is usually identified as a “DC artist,” the brothers are recalled for their prolific Marvel work. Today, they are top artists for the House of Ideas. This collaboration between Andy and Joe appeared as cover for Ghost Rider #29 featuring our fave X-Man. Courtesy of the Kuberts. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

17

Above and below: Soon after becoming an editor/artist at DC in 1968, Joe was given an entire DC Special devoted to his work.

It included a delightful autobiographical strip written and drawn

by Joe, the first two pages seen here. ©2002 DC Comics.

18

time we experienced. For me, they weren’t campy. For me, they were real.

Frankenstein, Dracula…

CBA: I was talking about the later pictures, in the ’40s. As good as Tarzan’s New York Adventure was, it still didn’t have the savagery, or the sexuality… well, sensuality, as the MGM movies.

Joe: Sensuality more than sexuality, that’s true.

CBA: Right, skimpy loincloths. [laughter] Tarzan was actually a radio show at the time, too?

Joe: I don’t recall. It may have been; it must have been. They were all radio shows at one time or another, but I don’t really recall it specifically.

CBA: Did you go to see the movie serials every Saturday?

Joe: Oh, yes. The Flash Gordon series I remember vividly. Incidentally, at that time, it only cost ten cents to get into a movie.

CBA: Apparently, going to the movies was much more elaborate in those days, right? They would routinely have different film shorts as well as features. What were the different short subjects?

Joe: Oh, God. You’re really pulling memories out! [laughter] CBA: They’d have a cartoon, a travelogue, a newsreel…

Joe: That’s right. The Movietone News, that’s right, and they’d have maybe two feature films, at least. Most kids, like myself, who went to the movies, would take their lunch along; we’d never go without food, and you sure as heck wouldn’t depend on what they offered at the theatre… I don’t think they sold anything at the movies at the time. You could grab something going in maybe, but I would

never do that. My mother would pack a heavy lunch, with sandwiches and everything! You’d be there for half-a-day! [laughter] CBA: Would you go in around noontime?

Joe: Oh, it’d be during the day. That’s when the serials started…

CBA: So there’d be a noon show, and it would go on until 4:00?

Joe: That’s right, that’s about when we’d get out. It was still light out when we left the theatre but we’d be blinded, because we’d been in the dark for four hours straight! It was like striking the eye with a hot iron!

CBA: Were you athletic?

Joe: Yeah. I was, I played a lot of ball. Stickball, basketball, baseball, football.

CBA: You had pick-up games?

Joe: Oh, yes.

CBA: Where would the hoop be, at the “Y”?

Joe: This would be outside of the schools where there were the playgrounds. We used say, “Let’s play out in the lots.” Lots were open ground where you played…

CBA: Stoopball?

Joe: Stoopball was different; that’s what you played out in the streets. Stoopball’s where you’d throw the ball against the stoop steps, and then three guys behind you were supposed to catch it.

We also played kick the can… it was at a time around the Depression, and nobody had a lot of dough. We used to make guns out of a couple of hunks of wood, put a rubber band on it, and put little square cardboards to shoot and blind your buddies! [laughter] CBA: Was it cowboys and Indians?

Joe: I don’t recall cowboys and Indians…

CBA: Was it gangsters and G-men?

Joe: Gangsters mostly, yeah. That was the time when the original Scarface came out, with Paul Muni, and I think that had a terrific impression on young people, too.

CBA: In Jack Kirby’s neighborhood, there was even admiration for some gangsters, like Bugsy Siegel.

Joe: There was crime in the area, but I never experienced or felt any admiration. There was Murder, Incorporated, that was really running rampant. I grew up in East New York City, Brooklyn, but as a kid, I wasn’t aware of any of that stuff. I don’t think Jack was, for that matter. He wasn’t that much older than I, maybe five years older.

CBA: Did your experience have more in common with Will Eisner’s, a fellow Brooklyn native?

Joe: Right.

CBA: Howie Post described parts of Brooklyn to me in rural terms. Was that so?

Joe: Oh, yeah, there were farms not far away from where I was.

CBA: Could you ride your bike there?

Joe: I didn’t have a bike. We used to fool around with carts.

We’d get a piece of 2’ x 4’ wood, and mount a box on it, take a pair of old skates, and put one part of a skate in front, the other part on the back, and that was your scooter, that’s what you rode on.

CBA: Were they called scooters?

Joe: No, they weren’t called scooters. What the hell were they called?

CBA: So this was the preRobert Moses Brooklyn, and you still had farms and open areas like that?

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

doing it, “Wow, this is really hard! You were really good!” [laughter] CBA: [To Joe] Where was your studio? Upstairs? In the basement?

Andy: You were in the basement, then over the garage.

Joe: Right.

CBA: [Points to the DC Special prologue] Were you always working through the night?

Joe: I don’t think so.

Adam: Yeah, you were! [laughter] CBA: I’ve got that right here. The cartoonist at home!

Andy: Proof!

Adam: That’s not a realistic assumption, Jon! CBA: [To Joe] But you drew that!

Adam: The studio was above the garage, but you had to walk through my bedroom to get to it.

Andy: I was in there, too. We shared a room, and I was up there all the time.

Joe: Well, I worked all day, it wasn’t like I was— Adam: Poor kid!

Andy: At three in the morning— Adam: He’d walk back and forth, through the bedroom, a lot of times.

Joe: Did I? I guess it’s true.

CBA: So, as a night owl, would you sleep pretty late?

Andy: I don’t remember if he slept late or not. I don’t know.

Adam: Well, he tried to, but sometimes [to Andy] if you and I were fighting in the morning, we woke him up! [laughs] Andy: Yeah, and that wasn’t a good thing!

Adam: That’s true!

CBA: [Points to DC Special prologue] How long have you been in living in this house?

Joe: About 40 years. That’s the house we built.

Above: Another Kubert preliminary sketch, this one for the cover of Our Fighting Forces #135. Courtesy of the Kuberts.

Art ©2002 Joe Kubert. ©2002 DC Comics.

July 2002

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

Above: Joe Kubert preliminary sketch for his Our Army at War #238 cover.

Courtesy of the Kuberts. Art ©2002 Joe Kubert. Sgt. Rock ©2002 DC Comics.

Andy: See, Adam… [shows comic] Adam: The House of Mystery… Lovecraftian! [laughter] Andy: Adam didn’t love the war stuff, but I did. Dad used to bring home stacks of comics, comps, and I used to go through them. I loved “Sgt. Rock,” “Enemy Ace”…

CBA: When he came out with his Tarzan, you were ten years old.

Andy: Yeah, I loved it. Remember they put him in a treasury-sized thing?

CBA: Oh, a couple of them!

Andy: I used to read them, and re-read and re-read those… I still have them and still like them.

Adam: With the dioramas on the back?

Andy: Exactly, and how to draw Tarzan… you start out with a little squiggle, then a couple more squiggles to make a Joe Kubert Tarzan! [laughter] CBA: Joe, you also did one of the first features about tools, about brushes, and as a kid growing up wanting to draw comics, that was some secret knowledge. That was one of the first times someone actually drew what the pen points looked like. I remember that was like the Holy Grail of secret knowledge being handed down.

Joe: That was at the behest of Carmine Infantino, who was the editorial director of the books at that time, and he asked, “Joe, what do you think about doing something like this?” and he instigated it.

CBA: In those days, you had to hunt high and low for that information.

Joe: Yeah. Well, it’s still true today. In fact, that’s probably one of the reasons that I started the school, and the reason I think it’s still doing pretty good. Both Adam and Andy are now teaching at the school, too. But I don’t think there are many other places where you can actually gain the kind of knowledge you need to get started… I was lucky, [to his sons] I told you guys, I got my knowledge from people 29

CBA: [To Adam and Andy] How do you characterize your father, how do you look at him?

Adam: This is too hard! [laughter] Joe: Should I step out of the room so they can really be candid? [laughter] Andy: I would have to say respectful. Professionalism, I mean… super, professionally. Meets all his deadlines, has ten jobs going on at once… probably does at least five times the amount of work I do, still runs the school and teaches, you know?

Above: Got Hulk? Adam Kubert’s advertising art for the National Dairy Association’s “Got Milk?” campaign.

Courtesy of the Kuberts. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

38

CBA: If you’ve learned anything from him, what is it?

Adam: I don’t know if I could say it in front of him… Just be a professional.

Joe: Good! [laughter] I was going to say, “Don’t answer that!”

Adam: One of the biggest reasons Andy and I have done as well as we’ve done, is because we’re not dicks. In a nutshell. We call people back, we treat them with courtesy and professional, we do the work we’re supposed to do, we know our place. We’re working for a company, they have the last word. After my page leaves my board, again, they could do whatever they want, and there’s not much I can do about that. You have to accept that, and you have to realize that these are the parameters you’re working under.

CBA: [Chris Knowles is speaking] Everything that you’ve just said,

Joe told to me when I was going to my first interview! You know, in a different… [to Joe] it’s funny, I remember sitting with you when your office was in the mansion, and I was just a 17-year-old kid, and everything you just said, Adam, Joe said to me.

Adam: That’s where it came from! [laughter] Joe: I don’t think I treated anybody who came through the school in any other way, in any different way, than I did with the two boys.

CBA: [Jon Cooke is speaking to Joe] I recall the first time I met you was at the Words and Pictures Museum, when Fax from Sarajevo was on exhibit, and I sat down and talked to you, and you gave me your full attention for an hour-and-a-half, but you didn’t know me from anybody. You just treated me straight, with respect, you didn’t have any pretense of shrugging me off as being the fanboy that I was.

Joe: I didn’t know you then, but I know you now! [laughter] CBA: Hey, I took you out to lunch, Joe! Adam: And he’ll still do that, with somebody who writes him a letter, he’ll write back right away.

CBA: Yes, he’s written me letters years ago. That’s just astonishing, frankly, because of the impact you’ve had on the industry. I think your stint as editor is one of the great legends of the business.

Joe: I don’t understand that.

CBA: I’ll shut up again. [To Andy] How would you characterize your father?

Andy: Oh, man!

CBA: These are tough ones, eh? Mentor?

Andy: I was going to say intimidating. [laughter] CBA: You guys obviously have a great relationship.

Andy: We get along real well. We just went out shopping before. [laughter] Joe: That’s right.

CBA: Would you say that you’re friends with your father?

Adam: Yeah.

Andy: Oh, yeah. I could bounce anything off of him, talk about anything. Business stuff, anything. Feedback as far as career moves, whatever. It’s a gift.

CBA: Do you admire your father for Fax from Sarajevo? Going into autobiographical territory….

Adam: Every time I look at one of his drawings, it’s something you just can’t touch.

CBA: There’s a real maturity to the work right now. It’s not genre material, and he’s dealing with real life with Fax from Sarajevo, as I would assume the Holocaust project Joe were just talking about. Is your father going into this new level?

Andy: Yes. Especially with this latest project… well, I haven’t read the Holocaust book yet. I skimmed through it, but you haven’t given me the whole thing… [laughs] but yeah, I think so. Especially going from comics and the graphic novels to getting into bookstores and things like that. I think it’s a great… he’s still going up the ladder. It’s amazing.

CBA: [To Joe] You said they only do pencils, and that you were hoping by them teaching, it might lead to them doing…?

Joe: Not necessarily do the teaching, I’m hoping they may be able to control their time a little better so that they can afford to say to their editors, “Well, look, instead of penciling 12 books a year, because of that schedule, maybe we can do four books a year completely, with our pencils, inks and letters.” I don’t think their individual voices are being heard through the material that they’re doing now, and that bothers me a helluva lot.

CBA: Meaning you don’t feel their style is getting exposure?

Joe: I don’t think their work is being shown!

CBA: You mean, we should see their inking?

Joe: Absolutely, because their pencils are then covered by somebody else’s inks, and then on top of that by somebody else’s color, over which they have some control, but not complete. I think that the stuff they’re capable of doing is not being done right now… even from a business standpoint, it’s a bad thing to do, because somebody who has their own voice—and that’s an expression I’ve adopted from Paul Levitz, he’s the one who uses that term, which I think is a good one—by not using their own voice, and showing their own stuff, they diminish the effect of the work they’re capable of doing, and thereby also diminishing the kind of recognition that would be forthcoming for their work. When your work is split up amongst three people, it COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

A Feminine Perspective

Muriel’s Memories Private and personable Mrs. Kubert talks about Joe & the boys

by Blake Bell

Above: Joe and Muriel Kubert recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Courtesy of Blake Bell and the Kuberts.

I Have To Live With This Guy! is a forthcoming book by Blake Bell— where this article is excerpted from—and the author gave us this following description: Will Eisner does what? Alan Moore said that?

Dave Sim is really like that?

Penetrate the surface for a deep look at the roller coaster life of comic book creators and their spouses over the past 60 years.

Buy a ticket to ride with Ann and Will Eisner, Joan and Stan Lee, Muriel and Joe Kubert, Adele and Harvey Kurtzman, Virginia and John Romita, Adrienne and Gene Colan, Josie and Dan DeCarlo, Lindy and Dick Ayers, Deni Loubert and Dave Sim, Eddie Sedarbaum and Howard Cruse, Jackie Estrada and Batton Lash, Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore, Julie and Dave Cooper and more!

You only thought you knew them.

40

Father Joe Kubert helps mold the picture of Muriel as a force in their sons’ lives. “She’s the one who really extends herself in every way to make sure every opportunity comes their way. She’s very family-oriented and the kids and the grandchildren are probably some of the most important facets of her life.

“She’s very giving, almost too much so. Her mentioning ‘Kubert and Sons’ is an indication of where her thinking lies. The possibility of our sons to have enough interest to do this kind of work, and second to get involved in the school, I never really gave it much serious consideration because there are too many things that can happen. To bank on something like that would seem a little bit precarious, if not just silly.

“Adam, at the age of 11 or 12, was lettering not only for me, but for other comics as well. Muriel would absolutely encourage them, but with young people, they may elicit an interest when they are 11 and 12, but by the time they are 13, the interest has disappeared.”

Following up with an example of son Andy’s inferiority complex, Joe shares a danger of being the artist of the house, when sons aspire to the same heights. “John Romita probably had more insight on the situation than I with my sons,” says Joe. “There’s an incident that did bug the hell out of me. Very often, the kids would be drawing in my studio while I was working. Andy, at the age of nine or ten, was really laboring on a particular drawing that just didn’t work out.

He brought it over to me and asked him if I would help him with it.

I was intent and intense in the job that I was working on, and when he showed me the stuff, I said, ‘Sure!’ and made the correction very quickly.

“But when I did the correction, Andy stopped in his tracks, looked at me, looked at his drawing, threw the drawing away and for years after that, didn’t pick up a pencil to draw again. It’s only later that I realized what I had done. Here the kid was slaving over the drawing for at least an hour, and couldn’t get it to look right. I picked it up and in a matter of a minute was able to make a correction.

“I only realized later that his thoughts were, ‘Gee, if it took me so long to try to correct the drawing, and I wasn’t able to do it, and he did it in a second, I’ll never be able to do it.’ So, he decided he didn’t want to pursue it. It was only years later that he came back to do the drawing. He kept it in himself, until he had gone back into drawing and we talked about that. I had no idea that my doing the correction so quickly, without talking to him about it, how it would affect him.”

With that many siblings, with two growing into artists, Muriel’s private nature would be a boon. Few hold their cards as close to the vest as does Muriel. “It’s just in me, as far back as I can remember.

I’m not a gossip. I don’t talk about anybody else. My kids know if they tell me something—‘Mom, please don’t say anything’—I never talk from one kid to another. I feel my life is my own business.”

Even with her own children, just to find out what they are

doing, Muriel says, “I have to pump them, and if you ask me what they’re doing, sometimes I don’t even know what strip they’re doing.

I’ve looked at their artwork. They would show me a couple of pages, but I’ve never read them. When they started getting e-mail fan letters—I would get them and forward them on to Andy and Adam— then I knew they were a success.”

While not exhibiting a great deal of direct influence over his work, she does try to help Joe keep the amount of time he has in perspective. “There were a couple of things I tried to talk him out of lately. I said, “you don’t have time for this.” He really wanted to do it, so I said okay. When it comes to his career, he’s the boss.”

The most difficult period comes when Joe commences work on the Tales of the Green Beret syndicated strip. Lasting from 1965 to 1967, even with Jerry Capp writing the strip (based on Robin Moore’s book), Muriel will have no fond memories of that period, thanks to the physical and emotional strain it puts on her husband. “The deadlines on a syndicated strip are tough,” remembers Muriel. “You can’t call them and tell them you’re going be late. I respect the people that do it today. If we were going away on vacation, Joe would always have to drop the strip off in New York. When he was doing the strip, after awhile I was kind of agreeing with the protesters. I began to see that we shouldn’t be in the war at all and he’s still drawing The Green Beret. The Special Forces did a wonderful job, but that I was kind of against, but not enough to influence him and I wouldn’t even try.”

Muriel first becomes acquainted with the high regard for her husband when she starts attending conventions. “I never really knew it,” says Muriel. “As I said, I didn’t know any cartoonists.”

The image of the close-knitted, incestuous comic book industry is born of the late ’60s generation of artists. People make the assumption the comic book industry is so small and all New York based, but certainly from the ’40s to the ’60s, only if someone lives next door will an artist get to know his peer and their family. Otherwise, they all had a circle of friends who just weren’t cartoonists. “When you have five children,” says Muriel, “you don’t have time to go out of your way to meet other cartoonists. Just because you have something in common, as far as a career is concerned, doesn’t mean that you’re going to be friends with them. We had our own circle of friends right here. We’re very close with family, which took up a lot of time.”

Muriel’s first memories of a convention are of Lucca, Italy, in the early ’70s. She remembers, “Just standing around watching these kids and when they saw Joe, their faces all turned red. I get a big kick out of them. I enjoyed watching them.” The male comic book fan, in the eyes of Muriel, is “always blushing—a little bit heavy; very nice, very shy, very quiet—maybe because they were intimidated by Joe. “There is a policeman in New York that works on the boats that go around doing scuba diving for bodies. He’s been writing to Joe for about four or five years. He’s a fan of Sgt. Rock and Joe would answer him. This fellow was very active in the World Trade Center [recovery effort] and he came out to see Joe for the first time a couple of weeks ago, brought his three kids, and Joe felt it was very heart-warming. It was probably the sincerity in the letter. They’ve had an on-going, sporadic communication.”

“I have responded to a good number of letters,” says Joe, “that others might feel are innocuous. I feel almost compelled to do that in a lot of cases. This was a guy that sounded interesting. I found him very nice and he didn’t make a pest of himself. His letters came maybe three or four a year. Every once and awhile it was nice hearing from the guy.”

An artist can perhaps measure the value of his work by the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

CBA Interview

Adam’s Amazing Adventures Elder son Kubert from Heavy Metal to Ultimate X-Men Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson As mentioned in the intro to younger brother Andy’s interview (to follow), CBA ain’t that much up on the current comics scene, but after viewing Adam’s original pencils for his Ultimate X-Men covers, we’re simply in love with the guy’s work. Of the two Kubert sons working in comics, Adam is the coolly suave one, as exceedingly courteous and well-mannered as his bro, if a bit more urbane.

It’s simply hard not to like these guys and easy to share a little of father Joe’s pride in having two such nice gentlemen in this biz.

This interview was conducted by phone a few weeks after the preceding roundtable (to detail the artist’s background a bit more) and was copy edited by Adam.

Above From left, grandpa Joe Kubert, grandson Max and son Adam (father of Max) at a recent comic book convention.

Courtesy of the Kuberts.

42

Comic Book Artist: Were you into comics as a kid?

Adam Kubert: Yeah, I definitely was! They were all over our house. Although I was only into DC, for obvious reasons.

CBA: Because those were the only ones available?

Adam: I never went out to the store to buy them, but they were always around. Frankly, I didn’t even know Marvel existed!

CBA: Did your father receive a big package, or would he pick up all the titles when he would go into New York to drop off a job?

Adam: He would bring them in from New York.

CBA: You started lettering for your father at quite a young age?

Adam: Yeah, he got me going on lettering when I was about 11 or so. I did that rather than the paper route or any other job a kid could have.

CBA: What would be the routine? Did you start work when you came home from school?

Adam: Yeah, I’d do it after school. My dad started me out to see whether or not I had the patience for it. He had me line up two pages, front and back, from top to bottom, without using an Ames Lettering Guide, which is what the guys used to use. I would measure it out, a 10” x 15” piece of paper, on both sides, space-line-spaceline, and he would do the alphabet, and I would just do the alphabet

over and over and over. Once in a while, I would practice balloons, setting up a balloon, figuring out sound effects, and things like that.

He was putting me through the wringer to test me, to see if I had patience for it.

CBA: So you passed the test?

Adam: I passed the test! [laughter] Yes, I started lettering the “Sgt. Rock Battle Albums,” which Sam Glanzman or Russ Heath would draw.

CBA: This would be 1970 when you were starting? During the tenure your dad was an editor-artist. So he would obviously come home with a Glanzman spread, you’d work on it after school, and take your time. Did you get paid?

Adam: Oh, absolutely! If I can remember correctly, I think I was making two-and-a-half, three dollars a page? Something like that, starting out, yeah. I loved it! It would take me half-an-hour a page, so I was making six bucks an hour! It was great!

CBA: Did you spend the money accordingly, or did you save it?

Adam: I saved it, and bought minibikes and motorcycles.

CBA: Cool! [laughs] That’s nice. Did you graduate into doing logos?

Adam: I did titles and things like that.

CBA: How long did you do that for?

Adam: I guess I did it until around ’94. I did it for a long time.

CBA: 24 years! That’s a full career!

Adam: The last lettering job I was doing was for Heavy Metal magazine, which I’d lettered, because all their stories are transcribed from a foreign language into English, and had to be relettered. I started working for Heavy Metal right after I got out of my dad’s school in ’84, and I continued for about 10 years.

CBA: You were on staff? You were in the masthead.

Adam: I was the regular letterer, the only one who did the lettering for them, but I was freelance.

CBA: Do you think coming up that route, through a real production job, gave you a very steady hand and ended up being an asset in the end?

Adam: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I got to know the editors, I’d bring my work up to them, and it was a lot easier to get your foot in the door when the door’s already open, you know? Absolutely.

CBA: When did you start pursuing a career in art?

Adam: First, after I got out of high school, I went to the Rochester Institute of Technology, and got a bachelor of arts degree in medical illustration.

CBA: Even though your father had already started the school?

Adam: Yes. I had taken a commercial art course in high school, where I had a great commercial art teacher. He helped me get my portfolio together to get into college. I was accepted for medical illustration in Rochester, and I liked science and art a lot, so I put the two together, and that’s what I came up with. I also wanted to stretch my wings a little bit. I was looking for something where I could set my own path. At that point, I knew what my dad was in the business, and I wanted to forge my own way. But all through college, I was constantly drawing things out of my head, doing concert posters and always helping out for parties and things like that. I just realized, “Why fight it? It’s something I really like and I really want to do,” and I got my jollies out at college, now I’m ready to buckle down.

That’s when I decided I’d go through my dad’s school.

CBA: So you basically started again?

Adam: I started again, right.

CBA: Was there any advantage to having the Kubert name by COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

going to the school?

Adam: Though they obviously did know, I still didn’t want anybody to know who I was. I wanted to fit in, I didn’t want to stick out. My dad didn’t treat us any differently. Maybe I made it a big deal in my own head, you know? After that, it was no big deal. There was no such thing as getting away with cutting classes for me.

CBA: So you didn’t take any flack, necessarily, just ribbing?

Adam: Oh, they busted my ass, but I busted theirs right back… [laughter] CBA: Of all the comic book artists, your father has had an especially good career, and he’s obviously parlayed that into creating a viable, long-lasting educational institution. He’s very savvy business-wise, comparative to other comic book artists who are not necessarily very well off by the time they’re 65 years old. They work for a page rate, day in and day out. As Ernie Colón says, “You’ve got to love it to do it, to be in it, because it’s probably just not going to pay off in the end.” Did you look at the life of a comic book artist and think maybe you could end up that way?

Adam: No. [laughs] Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t have gone this route! I had one guy to look up to and I don’t ever regret my decision… I mean, my dad grew up without money, he was always watching money, but I never felt like we didn’t have money to put food on the table, I never felt that way growing up. When I decided to get into this, I didn’t really pay attention to how much money I was going to make; it just wasn’t something I thought about!

CBA: As you have a family of your own now, do you see it more clearly? For instance, your father created Tor, and he’s always held on to the ownership of that character, and 50 years later, it’s back in print. Does his foresight weigh on your mind at all?

Adam: At this point in my career, no, I don’t really have anything under my belt as far as a creator-owned property, but fortunately, I’ve been under contract with Marvel for nine years now, and they’ve treated me very, very good. The time will come where I’ll get that edge, and I do have things in mind what I want to do, so it’s just a matter of having the time and place to do it.

CBA: Is it a grueling schedule you have?

Adam: Pretty much. I usually start at seven in the morning, and I stop at six at night, six days a week.

CBA: How many pages, generally speaking, can you do in a day?

Adam: Generally, a page a day, sometimes not even that. I have other things that happen during the day, and family obligations can take you away a little bit.

CBA: When did you go into your dad’s school?

Adam: In 1981.

CBA: So that was the fifth or sixth graduating class?

Adam: I guess so, yeah.

CBA: Did you have any classmates who went on into the business?

Adam: There’s Eric Shanower, he’s doing pretty well. Ron Wagner, who’s been in and out of the business.

CBA: Did you get along with anyone particularly?

July 2002

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

Below: Superbly designed and rendered cover art

by Adam Kubert for Wolverine #107. Courtesy of the Kuberts. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

43

CBA Interview

The Origin of Andy Kubert the younger tell us how he keeps the Wolverine at bay Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Below: Andy Kubert during the roundtable interview session.

Photo by Chris Knowles.

Look, if you readers are at all familiar with this magazine, you know that Ye Ed is fanatically into the Old Stuff. Sure, he picks up an occasional Mike Mignola or Art Adams title here and there but you’ll usually find him trolling through the back-issue bins, not the new comics rack. So our knowledge of the Sons Kubert are embarrassingly scant. But when a box of Kubert Xeroxes arrived from the official family archivist Pete Carlsson, we instantly became fans of both Adam and Andy for life. These guys can draw the hell out of anything! Currently, Adam (the kinda frumpy, awfully friendly, and self-deprecating son) is a super-star artist working on the very high profile mini-series Origin, featuring the much-anticipated beginnings of Wolverine. To augment the prior roundtable (which was brief on details of the sons’ lives), we conducted a phone interview later in the early Spring. Andy copy-edited the final transcript.

Opposite page: Currently, Andy Kubert is getting notice for drawing the much anticipated story behind X-Man Wolverine’s beginnings (which startlingly commence in the 19th century) in the Joe Quesada-scripted mini-series Origin. Courtesy of the Kuberts. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Comic Book Artist: When did you start contemplating having a career in art yourself?

Andy Kubert: Oh, probably towards the end of my first year going through my dad’s school. [laughter] CBA: Why did you attend the school if you weren’t really interested?

Andy: He wanted me to go through the school, because I was going to work in the administration offices, and so not having a real drawing background (though I had taken some graphic arts courses previously), my father said, “Why don’t you go through the school for a year, and then you’ll really get to know it, and have a better understanding when you work in administration?” That was the idea. I would then work with him and my mom in the office.

CBA: Did you suddenly get off on it?

Andy: The atmosphere here, with all the kids that were really into comics, movies and all that kind of thing, I just got bit by the bug, basically. I really got into it.

CBA: Prior to that, would you call yourself a comics fan at all?

Andy: No, not at all. I used to read them, but I never went out and bought them or anything like that.

CBA: Did you become one afterwards?

Andy: A fan? No, I collected what I liked in terms of artwork and stories. But not as far as I needed every issue of X-Men, nothing like that.

CBA: So kind of. [laughs] Andy: Yeah… kind of.

CBA: What artists were you particularly into?

Andy: I loved Bernie Wrightson’s stuff going through school. I

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collected Hal Foster and Alex Raymond’s work. Al Williamson… and I borrowed my dad’s books.

CBA: Joe must have a hell of a library.

Andy: He has some nice stuff, yeah.

CBA: Obviously, you had a lot of professionals working there in a teaching capacity, but did you also have a lot of people of note within the field dropping by at the school?

Andy: I remember Sergio Aragonés came out.

CBA: Compared to your brother, what class were you in? Were you a couple of years after him?

Andy: No, we were in the same class for three years. In the same room! [laughter] CBA: Are you particularly close to your brother? Can you stand each other for long periods of time, so to speak? I have three brothers, and I know what it can be like.

Andy: [laughs] You know, I never really thought of it that way!

We get along. I mean, of course, we have our times where we want to kill each other, but we do get along.

CBA: Were you getting into drawing super-hero stuff or was it really anything?

Andy: Not really super-heroes, it was more or less Prince Valianttype things, castles, knights… fantasy, science-fiction. The guys I was really into. I loved what Al Williamson was doing on the Star Wars newspaper strip, and I collected those Amazing Heroes that had reprints in it… I still have them. That’s basically what I got into.

CBA: What did you want to do when you got out of school?

Andy: I wanted to get into comics.

CBA: Did you want to specifically get into DC or Marvel?

Andy: Anybody who would hire me. [laughter] It didn’t matter to me, I didn’t care.

CBA: Do you have an interest in writing yourself?

Andy: Yes, I do think about that a lot. I was thinking about it today! That’s a thing I’d like to get into. It takes a lot of time. I’ve never done it before, and it takes a lot of time just to really get your feet wet in it. Eventually, it’s something I would like to get into.

CBA: Except for Sojourn, your father really never self-published, right? He always had other people publish his work.

Andy: Yeah.

CBA: That’s interesting, he’d go in there and probably saved a lot of money not going that way!

Andy: You’re probably right! [laughter] CBA: What was your first professional assignment?

Andy: My first professional work? Oh, God… CBA: You graduated in 1984?

Andy: Yeah, ’84. I did some pin-ups or back-ups in Savage Sword of Conan. That was for Larry Hama. If you count this, I did some back-ups in Sgt. Rock, through my dad, and that was a school thing.

A lot of the kids, when they get to their third year, one of the programs my dad had when he was editing Sgt. Rock was, you could work on the back-up war stories there, and I was able to do that.

CBA: Did he edit Sgt. Rock and G.I. Combat until the end?

Andy: No, Murray Boltinoff was editor on both when I was published there.

CBA: Was there any pleasure in doing the war material?

Andy: I loved it. I would still love to do it! You know, we talked about this Sgt. Rock hardcover thing? Oh, God, I would so love to do something like that! That would be so much fun! I had blast doing those back-ups!

CBA: Adam said that he really wasn’t interested in war, because of COMIC BOOK ARTIST 20

July 2002

Above: Was Andy disappointed by John Severin’s overwhelming ink job which obliterated the Kubert son’s pencil job in Semper Fi #5, as seen above? “Are you kidding? It was an honor to work with a legend like John Severin! Who cares what my pencils looked like.” Courtesy of the Kuberts. ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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deadlines or something like that, and Adam called me and told me that he was offered a mini-series. I said, “Well, if you can’t do it alone, why don’t we do it together?” So Adam called Mike back, and Mike said, “Fine, great!” So we both got on that gig.

CBA: Your brother told me you guys traded off penciling and inking chores?

Andy: We’d do anything to get it done! [laughs] It was pretty tight on the deadlines, too.

CBA: Did you pull all-nighters on that?

Andy: Oh, God, that was a long time ago! [laughter] I remember putting a lot of hours in on that one!

CBA: Are you able to maintain, to this day, a kind of a nine-to-five existence?

Andy: That’s the way I have to do it, I can’t do it any other way.

To keep focused, to keep sharp. I can’t work tired, so I’m usually starting around eight in the morning, and I’m here until around 5:00, 5:30. If I have to work at night, I’ll pack up my stuff, eat dinner, play with the kids a little bit, and put maybe an hour or two in at night, if I have a tight deadline.

CBA: But you really try to keep a separation between work and home?

Andy: Yes, I do.

CBA: Did you learn that from your father, or did your father have that same kind of point of view?

Andy: My dad worked at home, and he was always home and always had time for the kids.

CBA: So he would put the work away?

Andy: Yes. CBA: Did you seek out professionals you particularly admired back then to ask advice?

Andy: Not really. I never really did.

CBA: Were you shy?

Andy: No, I just had my dad there all the time!

CBA: He’s professional enough, eh?

Andy: He’s maybe all I needed. I don’t know. [laughter] CBA: Did you take any flack for having the Kubert name?

Andy: Some people. I heard through the grapevine that some people said that, especially starting out, I had an easier time getting IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, in there, getting into the business, because of my dad. And that’s CLICK THE LINK TOfine, ORDER I’ll take THIS it any way I can get it! [laughs] ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! CBA: Do you think that’s true?

Andy: Yeah, I do. I think… yeah, once they hear a Kubert’s coming in? Yeah, I think so.

CBA: That gave you entrée. I would also imagine there was some pressure on you because of that, to perform… to come into your own, so to speak.

Andy: You mean to keep up with my dad?

CBA: In a way. Keep up with the name, anyway.

Andy: My dad was so far out there that I couldn’t all the ordinance and all the man-made material. even touch him, I didn’t really think about it, that he Andy: The technical stuff? I love getting into that. was just so high up that… not many people are up at I love reading the history books on that stuff. I get a that level, so I didn’t really worry about it that much! kick out of it. [laughs] CBA: Do you have a Sgt. Rock story inside you CBA: In the ’80s, did you have any regular gig? that some day you’d like to get out?

When Doc Savage became a regular series, did you Andy: I never thought about it that way! [laugh- #20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs work on that?

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man ter] Maybe, I’m sure there’s one in there Andy: I did the covers. artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer somewhere!

CBA: JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KU- Did you work on a regular series before your CBA: Did you start gravitating towards DCBERT or share their histories and influences in a special roundtable breakout? conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a Marvel at any particular time, or were you just Andy: X-Men was my first regular book. visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUfreelancing, going back and forth?

CBA: And you took over from who?

BERTs and the ROMITAs! Andy: Just freelancing, going back and forth, Andy: Jim Lee. (104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 basically. Whoever would give me a job!

CBA: Really? http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=536 CBA: But you did a lot of work for DC to Andy: Yeah, when he left to form Image. start, right?

CBA: So there’s some pressure for you!

Andy: Yes. Andy: Yeah, not too much, huh? [laughter] CBA: I remember you and your brother on CBA: So, how do you view the great exodus to Doc Savage. Was that the first kind of breakthrough Image? project for you two?

Andy: It was the best thing that ever happened to Andy: Yeah, I think so. Mike Carlin called up Adam me! [laughs] with that, and then Adam had turned it down for CBA: And it was, wasn’t it? some reason, like he didn’t think he could handle the Andy: It really was, yeah.

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July 2002