Comic Book Artist #6

ROMITA SEVERIN COCKRUM BRUNNER MCGREGOR RUSSELL SUTTON THE PRISONER

No.6

$5.95

Fall 1999

In The U.S.

Man-Thing, Sise-Neg, Dr. Strange ©1999 Marvel Entertainment.

THE MARVEL BULLPEN: 1970-77

A COMICS HISTORY GAME-CHANGER!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES THE

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This ongoing project enlists TwoMorrows’ top authors, as they provide exhaustively researched details on all the major events along the comics history timeline! Editor KEITH DALLAS (The Flash Companion) spearheads the series and writes his own volume on the 1980s. Also in the works are two volumes on the 1940s by ROY THOMAS, the 1950s by BILL SCHELLY, two volumes on the 1960s by JOHN WELLS, a 1970s volume by JIM BEARD, and more volumes documenting the 1990s and 2000s. Taken together, the series forms the first cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast!

JOHN WELLS leads off with the first of two volumes on the 1960s, covering all the pivotal moments and behind-the-scenes details of comics in the JFK and Beatles era! You’ll get a year-by-year account of the most significant publications, notable creators, and impactful trends, including: DC Comics’ rebirth of GREEN LANTERN, HAWKMAN, and others, and the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and multiple earths! STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY’s transformation of superhero comics with the debut of FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, X-MEN, AVENGERS, and other iconic characters! Plus BATMAN gets a “new look”, the BLUE BEETLE is revamped at Charlton Comics, and CREEPY #1 brings horror back to comics, just as Harvey’s “kid” comics are booming!

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The co-founder of Filmation Studios tells all about leading the last American animation company through thirty years of innovation and fun!

(288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 ISBN: 9781605490441 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

MATT BAKER: The Art of Glamour The fabled master of glamour art finally gets his due!

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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

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LOU SCHEIMER: Creating the Filmation Generation

All characters TM & ©2013 their respective owners.

1960-64 VOLUME: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 9781605490458 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

NO. 6

CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

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EDITOR’S RANT: MY TURN ON THE CENTURY Ye Ed ruminates on the spirit of collaboration, nostalgia, and Steranko’s History of Comics ....................2 SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE—HELLO, CRAIG THOMPSON! Charles Hatfield reviews the debut graphic novel of one hot, up-and-coming cartoonist..........................3 PUBLIC SERVICE: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART Editor John A. Lent makes the pitch for his latest addition to comics scholarship, IJOCA ........................4 CBA COMMUNIQUES Skeates on his interview, Infantino & Orlando on Bat Lash, and letter bombs from our readers ..............5 PINCHERA’S PIX: MR. SATURN Our resident cartoonist begins his new series: Candid shots of superfolk in everyday life ........................6 FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Fabulous Fred regales us about Steve Gerber and the writer’s, umm, Giant-Size Man-Thing ....................9 JOHN ROMITA INTERVIEW: SPIDEY’S MAN From nefarious kick-backs at ’50s DC to the chaos of the ’70s Marvel Bullpen, JR Sr. spins his tale! ....10 MARIE SEVERIN INTERVIEW: MORE THAN “JUST MARIE” Cartoonist, colorist, cover designer, caricaturist, and the heart of the Bullpen, Marie talks Marvel ........22 DAVE COCKRUM INTERVIEW: BLACKHAWKS, X-MEN, AND JOHN CARTER OF MARS Fan artist turned fandom favorite artist, Dave chats about his mutant Marvel past ................................28 RETROGAZE: WEIRDNESS ON THE PLANET OF THE APES Chris Knowles looks at the wacky fun of Doug Moench’s b-&-w monkey business ................................32

CBA #5 CORRECTIONS: CBA’s most profound apologies go to Len Wein. Not only did his and Mark Hanerfeld’s photo come out terribly, and the last line of his interview get dropped (which was supposed to say: “Home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in.”), but THREE proofings failed to catch the greatest faux pas, ye editor’s characterizing Swamp Thing as Len’s “nadir” as a writer. That landmark series was, of course, precisely the opposite: ST was Len’s zenith as a scribe, in my humble opinion. My American Heritage Dictionary is ever closer, by my side. Sorry to R. Gary Land for his uncredited Alex Toth “Black Canary” contribution on pg.

61—Dennis O’Neil told ye ed at SDCC that he wrote the initial script for that story but it was substantially changed by Alex. Apologies to Scott McAdams for failing to mention his Moldoff art contributions from last issue’s A/E section. Mea culpa to Robert Knuist and Jim Higgins who also contributed art to CBA. Arnie Fenner’s wife and collaborator is Cathy, not “Carol” as misnamed in the letter column last issue—sorry, CF! Keith Craker tells us the Rudy Nebres art on pg. 96 was “originally in an early Creepy and reprinted in the ‘Best of’ issue Creepy #50.” Mart Gray informs us that the Kaluta rough on pg. 88 was not an unused concept but was finished as a cover, “I would guess, at around Secrets of Haunted House #14.”

Visit CBA at our NEW Website at: www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/

TOM SUTTON: “I WENT APESH•T!” Chris Knowles’ mini-interview with the artist on his outstanding Planet of the Apes work ....................35 FRANK BRUNNER INTERVIEW: OF DOCTORS & DUCKS The artist discusses his work on Dr. Strange, Howard the Duck, and his days at the House of Ideas ......36 P. CRAIG RUSSELL INTERVIEW: THE VISUAL POETRY OF PCR A conversation with the artist, from Dan Adkins assistant to coming into his own on “Killraven” ........48 DON MCGREGOR INTERVIEW: MCGREGOR’S RAGE! Finally! The McGregor interview reveals the verbose one’s thoughts behind T’Challa and Killraven ......60 PHANTOM BOOKS DEPT.: THE PRISONER THE PRISONER THAT NEVER WAS Tom Stewart investigates the unpublished Marvel adaptation of McGoohan’s cult TV show............76 NONE OF SIX—INSIDE THE PRISONER Steve Englehart remembers his participation in Marvel’s version that never came to be ..................78 DEAN MOTTER ON THE PRISONER THAT WAS The premier artist/designer shares his recollections of the DC adaptation that did see print ............79

All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to:

SECRET ORIGINS OF THE DIRECT MARKET Part one of Bob Beerbohm’s ground-breaking essay on the real background of the comic book biz........80

Jon B. Cooke, Editor Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204 West Kingston, RI 02892-0204

CLOSING ARGUMENT: DAN RAEBURN’S THE IMP The best discovery of ye ed’s Summer of Convention Hell, Dan’s annual magazine is wicked fun! ........92

(401) 783-1669 • Fax (401) 783-1287 e-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

NEXT ISSUE

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MORE ’70s

MARVELMANIA!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published quarterly 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: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere.

First Printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©1999 TwoMorrows/Jon B. Cooke. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE

Editor’s Rant

Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Associate Editor CHRIS KNOWLES Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW Proofreading RICHARD HOWELL Cover Art FRANK BRUNNER Cover Color TOM ZIUKO Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON SAM GAFFORD

Mascot WOODY

by J.D. King Contributors John Romita Sr. • Marie Severin Dave Cockrum • Frank Brunner P. Craig Russell • Don McGregor Tom Sutton • Steve Englehart Roy Thomas • Dan Adkins Marv Wolfman • Mike Royer Jim Salicrup • Steve Mitchell Paul Gulacy • Doug Moench Gil Kane • Neal Adams Jim Mooney • Denis Kitchen Alan Weiss • Bernie Wrightson Rich Buckler • The Kirby Estate Steranko • John Severin Billy Graham • Joe Staton Chris Knowles • Tom Stewart Robert Beerbohm • Dean Motter Charles Hatfield • John A. Lent R. Gary Land • Steve Skeates Sam Glanzman • Steve Leialoha 2

My Turn on the Century Beginnings & Endings as the 20th Century Bids Adieu here, now. To that end, my friend Charlie is initiating a new regular colThus, the century that gave birth to comic books shall soon pass umn, Small Press Spotlight, so get a first glance at books you just might into history as we—the most fervent supporters of sequential art— stand together, (cue violins!) braving a new millennium, poised to shore be nostalgic about 20 years hence.

The joy in producing this rag is not only in the detailing of the up our ailing industry and resolved to preserve its past, for better or creative process and happenstances behind producing good comics; it’s worse. From Max Gaines’ sly ploy to slap a “10¢” sticker on a givethe collaborative process I’m involved in, here and now. Folks like Chris away booklet back in 1933, to the apparent victory of the Siegel family Knowles (our new Contributing Editor), Arlen Schumer, Bob Beerbohm, for a piece of the Superman fortune in 1999, it’s been a doozy of a Tom Stewart, Sam Gafford, and Jon B. Knutson—not to mention, John ride, these past 70-odd years! But rather than describe a litany of the Morrow and Roy Thomas— zenith and (ahem!) nadir of give me a taste of the glorious our beloved art form, indulge Apologia & Explanation insanity of Bill Everett’s 33rd me this personal view about Street apartment nearly 60 nostalgia and the art of collabIn preparing the final proof for this issue, I came to the distressing years ago. Thanks, guys. oration. realization that I simply had far too much material to fit in all the feaAnd that madcap spirit My friend, Charlie tures I promised. I had to do something and do it quick. If I were to go evidently endured with a later Hatfield, as devoted to comics ahead and produce a 160-page issue, we would have to return to the generation of Marvel creators in his academic realm as I am newsprint stock of our last two fat issues, print the art even smaller, as CBA’s ongoing study of the in the glorified fanzine world, plus lose virtually any profit to the high printing and postage costs. collaborative art of comics tells me that while he loves Well, as I’m now somewhat dependent on the profits of CBA, none continues in this issue’s look at history and criticism, he of these possibilities seemed attractive. So, in a last minute effort, I the Marvel Bullpen in the ’70s. loathes nostalgia; and much as split this issue into two, postponing the interviews with Paul Gulacy, True, some interviewed herein I agree with him concerning Doug Moench, John Byrne, Jim Mooney, Dan Adkins, Frank Springer, and Denis Kitchen; the Kung Fu feature; and the second part of Bob didn’t actually work on staff in the reactionary attitudes of Beerbohm’s history of the direct sales market—all of which will appear, the House of Ideas, but all many graying fans—[in best along with a few other choice items (such as interviews with Rich contributed to the sometimes Karloff Monster voice] “All Buckler and Steve Gerber) in our first bi-monthly (and bookstore-disglorious, often bizarre books old, gooood!!! All new, tributed) issue in February. (Why such a long interval? To set into that made Marvel Comics very baaaaddd!!!”—I am finding motion a proper schedule and to produce the upcoming CBA Special fun to read in those days of myself not so much looking Edition #1, available only to subscribers and coming in December.)

Vietnam and Watergate. Here, forward to our Brave New My sincere apologies to everyone who helped scramble and to any for your pleasure, are the World as we near Year 2000, readers who stopped by expecting to find any of the postponed particistories of some of the best but instead looking back fondpants. My thanks for your patience and I hope to see you in December creators of Marvel’s Second ly on much that has gone by and/or February! Here’s wishing you enjoy this issue!

Wave. Thanks to all the generwith a sincere wistfullness; and ous artists and writers who many of the memories I cherparticipated in this wacky issue! ish aren’t even my own!

But, hey, don’t get me wrong: CBA ain’t afraid of no Y2K! As a In 1970, Jim Steranko published the first important study of our matter of fact, we’re getting downright cocky and will be going interfield, The Steranko History of Comics Volume 1, and besides being a national—and bi-monthly!—beginning in 2000. Commencing in graphic tour de force, it featured an astounding array of comics creator February, we can be found every 60 days throughout the world in personal histories and engrossing anecdotes about how the industry bookstores and on newsstands, courtesy of our new distributors, really was—shorn of publisher hyperbole and whitewash. Steranko’s Ingram and Desert Moon! And we look forward to continuing our two volumes detailed the hitherto unknown lives of many seminal crerelationship with Diamond, FM, Tower Books, and Cold Cut! And, to ators—Siegel & Shuster, Jack Kirby, Lou Fine, Jack Cole, Bill Finger—all those who want guaranteed delivery (plus a subscriber-only Special once unheralded but now, primarily because of Steranko’s efforts in Edition of CBA—graced with a Bruce Timm cover, no less!), check out chronicling their lives and work, all considered giants in the field. our back cover for subscription information! And don’t forget to stock But the essence of Steranko’s history—and, really, the impetus of up on Alter Ego and The Jack Kirby Collector just in case society does my affection for comics creators—can be found in Jim’s description of go kablooey! that extraordinary weekend in 1941 when Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, and And we’ll never get too big for our britches, because we’ll always an entire slew of helpful freelancers jammed to get a 64-page issue of want the collaborative help of you, our reader! We’re ever in need of the legendary Human Torch/Sub-Mariner battle finished by Monday your rare and unpublished art, interviews, fanzines, and photos! Drop morning. Imagine the camaraderie and chaos in Everett’s apartment, as me a card and let’s get jammin’! And, with your generous support, an artist slugged back shots of whiskey to stay awake and a writer we’ll continue the joy of going forward, all the while looking back in found a spot to work in the bathtub! And collectively these young crewonder at the comics we love so much and the ones we’ve yet to find. ators produced a sold-out comic book. The art of collaboration!

Good luck, thanks for your patience (as this issue is a tad late), Granted, Comic Book Artist is riding a wave of nostalgic interest and see you in 2000 A.D, as we take a slight breather to prep for biin the “good, old” comics. Culture is awash with forlorn backward looks as we tremble fearfully before the advent of an unknown, new monthly frequency. See ya! era. But even as CBA devotes reams to the wonderful collaborations in —Jon B. Cooke comics gone by, I implore you to open your eyes to the good that is

NEW CBA PHONE NUMBERS! (401) 783-1669 • Fax (401) 783-1287 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

Small Press Spotlight

Hello, Craig Thompson Charles Hatfield reviews Top Shelf’s Good-bye, Chunky Rice

by Charles Hatfield There’s a scene early in Craig Thompson’s Good-bye, Chunky Rice, in which the titular hero, a turtle named Chunky, and his best friend, a mouse named Dandel, build a sandcastle together. Against a backdrop of inky surf, they dig, pack, and pour for three pages, all the while talking about Chunky’s pending departure for parts unknown. Finally, Dandel grabs a nautilus shell—”Cool,” she says—and, as a coup de grace, places it on the castle’s topmost tower, shouting, “Tada!”

Chunky, eyes wide as ever, looks on, and, seeing that it is good, cries, “We built an entire world!”

Something of Craig Thompson’s delight in creation seems to peek through this scene, for this is exactly what Chunky Rice does: builds a world, one that is rich, diverting, and strange. The means are humble, and the story deceptively simple, but the resulting worldscape is a wonder of mood, artisanal craft, and, above all, emotional heft. Chunky Rice is a shockingly accomplished debut for Thompson—not least because the awe inspired by its formal ingenuity finally takes a backseat to the emotions it touches off.

Thompson takes an admittedly thin (or at least obscurely motivated) plot, about Chunky’s wanderlust and his separation from Dandel, and embroiders it with care. Chunky’s traveling brings him face to face with a flock of eccentric yet genuinely sympathetic characters, whose memories enable a series of deftly interpolated flashbacks—surprising side trips, yet entirely apt. Hindsight works wonders on Thompson’s tale: the apparent digressions keep folding back into Chunky’s pilgrimage, enlarging and enlivening it. The narrative set pieces don’t necessarily depend on Chunky or Dandel; some don’t belong to them at all. But Thompson makes sure that these bits reinforce the reigning themes of his story: friendship, loss, memory, and longing.

As Chunky takes to the seas, bound for wherever (apparently the Kahootney Islands), the losses and longings of ship’s captain Charles and his hapless landlubber of a brother, Solomon (Chunky’s ex-neighbor), work their way in and out of Chunky and Dandel’s story. While Dandel pitches bottles into the ocean, all packed with messages for Chunky, Solomon nurses a lame, land-bound sea bird, a substitute perhaps for the beloved family dog whose death haunts him still. Meanwhile, Charles, long estranged from his brother, nurses memories of his departed wife Glenda, about whom he sometimes speaks as if she is still alive.

Equally important to Charles is the “boundless” (literally: the panel borders drop away, the sea surges to the margins) beauty of the sea. During a terrifying squall, as waves burst over the rail, Charles takes the helm with a manic delight, shouting, “The pasFall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

sion!” This is the same sea, of course, that wipes away Chunky and Dandel’s sandcastle, the same sea that drowned Solomon’s dog and threatens all with death and dissolution. Bereft of his beloved wife, Charles has declared that from now on “the sea will be my only friend”; Solomon, in the meantime, avoids the sea, his helplessness shown by his inability to float even a toy boat in the calm waters of the harbor. Only the friendship of a tiny bird, “Merle,” compensates for Solomon’s sense that he “never was too good at much.”

Jolly and heartbroken, his speech a patchwork of colorful and stilted idioms, Solomon is a wonderful creation, as is his flint-nosed, wild-eyed brother, who revels in the real and imagined dangers of the sea.

The hardships of separation, and the terrible beauty of the things that draw us apart, lie at the heart of Thompson’s story (though, ironically, two featured characters cannot separate: the Siamese twins Livonia and Ruth, Chunky’s shipmate). It is the ocean, more than anything else, that embodies these themes.

Thompson’s ocean is a sea of ink, darkly patterned, thick, almost viscid, awash in curlicues like delicate script—it is his central metaphor, and artistic indulgence, a field of swirling, hypnotic linework. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Chunky Rice is still all at sea when it ends (when it stops, rather): there is no candy-eyed reunion, no facile resolution, to this fable. On the other hand, the suddenness of its end is a bit frustrating—one longs to remain in the company of Thompson’s weird repertory company. But what more certain, more resolute, ending could do justice to Thompson’s concerns?

Chunky Rice feels autobiographical, although one does not know whether Thompson’s alter-ego is Chunky, or Dandel, or Solomon, or Charles, or all of them. The book, drawn while Thompson lived in Oregon, is pitched as a self-conscious valentine to dear friends in Wisconsin, and bespeaks both a profound sense of separation and the fragility of our attempts to overcome time and distance. These are weighty concerns for a mid-twentysomething cartoonist with no prior books to his credit, and in tackling them Thompson has produced the sweetest piece of faux-naive cartooning since Walt Holcombe’s enchanting King of Persia several years back. I say “faux” because there’s nothing naive about Thompson’s arsenal of formal techniques: Chunky Rice does things with a comics page that I’ve never quite seen before. Not only is its surface—its rendering—fairly dazzling, but its approach to breakdown and design is disarmingly ambitious, revealing the kind of formalist preoccupations that hover over the work of, say, Chris Ware or Warren Craghead.

Thompson’s refusal to cave in to cynical irony, despite his penchant for mischievous and at times grotesque humor, marks him as a contemporary of such young cartoonists as John Porcellino and Tom continued on page 92

Rocco Nigro • Bill Alger • Jerry Bails David “Hambone” Hamilton Arnold Drake • Frank Plowright Mark Burkey • Jerry K. Boyd Craig Thompson • Rick Pinchera Fred Hembeck • Al Bigley Tom Field • Tim Barnes • J.D. King Special Thanks John & Pam Morrow • Beth Cooke Benjamin, Joshua & Daniel Cooke Ina Cooke & Nick Mook Andrew D. Cooke & Patty Willett Janet Riley Sanderson • J.D. King Chris Staros • Dan Raeburn Brian & Ellen Saner Lamken Barry Windsor-Smith • Alex Bialy Russ Heath & Julie Nixon Don & His McGregor Clan Dan Adkins • Paul Gulacy Frank Plowright • Charles Hatfield Arlen Schumer & The Boss Jon B. & Barbara Knutson Sam Gafford • Tom Field Kevin Eastman • Chris Orr/CBLDF Tom & Highwater Books Nick Cardy • John D. Coates Trina Robbins • Frank Miller Michael T. Gilbert • Tom Stewart Bill Schelly • Kurt Busiek Steve Englehart • Steve Gerber Mark Evanier • Rick Pinchera John R. Cochran • Rich Buckler Tim McEnerney • Steve Kortes Cliff Galbraith & Tim Bird Adam McGovern • Tony Isabella Frank Brunner • Bill Black Patrick & Olga of Quebecor Bob Yeremian • Ray Kelly Bruce Timm • David A. Roach Peter Coogan • Jerry Bails Richard Howell • Ed Stelli Pat Varker • Glen Musial Russ Garwood • D. Hambone and all you folks in San Diego!

And a very special thanks to my brother from a different mother TOM ZIUKO Whose inspiration led to our great cover by Frank Brunner This Issue Dedicated with Affection to: The Late Billy Graham Jonathan Sebastian Pinchera & My Brother Andrew D. Cooke 3

Public Service

IJOCA: The Latest “Must-Have” ’Ello! What’s This About The International Journal of Comic Art? [While many of us have been grousing for years that comics simply aren’t taken seriously enough in the U.S. these days, a quiet revolution has been taking place on college campuses nationwide (and around the globe)—an academic movement that gives funnybooks the scholarly consideration too long warranted. These advances are exemplified by the scholarly efforts of my friend Charles Hatfield and the International Comics Art Festival he helps organize every year. Charlie tells us there’s a new journal out there in academia worthy of our support and attention, The International Journal of Comic Art, and far be it for me to debate Mr. Smartypants, so here goes ye plug!—JBC]

Commencing with our debut, Comic Book Artist has devoted space to worthy causes in service to sequential art. This issue we plug IJOCA, and beginning next ish, we’ll be featuring a regular column on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. We hope you will consider supporting these important institutions, especially the CBLDF, lest someday, someone comes knocking on your door.

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WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART? Where sequential art is concerned, there are no boundaries— only opportunities for learning.

This is the philosophy of the newly launched International Journal of Comic Art, a semiannual scholarly journal which represents an unprecedented effort to look at comics from a global perspective. Academic in its mission, yet lively and accessible in its approach, IJOCA aims to cross the divide between American comics and other traditions—and to bridge the gap between popular and academic approaches to the understanding of this under-appreciated art form.

IJOCA is the only refereed academic journal in English to be devoted entirely to comic art: Comic books, graphic novels, comic strips, gag and editorial cartooning, caricature, and related traditions.

All aspects of sequential art and cartoon illustration are dealt with in IJOCA’s pages. Its first issue, for example, includes essays on a wealth of different subjects: Japanese political cartoons, African educational comics, Brazilian comics, Classics Illustrated, Gaiman & McKean’s Mr. Punch, Winsor McCay’s strips and animated films, William Hogarth, the Algerian cartoonist Slim, woodcut novels, Eisner’s A Contract with God, space, time, narrative structure, sex, and censorship. IJOCA welcomes writing from all sorts of perspectives and disciplines: from literary critique to sociocultural history, from bibliographies and reviews to interviews and in-depth essays.

The journal is open-minded and inclusive in its philosophy, determined to touch on all genres and regions; as editor John Lent puts it, studies of erotica will sit side-by-side with studies of religious comics, and so on. Contributors have included, and will continue to include, new voices as well as veteran scholars.

IJOCA’s goal is to include a varied and truly international assortment of scholarly writings on comics. These writings are expected to be detailed, rigorous, and well-grounded in academic disciplines—yet readable, elegant, and accessible. As Lent puts it,

“Our aim is to be scholarly, but not stuffy.”

IJOCA’s International Editorial Board includes some thirty-one countries. Besides North American and European cultures, the journal represents sequential art traditions in Africa, Asia, South America, the Arab world, Oceania, and other regions. The Editorial Board joins established and up-and-coming scholars with practicing comics creators, such as New Zealand’s Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville) and Slovenia’s Igor Prassel (Stripburger). Among those scholars committed to IJOCA are authors of acclaimed books on the art: Allen Douglas and Fedwa Malti-Douglas (Arab comic strips), Ian Gordon (Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945), Amy Kiste Nyberg (Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code), Joseph Witek (Comic Books as History), and others. The Advisory Board is a Who’s Who of historians, critics, and artists, the latter including such celebrated figures as Malaysia’s Lat, Spain’s Max, and Will Eisner, Jerry Robinson, and Mort Walker from the U.S. The composition of the editorial and advisory boards is designed to insure cultural and disciplinary balance, so that all aspects of comic art are recognized and covered.

IJOCA’s format is squarebound and digest-sized, with numerous illustrations (the first issue, Vol. 1, No. 1, features 73 illos). While the first issue weighs in at a hefty 224 pages, subsequent numbers call for about 160 pages each, so that each annual volume (two issues) will include over 300 pages of work. Plans call for a Spring/Summer issue and a Fall/Winter issue each year: Vol. 1, No. 1 was released in April 1999, with No. 2 in September 1999. Whereas the inaugural issue consists of fifteen full-length critical essays, Lent plans to include other features in the future, including reviews, familiar essays, and responses from cartoonists to IJOCA articles treating their work.

The International Journal of Comic Art is poised to take advantage of a new spirit of internationalism in comics and comics scholarship. Events like the yearly International Comic Arts Festival in Washington, D.C. herald the growth of international cooperation in the study of the art, and IJOCA aims to encourage that cooperation.

As a postscript, Charlie sent along personal comments by IJOCA Editor John Lent on genesis/impetus for IJOCA: “I've seen the need for this type of publication for years, and decided last Fall that it was time to do something about it. I have experience bringing out journals and therefore, I am not shy about attempting a new one. In fact, my mailman must be very perplexed as he brings letters and packages to my door addressed to three different periodicals. I publish and edit all over my house.

“I've been pursuing comic art scholarship since 1963-64, on and off. At that time, I was trying to determine "violence effects" of comic books on children, but the fourth graders I tested were too crafty and manipulative for me. I see a "revolution" of sorts in comics scholarship, fortunately not all of which emanates from the academia: Periodicals, conferences, symposia, exhibitions, plethora of new books (many of high scholarship), theses and dissertations, and some courses. IJOCA fits into all this rather neatly.

“And the international dimension is finally catching on. The aim of IJOCA might be to minimize the number of times the phrase, ‘I didn't know they published comics or cartoons in _____’ is uttered.”

1 year (2 issues) $25 U.S. or $35 U.S. institutions. Payment by check or intn’l money order in U.S. dollars. Payable to: John A. Lent/ IJOCA. Send to: John A. Lent, 669 Ferne Blvd., Drexel Hill, PA 19026 USA. The second issue has just been released.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

CBA Communiques

“Nonsensical” Skeates Interview Aquaman scribe laments “mish-mosh” of CBA “confab” issue featuring a truly beautiful Cardy cover and Steve Skeates Fairport, New York countless other nifty items—who needs an apoloWhen an interview with my name on it in gy for that? Still, I do rather wish it hadn’t been large screaming block letters suddenly pops up those particular four pages, the ones supposin your magazine, what can I say? And when, edly about me. But then… oh, well… upon perusing that particular blatherfest, I [Oh, well, indeed. My profound apologies discover it to be garbled, confused, and to Steve on the troubles that befell his often unintentionally nonsensical, perhaps I interview. Actually, the transcription was should say even less. Yet, from a different mailed to Steve’s old address and was only and perhaps more self-serving angle, even bounced back to me days before we went though this off-the-wall mish-mash of a conto press way back in Spring, 1998. Still, fab can’t help but enhance my reputation as a because the interview was postponed, I drug-ridden casualty of the ’60s, a true hippie should have run it by Steve again, conburn-out of the Western world, I cannot in good sidering the circumstances. Please note conscience take an overabundance of credit for that CBA really has no staff, per se, at what went on there. our Kingston, RI address, and my office, First and foremost, I would like to object Another zany self-portrait by & ©1999 Steve Skeates. more often than not, ends up being the to the suggestion up toward the top that I kitchen table.—JBC] “copy-edited” that piece. Though perhaps technically correct, that bizarre oversimplification nonetheless fails quite miserably when it Carmine Infantino comes to the fine art of cutting to the meat of what really hapNew York, New York pened.

I have this note from Joe Orlando—his note to me!

As someone or other upon your staff (perhaps even the person I thought it might be of interest to your readers in regard to the responsible) might well recall, close to 18 months ago I was sent at Bat Lash controversy. supposedly the “last possible second” the completed transcription of I called Joe Orlando to verify CBA writer Tom Stewart’s claim he the telephone interview in question (at that point, still scheduled to discussed Bat Lash with Joe! appear in your very first issue). I was asked to read it over, correct Joe was adamant! Absolutely no one called him concerning the any of the more glaring errors I chanced upon, and then get it in the character. I asked him to send me a note to that effect, and also to mail headed back in your direction—and all of that hopefully within include his reflections of the Bat Lash saga. one day. It seems, you see, that some sort of mishap had occurred: He agreed. His letter follows.

Someone had flat-out forgotten (until that aforementioned last second), or had first sent it to the wrong address, something like that, and now what was being asked for was but a token perusal upon my part—and immediately, if not sooner, or else I would not have the honor of being amongst all those bigtime bigdeal comic book personalities to be interviewed within your bigfat bigdeal premiere issue.

Hey, I was (in fact) nice enough to do as you requested. And what did I get for my trouble? The interview was not used in the issue I was scrambling to get it back to you in time for, but was held onto for a year and a half, yet no attempt was made during all that time to allow me to give the thing a more thorough copy-reading—a further participation which, I’ll admit, I probably should have demanded. So, why didn’t I? Who knows? Perhaps I possessed a quantity of obviously undue confidence in my ability to proofread on the quick. Surely, though, with the passage of time, something else took shape within what passes hereabouts for a brain—an actual thought, the thought that this had become but last year’s news, that this whole schmear was dead and forgotten, that said interview would now simply never see print!

And then suddenly, there it was (within issue #5, to be exact), filled with enough gibberish to make me wonder if anyone even bothered to read the darn thing over during that year-and-a-half it was sitting around your offices! I mean, I defy anyone to explain (for example) what the hell I’m talking about within that section supposedly concerning those Deadman back-ups in Aquaman #50-52— similar confusion throughout actually, yet confusion that could have easily been eliminated via the application of but a few additional nouns, adjectives, and pieces of punctuation!

But, really now, what at this late date can I possibly say or do about such egregiousness? …Except, of course, apologize to anyone who came to that interview with the expectation that it just might make some sort of sense—and even that seems rather silly, does it not? A mere four pages within an otherwise spectacular 130-page Fall 1999

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[It was gratifying to patch things up with Carmine when he stopped by the TwoMorrows booth in San Diego—the artist’s first SDCC in 25 years, where he was warmly received by many fans and friends!—but he requested I print his letter and Joe’s note as submitted, even after I told him I had printed an apology in CBA #3 (on page 9) about my previous assumption that Tom Stewart had spoken to Joe about Bat Lash. In fact, Tom was never able to get through to Joe after leaving repeated messages, and, again, I sincerely regret my mistake. Sadly, the great artist/editor Joe Orlando passed away on December 23, 1998.—JBC]

Above: Carmine Infantino sent us this note by Joe Orlando regarding the origin of Bat Lash.

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Pinchera’s Pix

Above: Yeesh! Last time we heard from Rick Pinchera, he was on the verge of his nuptials and taking a break from CBA cartooning. Now he tells us he’s the proud pop of Master Jonathan Sebastian! Nice first name there and many congrats, Mr. P! Rick is back, this time with a new concept: Photogs of superfolk caught in the act of everyday living! Jamaica Plain has gotta have something in the water! ©1999 Rick Pinchera.

Below: Craig Thompson—my latest fave cartoonist (whose excellent book, Goodbye, Chunky Rice is raved about elsewhere in this ish)—sent us this ’toon of his character Solomon wearing some nifty T-shirt. You go, Sol! And tanks zillions, Craig!

Solomon © Craig Thompson.

Mr. Saturn

Vincent Bellizia North Brunswick, New Jersey Never have I been so disturbed by an interviewer’s techniques as I was by Mike Barr’s seeming cross-examination of an increasingly harassed John Broome [in CBA #5]. Page 22 deteriorated into Barr needlessly repeating the same type of question, resulting in Mr./Mrs. Broome answering in a one-word affirmative, no less than four times.

At one point, after telling Barr that the interview would have to be “cut short now,” since Mr. Broome had already said three times he left DC on his own, Barr follows up with, “All right. When you left comics, that was your own decision?” Broome, for the fourth time, said, “Yes.” You may say that leaving DC and leaving comics are two different things, but Mr. Broome had answered, the first time, that he left DC due to being “just tired of writing comics.”

The Broomes’ reply, “Yes, we were living overseas by then,” to Barr’s question, “Were you living overseas by then?” shows an attempt by the Broomes to keep the answers short and to the point, indicating a growing annoyance, if subtly, towards Barr. Indeed, the rest of the interview has the 83-year-old Broome replying in short sentences, with hardly any elaboration, until Mrs. Broome says her goodbye to Barr; Mr. Broome is understandably silent.

As a relative, who is a lawyer, put it, “If Barr ever wanted to change careers, he has the makings of a fine interrogator. But if that’s how he interviews friends, he should stick to writing.”

Sam Glanzman via facsimile

[I transcribed Mike’s interview with the Broomes and I found no audible evidence in either John or Peg’s voices of any annoyance, growing or otherwise. John did sound tired as the talk progressed— the session, after all, took place after a busy day for the couple in San Diego, which culminated in the well-attended Q&A panel devoted to the Silver Age writer. Please note that Peg Broome approved the final transcript of her late husband’s interview, and she has written me a personal note commending Mike’s coverage.—JBC] Richard Howell Leonia, New Jersey I wanted to contribute a small clarification to a statement made by Al Williamson in your Warren issue [#4). While speaking of the many reprints of the stories he did for Warren, Williamson comments that he never got any money for them, and neither did any of the other artists who contributed work to those issues.

Williamson goes on to say that, “It would have been nice if everyone had gotten something out of it, even if it was just a little bit.”

This is precisely what we tried to do in the early days of Harris’ repackaging of the classic Warren material. When I compiled the first

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four reprint trade paperbacks (Creepy: The Classic Years; Eerie: Eternal Terror; Vampirella vs. the Cult of Chaos; and Vampirella: Transcending Time and Space), publisher Stanley Harris and I discussed the subject of reprint money, and on my recommendation that it was “industry standard practice” to pay for reprint material, he okayed it for our books, too. I don’t remember the exact figures (it wasn’t an overwhelming amount of money, of course), but it was at least enough to show that Harris didn’t intend to plunder that great stash of stories and artwork with no effort at all to recompense the artists and writers.

I can’t state that Al Williamson received and deposited the money from Harris (I no longer have that paperwork), but I can attest that he was sent a notification, a release form, and whatever money was allotted to him, as artist of “Success Story” (which was reprinted in the Creepy trade paperback). We made an honest effort to contact and pay each of the artists and writers of those stories— whichever ones we could contact. I received some confirmations (and nice, surprised notes) from some of the artists who never expected to see any money from those stories ever again (including the major beneficiary of Stanley’s decision, the late Archie Goodwin), so I know that at least some of the payments reached the people for whom they were intended. The policy of paying for reprints was in effect during my entire tenure as editor of the Harris Comics line (late 1990-early 1993) and was applied to every reprint, without exception.

If Al is claiming that he was never paid any reprint money by Warren, well, that could be true; he’d know better than I—however, any assertion that he was never paid any reprint money for any of his Warren stories may well be untrue.

Thom Glanzman Lawrence, Kansas Just wanted to drop a line to tell you how thrilled I was to receive a copy of your ’zine. Sam Glanzman is one of the most COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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underrated illustrators ever and it is nice to see him finally getting some recognition. He has been a major influence in many areas of my life. I plan on saving this issue for my two sons to read when they reach an age when it might be of interest to them. Currently, it's all "professional" wrestling and video games and sci-fi and cartoons with them. I'm secure there will come a day when your articles will be like found treasures to them. Personally, I lost contact/ interest in comic books almost 20 years ago but they were a heavy interest of mine between 8-20 years of age. But yours is a righteous endeavor—to get the thoughts and memories of these men (were there any women?) down in their living years. In fact, I started video taping interviews with my father two years ago in an attempt to preserve—preserve family history, perhaps social history, I'm not sure.

Maybe just to have something to pass on to future generations. I apologize if this missive appears rambling and without purpose.

Rambling, I'll cop to. Without purpose, no. Two purposes: 1) If there's any help I could offer you in your goal to get word to paper in regard to Sam Glanzman, I'm at your disposal because 2) I have a unique perspective and access to this man. He is my father and is the most interesting, complex, simple (I told you he was complex) guy I have had the fortune to know and I have the feeling I will never meet another like him—and I want to get him his due. Thank you so much for helping get the word out. Fight the good fight and, lest I forget, Sail on Stevens!

Bonnie Glanzman-Pewterbaugh via the internet I just received an e-mail from my brother sharing his wonderful note to you about the interview you conducted with our father. I, too, would like to thank you. Your article(s) gave me additional information that, believe it or not, was new to me. For instance, I never knew he and our uncle had to change their names to obscure their background. I am glad we've come somewhat past that these days… more concern and tolerance for our fellow man is surely needed. I also want to go back and re-read his “U.S.S. Stevens” stories. Being in close proximity to "the man," we take him for granted and do not often stand, as we should, in awe of his talents, his personality, his gifts, and his love for all. Yes, he is a man and a person, but thanks to you, and I think due to the fact that both my brothers and I are getting older and realize that one day he will no longer be, we are gaining a new perspective and an even greater love for this man called Sam Glanzman.

Lou Mougin via the internet Two points re: the Denny O'Neil interview. First, Denny says he doesn't know who wrote the first “Creeper” story. The author was Don Seagall, who wrote extensively for Dell Comics and also did some movie and TV scripting, as I recall. Second, some question was made as to why Steve Ditko "quit" Beware the Creeper and The Hawk and the Dove. The information I got is by way of cat yronwode [late of Eclipse Comics, now with Claypool], who had done research for a book on Steve Ditko (which was abandoned when a lot of the material was lost in one of the floods at Guerneville): apparently Steve had a recurrence of a bout of TB at the time, which is darn near the only thing that could apparently keep him away from a drawing board. If I'm wrong about that, Mr. Ditko, please correct me.

when weighed against the acres of good stuff in CBA. Having said that, there's now been two looks at DC's output between 1967 and ’74 and not one mention of my favorite title introduced during the period.

Jonah Hex ran longer than anything you've covered, involving some top artists, particularly during the Weird Western Tales run, and some of the most gruesome morality plays since the prime of EC. Despite the quality of the art, I'd ascribe the longevity of the strip to the extraordinary imagination of Michael Fleisher, and I'd love to see an interview with him about Hex. It would be nice to have him talking about his even more gruesome and imaginative “Spectre” strips as well, although I can see why he might shy away from that. I'd also like to know more about some of the artists. Who was George Moliterni? How was Doug Wildey persuaded to draw an issue when he was doing little (if any) comic work? How was it that largely foreign artists managed such a convincing evocation of the Old West?

Some Hex, please.

While I'm mentioning Michael Fleisher, has anyone got any information about the unpublished sections of his Encyclopedia Of Comic Book Heroes? It's my recollection that when the Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman books were published it was publicized that these were but the tip of the iceberg, and Fleisher also had detailed notes on many of DC's lesser characters and those from companies DC acquired. Is there any chance of them being published anywhere?

The exhaustive detail of the published volumes was such that it would be tragic for any further work to remain unread. If book publication isn't viable, how about web publication?

“Macredoak” via the internet You asked for feedback on reconstructing art so here it is: Generally I am in favor of you publishing the art as is, warts and all.

I tend to think the Wrightson halloween cover should have been left alone because it is a variation of known artwork, House of Mystery #256. However your reconstruction of Wrightson's Spirit cover was very necessary since this is an unknown piece of work. We would not have seen anything like it without your reconstruction job.

Frank Plowright via the internet I'm sorry to hear you're short of mail, but I would suggest it means most people are pretty pleased with what you're doing (always assuming CBA is selling). It's a sad fact of life that more people are likely to write to complain than to praise. Locating the Philippines in the South Pacific and referring to Swamp Thing as Len Wein's “nadir” are hardly likely to have the readership up in arms Fall 1999

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Above and left: Last ish we had zero representations of Howie Post’s Golden Age art but the mail brought us these fine examples of the artist’s early DC and Marvel/Atlas work. Thanks to Steve Leialoha and Rocco Nigro. More Fun ©1999 DC Comics. Nellie ©1999 Marvel.

Tastee-Freez ©1999 Harvey.

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Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

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See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art

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DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, & DITKO/GIORDANO cover!

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Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! Interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art!

DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, TUSKA, SEKOWSKY, TALLARICO Part 3, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

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Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art

by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

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Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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CBA Interview

John Romita Sr.: Spidey’s Man Yakkin’ with Marvel’s (de facto) ’70s Art Director

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by John Morrow and Jon B. Knutson What can you say about John Romita Sr.? Jazzy? Well, that’s pushing it, but I found the artist to be a regular guy who treats annoyances like Ye Ed with courtesy and consideration, and one (as you’ll find) who speaks quite frankly as one of Marvel’s premier artists in the ’60s and ’70s. Tellingly, he’s still married to his childhood sweetheart and (if the axiom is true that the character of the parent is revealed in the manner of the child) he’s a good father—just look at the graceful demeanor of his talented son, John Jr. The old man is a gentleman.

John was interviewed via telephone on May 19, 1998, and the artist copyedited the transcript.

Right: Spidey promotional illo by the Senior One. This was used to guide “the huge facade cut-out for the Marvelmania restaurant,” sez Mr. R. Courtesy of Mike Burkey.

Spider-Man ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Ever diligent, here’s JR SR. at work in the ’70s in this unabashedly swiped pic from FOOM #18. ©1977 Marvel Comics.

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Comic Book Artist: You started working as a ghost for Atlas?

John Romita: Yes, back in 1949. One of my fellow high school graduates from the School of Industrial Arts and I met on the subway once. I was doing artwork for Coca-Cola; someone else would do the main painting, and I would do little associated pieces for both sides of the displays. I tried to use the same colors as the painters on the Coke bottles and Coke glasses; I could do the Coke logo in my sleep. [laughter] So I saw him on the train, and he said, “How’d you like to pencil for me?” He was an inker who couldn’t pencil. He gave it up in a couple of years, but he was pretty good, and he certainly had a lot of contacts; more than I did. He was working for Stan Lee, but Stan was looking for pencilers. He must’ve bragged to Stan that he could pencil and ink if he needed it, and then he got cold feet. So I penciled for him for six months to a year.

The first one we did was a gangster story, 1920s mobsters with machine guns and old limousines. I was so pressed for time I faked a lot of it, and it was pretty

weak. Stan was turning out 50 titles a month, and he just wanted to fill pages.

I kept working for Stan through this guy for close to a year, and then I got drafted. That was the end of that.

CBA: I’m familiar with your comic strip influences; Caniff, Sickles, Raymond, Foster. Did you admire any comic book artists?

John: Oh, Jack Kirby, from the time I was ten years old and first noticed Captain America Comics was handled differently than any other book. The only line of books that came close to Kirby’s stuff, wherever he was, were the Charlie Biro books, which I think are a forgotten gem in history. He was quite a guy. He was almost doing what Stan Lee was doing years later, without being noticed.

CBA: You came back from the Army….

John: Actually, I was stationed at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. I was doing recruiting posters, believe it or not. A friend of mine was there, and he told me, “If you’re going in the Army, and you don’t go to Georgia for training, give me a call when you’re almost finished with Basic Training.” I did, and he said they were looking to fill the place of some guy who was getting discharged. All he could do was put in for me; his captain was the art director. Korea was a year old when I went in. The guys I trained with did go to Korea; I had been slated to go to Germany, and I was almost rooting to go, because I figured it would be a great experience—but I couldn’t say it out loud because my mother and my girlfriend Virginia would’ve killed me. [laughter] The chances were a million to one, but sure enough, I got the call to go to New York. I spent a year-and-ahalf doing recruiting posters, and while I was still in uniform, I started working for Stan Lee. CBA: So your wife Virginia was your first sweetheart?

John: Oh, yes. We grew up together. I’ve known her since she was nine years old and I was eleven.

CBA: Where was home?

John: In Queens, right on the Nassau County border. I moved there because of Carmine Infantino; he was a buddy of mine. I got his brother into Governor’s Island. Just before I left, I was a Staff Sergeant, and I got Jimmy Infantino in the same way my buddy had gotten me in two years earlier. Later Carmine told me, “Anything I can do, let me know. You want to work for DC? I’ll give you a couple of editors.” So he gave me the romance editors’ number; he didn’t give me Julie Schwartz’s number. [laughter] I was given entrée to DC; at the time he called up Stan Lee and said, “Any work you’ve got you were putting aside for me, give it to John Romita, because I owe COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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him.” Stan said, “You don’t have to beg me to give work to John Romita; I’ll give him all the work he wants!” [laughter] I think that was the first time Carmine realized I was not just a little schnook. [laughter] Carmine and I were buddies, and he taught me a lot. He was a hell of a help to me when I was young. He showed me how to draw women. He said I was doing too lumpy a silhouette, and he was right. He said you need to get a very compact, simple silhouette, and put the details inside. That was one of my turning points. That’s why I was able to do romance stuff.

CBA: So you went in uniform to Stan’s office?

John: Yes. I remember Morrie Kuramoto used to always remark, “Who the hell is that guy in uniform coming up here all the time?”

But I didn’t get to know anybody; I was always so quick to get back on duty. I had a Class A pass, so anytime I wasn’t working I could go uptown.

CBA: At that time there were no staff artists at Atlas, right?

John: No, there was a production department; letterers and colorists.

I remember Morrie and Artie Simek were up there, and a couple of other guys. As far as I know, there weren’t any artists up there. They had disbanded in 1947. Gene Colan told me there was an overnight massacre; they were all let go.

CBA: John Buscema told me that Martin Goodman discovered a whole closet full of inventory material that would never get used, and fired the whole group.

John: That was the nature of the business; that was not uncommon. Everybody had the same specter hanging over them; an editor would buy the stories, and he would pile them up for emergencies.

He was keeping artists busy so he could always call on them. The publishers never understood that. Inventory was a natural thing.

When I was nineteen, an editor named Steve Douglas paid me $200 Fall 1999

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for a twelve-page story; it was very generous. That was like eight weeks pay, and he never used the story. When I went in there, he put it on top of a pile on his desk that was about a foot tall; fivepagers and six-pagers that he was never going to use. He put it on top, just as a gesture, and said, “I’m not going to use it, but it’s here in case I need it.” He supported artists during all sorts of slumps. He was a wonderful guy.

CBA: What was the Spring of ’57 like? Did you think it was all over?

John: I thought I would never be in comics again. I couldn’t believe I got work at DC. When Stan pulled a western book out from under me in the middle of a story, I figured, “That’s it.” I never got paid for it, and I told Virginia, “If Stan Lee ever calls, tell him to go to hell.” [laughter] I’m glad I never did that. [laughter] We were watching the Senate Committee hearings; everything sounded as though this was the death knell.

The bells were tolling; I had been expecting it since the mid-’50s, because I thought television had killed the golden goose.

That was the 10-year cycle Gene Colan feared. When he came back into the business again at Marvel, he said, “I was there in ’47 when they cut our throats. I was there in ’57 when they cut our throats. I don’t want it to happen again.” I told him I thought it was going to be different this time, that ’67 was not going to be the problem.

CBA: Gene worked with you at DC on the romance books, right?

Above: John’s original sketches for his character, The Prowler, originally named “The Stalker.” Thanks to Mike Burkey. Prowler ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Left: Mary Jane Watson in repose by John. From a 1975 portfolio. Courtesy of Al Bigley. Mary Jane ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: John was romance artist supreme at DC before joining the Marvel Age of Comics. Here’s his cover for My Love #4, the artist taking another spin with the lovey-dovey stuff—this time for Stan. Courtesy of Jerry Boyd. ©1970 Marvel Comics.

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John: Yes, he was there for the same reason I was. We were looking for work. I always felt a little like an outsider there, because I was a little bit shy. I would not push myself on anybody. I also tell everybody I used to pass through the flat files that had all the original artwork of all my favorite artists: Kubert, Gil Kane. All the sensational stuff I could’ve had—just open the drawer and take it out—and I was too afraid and too ashamed to admit that I would do that. I just didn’t want to be pushy; I regret every minute of it. [laughter] CBA: What editors did you work for on DC’s romance line in the 1960s?

John: Zeena Brodie was there when I first started. Phyllis Reed had the longest tenure. Then I worked for Jack Miller for the last year or so.

CBA: Did you ever try for an editorial position at DC? John: Phyllis Reed was leaving, and she did want to put me up for editor of the romance section, but I’d be losing my own top artist when I came in. [laughter] I was doing all the major stories, the cover stories. We would do a cover, then write a story about it.

CBA: Who were most of your writers?

John: I was working a lot with Bob Kanigher’s stuff. He complimented me one day in the elevator; he liked what I was doing with the romance stuff. In my stupid naiveté, I said, “I hope you don’t mind I made a few changes in the stories.” He almost went through

the roof of the elevator! [laughter] He said, “What the hell are you talking about?” I swallowed hard and said, “Sometimes I’d add a panel, or take out a panel and do double duty with your copy in one panel.” He just tore me apart before we got to the lobby. He shredded me. [laughter] CBA: Were you ever interested in writing?

John: I do think about it, but every time I try it, I tie myself up in knots, because my writing process is so long and drawn out that I would never get it done. I’m too much of a perfectionist, and it would not flow out of me quick enough to make a deadline.

CBA: Did you catch wind of nefarious things like kickbacks?

John: Actually, Jack Miller was very blatant about it. After being with DC for about seven years with all the women editors, I never had the slightest hint of kickbacks, or any kind of seamy underside.

Jack Miller takes over, and the first Christmas he had me at his desk to talk about a script, and there were gift certificates on his desk, to be signed by artists. I was too naive and stupid to even know what it was about. I asked one of the other artists about it, and he said, “Oh, did you give him one? Did you sign one?” It was like a $100 gift certificate for Macy’s. I said, “No.” I didn’t even know what it was for. He gave me one, but I just put it down, going, “Oh, that’s interesting.” [laughter] I was such a stupid kid. I don’t know why he kept giving me work; I guess I was regarded as one of the top men in the romance department. I think he probably was pissed off at me after that. [laughter] I never heard about it at Marvel; Stan Lee was above reproach, but I heard about it at other places. An editor at DC started telling guys he was investing in an art studio, and he wanted us all to work for him. He was dangling big money in front of us, and he had me conned into thinking I was going to illustrate a book on the American Indian with him. I was even giving him samples; that’s how stupid I was. What he did was say he needed a little money to get off the ground with the project. I was getting about $360 for a 15-page job.

DC’s practice at the time was to give you a script and a check for the job at the same time; the editor said, “What I want you to do is write me out a personal check for $360 after I pay you for this, and then I’ll pay you for the next job—it’ll really be for this one.” I swallowed that. It went that way for about six months, and sure enough, the day after Christmas 1964, he died. I went into the office, and there’s about half a dozen guys all with sweat beads all over their foreheads.

Some of those guys were $2000 into the company, and as far as the company knew, the artists and that editor had pulled a scam. They didn’t treat me badly; I paid them back the money—I did the artwork for it, I think. Other guys, they said, “If you don’t lay a check for $2000 on the desk right now, we’re gonna have the police come.”

CBA: At some point, the romance work started drying up. Were you eager to move on?

John: A few months later, they said, “We’ve got so much inventory, we’re just not going to buy any more artwork for a while.” I was too stupid to say, “How about taking me into Julie Schwartz and introducing me?” I did know a few of the production people and some of the editors, but I never got an offer from them, so I went over to Stan Lee. I always had a feeling somebody was keeping me out of the adventure department.

About two weeks after I left DC, I was assigned to do Daredevil.

I got a call from George Kashdan asking me if I wanted to do Metamorpho. Ramona Fradon just had left it, and I regretted it; I had a handshake deal with Stan, and I think they would’ve paid me more. Only my foolish, naive honor kept me from telling Stan I’m going back to DC. So I stayed with Stan; I guess I did the right thing.

CBA: Why did you work over Kirby’s breakdowns on those first Daredevils? Was that a request from Stan?

John: I had inked an Avengers job for Stan, and I told him I just wanted to ink. I felt like I was burned out as a penciler after eight years of romance work. I didn’t want to pencil any more; in fact, I couldn’t work at home any more—I couldn’t discipline myself to do it. He said, “Okay,” but the first chance he had he shows me this Daredevil story somebody had started and he didn’t like it, and he wanted somebody else to do it. While I was up there turning in a cover, he asked me to sort of sketch out how I would work out this certain page of Daredevil. So I sketched it out quickly in pencil and he loved it. He said, “Wanna help me out? How about penciling this COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

Daredevil story?” Like a dummy, I said, “Okay.” [laughter] I did it, and when I came in with the first four pages, he loved the splash page, but the next three pages he said were very dull, like romance pages. He said, “I’ll tell you what; just to get you rolling…” He calls up Jack Kirby right there and says, “Listen Jack, how quick can you do 10 pages of breakdowns?” Except they weren’t breakdowns, they were very sketchy. For some lucky reason, I kept one of those 12” x 18” original breakdown pages from Kirby; I have one in my files. It’s a revelation; there are some panels where he’d really dazzle you with some great shapes, and some panels he would just do silhouette and call it Matt Murdock; he’d say “MM” or “DD,” just outlines with no expression, unless there was supposed to be a horrified expression, and he’d put a big mouth and big eyes. They were just samples of pacing; he chose the size of the panels and how much time to devote to each sequence, which was a pacing guide. So I took those back, and it immediately taught me everything I needed in that one story. Then he did the next one too, #13, and after I was finished with those 40 pages, I knew exactly what Stan wanted. From then on, I did it myself.

One of the things that enticed me to do that was Jack Kirby had penciled the cover of #13, and I had a chance to ink it. It was one of the most exciting things I ever had to do; to this day, I still get a tingle when I think of inking that cover. I had such a ball with it.

CBA: Wasn’t it terrifying following up Kirby and Ditko on books?

John: I was a little too dizzy to even realize it. [laughter] I knew Jack Kirby was an icon, but I had only seen some of Steve Ditko’s mystery stuff. I was not really aware enough to understand what a great man I was following then. Plus I thought I was just temporarily filling in for him.

CBA: Spider-Man actually picked up in sales after Ditko left and you came on. Do you think it’s because you got it away from the soap opera element, and a true romance element had entered the book?

John: Everybody does assume that’s what it was—that I was bringing a little more glamour to it. To listen to the fans at the time, what I was losing was the mystery and the shadowy stuff. They thought it was much too much broad daylight, and too much cuteness. That’s a funny twist, because Stan was worried when I was doing it. He didn’t threaten to take me off it, but he constantly was telling me I was making Peter Parker too handsome, and everybody too good looking. Even the villains were starting to look good, and I was taking age away from Aunt May. [laughter] I think there was another element behind the rise in sales. For about a year, Ditko and Stan were absolutely disagreeing on plotting. Ditko was plotting, and they weren’t even talking. It already had probably gotten a little bit confusing to readers for about a year. So between the fact that I brought in a new audience, and didn’t lose too much of the old audience I guess, I got the benefit of the rebound.

CBA: Did you ever meet Steve?

John: Yes, I met him a couple of times. I never spent enough time talking to him, to my regret. I was always busy running through the halls in an emergency, but I always wished I could’ve.

My first impression of Spider-Man was that this was a teenaged Clark Kent with glasses. I said to Stan, “This is your number two selling book? I can’t believe it.” I had never seen Spider-Man before 1965. July of ’65 was the first time I had even heard about it. I didn’t even keep an eye on the DC books while I was working there. I don’t know how I stayed in the business. I did not expect comics to last; all of us were expecting to be working in another business in a year. I never kept any of my books; I didn’t keep my Captain America books from the ’50s. Frankly, I thought the comic book industry was dying, and what’s the use of worrying about it?

CBA: Did Stan tell you when Spider-Man started outselling Fantastic Four?

John: Oh yes, he wasn’t hiding that. It must’ve been a year later; we didn’t get the figures very quickly in those days. I really didn’t trust those figures; if the figures said you’re selling well, you’re probably selling better than that. Those figures were very suspect; like the record business, publishers were very sneaky, and they didn’t want to share the profits, but you were the first one to share their losses.

CBA: You were working at home all the time?

John: I worked at home from 1949 to 1965. In ’65 I took a job at Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

[advertising agency] BBD&O to do storyboarding. I just felt I had dried up, burned out; I felt I needed a steady job, a steady income. I went to Stan and told him I took the job at BBD&O because I could not discipline myself at home; I can’t get the work out.

I took the job on a Friday morning; Friday at lunch I told Stan I wouldn’t be able to help him anymore, and I didn’t think there was much future in it anyway. I got about two hours of him talking me into staying in comics, giving me stuff like “Wouldn’t you rather be a big fish in a little pond instead of a little fish in a big pond?” and all of that stuff. I told him I’d be making $250 a week at BBD&O, and he said, “I’ll guarantee you $250 a week, even if I don’t have a script for you.” I didn’t have to learn new ropes, so I took the easy way out. I stayed in comics, and that’s how I stayed with Stan.

I just got a letter from my buddy at BBD&O. The letter says, “30 years ago, you came and went in one day. We always joke about what would have happened if you had stayed. You would have been a rich man, but you wouldn’t be a legend in your own time!” [laughter] CBA: Which would’ve been better? [laughter] John: The money would’ve been nice. The only thing is I probably would’ve worked harder over there. As hard as I worked in comics, I think it was harder to work at BBD&O. I was up there because Mort Meskin was there, and I wanted to work next to one of my idols. I spoke to him while I was up there for the interview, and he said, “It’s not easy work, but it’s a snap for comics artists. Other people don’t know how to turn out storyboards like we do. You won’t have any trouble at all.” He was a hell of a guy. He had to get out of comics because it almost gave him a nervous breakdown.

CBA: So you went to the Marvel office every morning?

John: Yes. The first year Stan left it open to me. I told him I needed to come into the office; it’s the only way I’m going to produce. Then I said, “If I pull an all-nighter to get a job in, I may not come in the next day.” He said, “Do it any way you want.” I really had it made. I was in there using their materials and drawing

Above: They tell us that John was instrumental in developing the “Death of Gwen Stacy” storyline, but hasn’t that been covered enough in the fan press? Let’s put her to rest! Here’s a commissioned drawing by John. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: John’s Kirbyesque take on the Fantastic Four, an assignment most intimidating sez Mr. Romita. ©1970 Marvel Comics.

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Above: Unused What If cover of one butt-ugly Peter Parker! Known for his renderings of beautiful women, who knew Romita had this talent for drawing nasty critters! Thanks to Mike Burkey for this, err, gem! ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Next page: A reprise of probably John’s best-remembered drawing: The introduction of one foxy Mary Jane Watson. All the more memorable was Stan’s great line (first heard in Spidey #42) as spoken by M.J.: “Face it, Tiger. You just hit the jackpot!” Top is the final art (done for a trading card series) and the bottom is the penciled rough. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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table; it really saved my life. I stayed there for 30 years.

CBA: Were you doing any licensing work while you were in the office?

John: I was doing some toy designs, some ads. I remember working with a lot of guys who weren’t Marvel artists—Archie artists and other people—doing peanut butter ads. For about two years, our advertising department would sell big companies a comic page of advertising, and they would say, “Don’t let your advertising agency do it; you want to get an authentic comic page look, done by our comic artists.” We were getting a lot of that stuff. For a while there, I almost went crazy dealing with some ad agencies who were trying to cover their own behinds; I would send them a comic page of artwork, and they would butcher it trying to give it to their own artists, because they were on retainer. One time I did a Sunday page, and we had it colored as a color indication, marked up with codes. They called me up and said, “What’s the black-&-white art for?” I said, “That’s to shoot from; the other thing is just a color guide.” The moron didn’t understand; he had his engraver take that sloppy, marked-up color guide, rout out all the code numbers, and patch up

all the coloring. When Sol Brodsky brought in the proof of that page, I said, “How did they get this so wrong? The guide was very clear.”

They never used the black-&-white art; they shot from the bad color guide. I wanted to go up there and strangle somebody.

CBA: Were you doing work at home at night?

John: Unfortunately. That was a stupid idea I had of working in the office. Stan started taking advantage of it almost immediately; cover sketches, corrections, and occasionally toy designs, and I was supposed to be doing Spider-Man. He immediately started to stretch me the wrong way, and I let him do it.

CBA: Did you have your own office?

John: Yeah, right next to his. He used to put a sign up saying “John Romita cannot be disturbed today” and he’d be the first one through the door with an emergency. [laughter] It was almost like a vaudeville show. I did the same thing for the four years of the newspaper strip; I was doing the strip and trying to keep my job. But it never worked. It was always double-duty.

CBA: Did you have a title?

John: I had an unofficial title. He told everybody I was the Art Director. The funny thing is, just before I went into Special Projects (I worked with Sol Brodsky doing coloring books and children books) Stan Lee, in a salary dispute and in order to get what he felt he deserved, had to claim he was Art Director. So they stripped me of the title; they called me Art Editor. Marie Severin was my Assistant Art Director, and for years after that she thought we had pulled a fast one; that Stan had stripped me of that title just before she was going to succeed me. I couldn’t explain it to her; she wouldn’t believe me.

It was just an unofficial title; I didn’t want the job. Frank Giacoia took over for me for about a month once, and felt he had done the job, and was insulted when they took it back and gave it to me. I told him, “Frank, if I had my druthers, you’d have that job full-time.”

I didn’t want it; I wanted to just do my books.

CBA: Why was Frank selected for the job?

John: He was helping me out, doing sketches at the time. He was always looking for a way to compensate for his lack of speed. He couldn’t keep it up, and if they had given him the job he would’ve abdicated it in a matter of weeks, because he was not a quick penciler.

He was the greatest inker I ever saw, but he didn’t like inking.

CBA: Did you hire people? Was Verpoorten before or after you?

John: When I just started Spider-Man, he was brought on as a production man. They asked me if I wanted John Jr. on staff, and I said I would not hire him, because I didn’t want him to suffer through the stigma of having to follow his father. Marie Severin actually put him on staff. I tried not to hire and fire; it was not my cup of tea.

CBA: Was everything out of the Bullpen in the mid-to-late-’60s coming from Stan?

John: It was all Stan. Even when Roy was first Editor-in-Chief, it was still Stan until Stan left town. Everything had to be okayed by Stan, no matter what we did. Even when I was given carte blanche on some projects, I still had to clear it through Stan. In fact, even if I didn’t have to, I would’ve anyway, just out of habit. He was the Editor-in-Chief and Art Director, and everything else. From the day I first walked in there when I was 19, I couldn’t see it any other way.

CBA: Did you guys feel funny when he would get the lion’s share of the publicity?

John: Well, we joked about it. I would kid him about it. Originally nobody thought about plotting credits, except Ditko. Ditko got plotting credits, then Jack Kirby got plotting credits immediately. I got no credits at all during the first run; I got them in retrospect. Later on, he would tell people we co-plotted. I never was offended by it, and I always assumed it was his right, because it was thought these characters really came from him. Even the ones Jack Kirby created with him, I felt were full of the Stan Lee stamp. I always assumed he had a right to do this. Now, when he left the office, and it was still “Stan Lee Presents”, I was very puzzled. [laughter] That was just good PR for Marvel. He always took the benefit of the fact that they figured continuity was more important than reality. He was called Publisher of Marvel Comics for years when he was out in California, but Mike Hobson was Publisher.

CBA: Did you actually co-plot on the Spider-Man books going COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

into the ’70s? There seems to be characters like the Kingpin and Black Widow who have a very strong Romita stamp.

John: The only thing he used to do from 1966-72 was come in and leave a note on my drawing table saying “Next month, the Rhino.” That’s all; he wouldn’t tell me anything; how to handle it.

Then he would say “The Kingpin.” I would then take it upon myself to put some kind of distinctive look to the guy. For instance, if it’s the kingpin of crime, I don’t want him to look like another guy in a suit who in silhouette looks like every other criminal. So I made him a 400-pound monster; that was my idea. I made him bald, I put the stickpin on him, I gave him that kind of tycoon look. (I later saw in a DC story from the 1950s a splash page where there was some tycoon who was wearing the exact outfit that was on the Kingpin. [laughter] If it was in my mind, I never remembered seeing that.)

I did the costume on the Black Widow. One of my favorite strips from when I was a kid was Miss Fury. They had done a Miss Fury book at Marvel, and when I found out they had the rights to her, I said I’d love to do a Miss Fury book sometime. I had done an updated drawing of Miss Fury, and Stan said, “Why don’t we redesign the Black Widow costume based on Miss Fury?” So I took the mask off her face, and made the Black Widow the one in the patent leather jumpsuit. That was why the Black Widow changed.

We would have a verbal plot together. First it was two or three hours, then it was an hour. Stan would tell me who he would like to be the villain, and personal life “threads” he would like carried on.

Generally we would select the setting; sometimes we wouldn’t even have time to select the settings, like “it takes place on a subway.” He would give me that, and tell me where he wanted it to end. I would have to fill in all the blanks.

CBA: You would take care of all the subplots?

John: A lot of times I injected stuff in there. For instance, when he asked me to do Robertson, I think I decided to make him a black man. I can’t swear to that. I wrote up a whole history for the guy, which he never used, by the way. My original character sketch had him with a cauliflower ear, because I wanted him to be a former Golden Gloves champ who worked his way up from the gutter and became the night editor of the Daily Bugle. I had this whole family thing written out for him, which he used later, with the rebellious kid and the beautiful, long-suffering wife because he worked nights.

The first Captain Stacy sketch was based on one of my favorite actors, Charles Bickford. I would take people like that and inject them into the stories all the time. The Mary Jane character was already established. It’s funny; I was rereading the books again, and Stan and I always say in our interviews that we hadn’t decided whether to make her beautiful or not. I just saw one of the early Spider-Man’s from about three months before I took over, where Betty Brant and Liz Allen met Mary Jane. Even though a flower was covering her face, when they left the office, they said, “My God, Peter knows that girl? She’s beautiful!” I couldn’t believe it was right in front of my eyes for years in the reference, and I never noticed it. Stan had already decided to make her beautiful. When I did it, I thought we decided then, at that time, to make her beautiful. He must’ve decided earlier, or he forgot. [laughter] CBA: You focused on Iceman for one, and Medusa. Were you looking to spin those off?

John: Medusa was one of my favorite characters. I always thought I would like to do a series on Medusa too, but I never made the time. Anytime I was free of Spider-Man, I was generally bailing out another book like Captain America or Fantastic Four. He would tell me, “I’ve got to take you off Spider-Man” but he would always leave me with the responsibility of keeping Spider-Man up to snuff. I was inking it, I was touching up pencils. Stan would give me the plot, and I would plot it out with Gil over the phone. I did that with John Buscema for Spider-Man. I had the problem of trying to keep John’s interest, because he hated Spider-Man so much, mostly because of the big cast of characters.

CBA: When do you remember starting to talk about putting a drug message in Spider-Man? John: That was a direct result from a government agency who sent Stan a letter, asking him to do something to put forth the message that drugs are bad for kids. Stan took the ball and ran, and I plotted it out with Stan and Roy. Once again, Gil got the plum. We were Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

going to do it, and I was pulled off to do Captain America or something, and Gil gets the stories.

He got the death of Captain Stacy, he got the drug issues, he got the death of Gwen Stacy, the hundredth issue, and the vampire Morbius; Roy and he plotted that out. I decided to give Spider-Man two extra arms. It’s a natural; if he’s got the spider blood and he gets an infection, maybe it could really manifest itself strangely. I told Gil about it over the phone, because he was doing the story. He came in with a drawing where Spider-Man had two extra arms and two extra legs coming out of his thighs, which really looked crazy! [laughter] I said, “That’s not the idea. Give him two extra sets of arms.” Then 15

Above: Rarely-seen Dallas Times Herald insert with cover art by John. Marie Severin had the interior art chores and she supplied CBA with the pencil breakdowns.

Hopefully, we’ll share them with you soon! Thanks to Mike Burkey for the above. Spider-Man and Ringmaster ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Next page: The cover and splash for a Sanger Harris store giveaway promotion, as drawn by John, and courtesy of Mike Burkey. Spider-Man, Hulk ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. 16

when he did that, everyone in the office laughed their heads off; they thought it was the dumbest thing they ever saw. I thought it was a great idea; I thought it was a natural, and everybody laughed.

I’m still hurt! [laughter] CBA: The bullpen was growing.

John: It started to get out of hand there for a while. When Roy was in charge, there was still a lot of continuity. Roy and I saw things the same way. When guys like Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Gerry Conway, and then Archie Goodwin came in, I was dealing with people that had a different bent on things than I did. We—Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway and I—designed a lot of characters together, like Wolverine and the Punisher. I always got along with everybody I had to work with. You can’t be abrasive in those situations; how the hell are you going to cooperate?

CBA: Did you ever feel like pulling a hissy fit when you wanted control of a book?

John: No, I never did. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to make those decisions.

I’m not an executive and I don’t want the responsibility of that. What I always told Stan and everybody else: I’ll take the Art Director job.

Jim Shooter gave me the official title, and I told him my style is this: If any editor needs my advice, they get it, but if they don’t take it I’m not going to say a word, because that’s their business.

They’re the ones with the credit of Editor, and they’re the ones with the responsibility. I don’t feel Art Directors should hire and fire; I can advise, and when they use the wrong artist—for instance, when Todd McFarlane got the Hulk—I just said, “I don’t like what he’s doing. I think he’s doing a very strange-looking Hulk.” I often wonder if the Hulk would’ve been our biggest character if McFarlane had stayed on it.

That’s an interesting quandary I’ll always carry with me.

CBA: When did Stan stop coming into the office every day?

John: Even during the ’60s, there were whole years where he would only come in three days a week, and sometimes two days a week. He would stay home and write one or two books a day. He was always absent from the office quite a bit. He generally was in every week, but not always every day. He still made decisions from home, and they’d hold decisions for him until when he came in. Then when he went to California, that was a whole different thing.

CBA: But he trusted you guys.

John: Yes. The reason I became Art Director is because I had

learned his indoctrination routine with new artists. Shortly after I started working in the office, he would meet a new artist and want to tell him everything he wanted to tell everybody else; what kind of excitement he wanted, the “Marvel” way, think like Kirby, excitement. I got that routine pat, and one time he heard me telling it to a young artist because Stan was busy. He said, “From now on, when a young artist comes in, I’m just gonna send him in to you.” That’s how I sort of became Art Director without portfolio.

CBA: What lessons did you take from Kirby’s work at Marvel?

John: From the time I was 10 years old, I could look at Kirby’s stuff and see exactly why he was doing it. I felt the same way about Caniff; I used to understand why he did certain things, and I immediately translated it to my drawings. I was just blessed with that.

CBA: Did you see Jack when he came into the office? Did you talk to him?

John: Oh, yes. We used to go out to lunch at the Playboy Club; sometimes four or five of us. We used to have wonderful conversations; I treasure them. You may have heard I used to drive home with them; whenever he was in for a story conference, Stan would drive Jack home. My house was on the way, so they’d drive me home, and then take Jack home. Sitting in the back seat of Stan’s convertible with the top down, going up Queens Boulevard, listening to them plot stories, I felt like I was sitting behind Cecil B. DeMille’s director’s chair. It was the most wonderful thing; I felt like a kid back there.

CBA: In the past, you’ve told that great anecdote about realizing they weren’t listening to the other!

John: I knew that even when I heard them plotting in other instances! [laughter] Jack would say, “Stanley, I think I’ve got an idea. How ’bout this?” Stan would say, “That’s not bad, Jack, but I’d rather see it this way.” Jack would absolutely forget what Stan said, and Stan would forget what Jack said. [laughter] I would bet my house that Jack never read the books after Stan wrote them; that’s why he could claim with a straight face that Stan never wrote anything except what Jack put in the notes. He was kidding himself; he never read them.

CBA: Did you see any of the problems Jack was having?

John: I had heard all of the inside stuff, like from the HeraldTribune article that insulted Jack, that he thought Stan was a part of.

Stan could not convince him of that, and certainly could not convince Roz that Stan hadn’t encouraged the writer to make fun of Jack. I know for a fact that Stan would rather bite his tongue than say such a thing, because Jack’s success would’ve been his success. There’s no reason to run Jack down. Stan had the position; he didn’t have to fight Jack for it. I don’t think Jack ever wanted the editorial position; if he wanted credit, he deserved credit. Stan used to give him credit all the time; he used to say most of these ideas are more than half Jack’s. Why they would think Stan would try to make him look bad in print is beyond me; but from that time on—which is very close to when I started there in the middle ’60s—when the Herald-Tribune article came out, there were very strained relations, and I thought it was a matter of time before Jack would leave; but I thought he would never leave, because I always figured if I had a success like Fantastic Four and Thor and Captain America, I don’t think I could leave; so I always assumed he’d stay grumbling, but Carmine made a deal Jack couldn’t refuse.

CBA: Stan is a well-loved guy, and he takes a lot of heat, but he’s also a showman and he has that hyperbole.

John: Oh, he’s a con man, but he did deliver. Anyone who says he didn’t earn what he’s got is not reading the facts. Believe me, he earned everything he gets. That’s why I never begrudged him getting any of the credit, and as far as I’m concerned, he can have his name above any of my stuff, anytime he wants. Every time I took a story in to Stan—and if Jack were reading it, he’d have felt the same way—I had only partial faith in my picture story. I worked it out and I believed in the characters, but I was only half-sure it was going to work. I always had my misgivings. By the time Stan would write it, I’d start to look at that story and say, “Son of a gun, it’s almost as though I planned it,” and I’d believe a hundredfold more in that story after he wrote it than before—and if Jack would’ve allowed himself to, he would’ve had the same satisfaction. I sincerely believe that.

I think Stan deserves everything he gets. Everyone complains, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

FALL 1999

including me sometimes. I used to say, “I do the work, and Stan cashes the checks.” [laughter] It was only a half joke, but it’s the kind of a grumble you do when you’re tired.

CBA: There was a scramble when Jack left.

John: Jack had sent in a half-finished story, and I went in to Stan.

My first assumption was that Fantastic Four was finished; we wouldn’t do the book any more, just out of respect. I found myself saying to Stan, “Who the hell’s going to do FF? We don’t have anybody good enough!” He said, “You’re gonna do it,” and I almost fell down. I didn’t feel qualified to do it, and I sweated through four issues with Jack Kirby books surrounding me. [laughter] Every inch of my drawing table had a Jack Kirby page on it, and I did those four strictly from Jack’s stuff. I felt obliged to make it a seamless transition.

CBA: Was Martin Goodman in the office all the time?

John: He used to be at first. We were cordial—always a smile—but he had a habit, when he was still coming in every day in the late 1960s, of asking Stan and Sol Brodsky, “What the hell does John Romita do for his money?” [laughter] I’m a guy who never sat one minute without working; he might’ve seen me once sitting and joking with somebody, and from then on, he must’ve said, “What does he do for his money?” Stan had to do a tap dance every so often to make him keep me on staff. I couldn’t get a raise out of him. I had to have a siege mentality one time when I asked for a $100 raise after two years without any increase. He wouldn’t give it to me; Sol and Stan had to talk to him for about two days before he’d finally give me the raise. He was absolutely out of touch. There were days when he used to say, “This is crazy. Why are we trying all these goofy things? Why don’t we do the things that are successful and stop experimenting?” I think Martin Goodman held us back for at least five years. It was the biggest day of our lives when he sold the company.

He was a burden for us. The Spectacular Spider-Man books were a huge success, and he refused to put them on because some crony of his told him, “Why do you want to start doing oversize books?

Why don’t you stick to the books that fit the racks?” So help me, that’s a quote. “Stan, why do we want to do these magazines, with black-&-white?” In fact, he’s the one who chickened out and made us do full-color in the second issue. We would’ve stolen the march on the entire black-&-white magazine process if we had gotten our foot in the door. It sold like 58%, and it was a 35¢ magazine! Martin screwed it up; he dropped it before he found out the final figures.

Then he wouldn’t admit he was wrong when he got the figures. It was one of the most aggravating episodes of our lives. He was uneasy with breaking the mold; he did not like change.

CBA: Weren’t they doing the men’s magazines across the hall?

John: On a different floor. Sometimes I would do illustrations for the men’s magazines. I remember doing some Vietnam battle scenes, and a couple of gangster things; spot drawings, black-&-white.

Mario Puzo wrote for those magazines. So did Bruce Jay Friedman, the playwright who wrote Steambath. Goodman would tell people he was a magazine publisher; he’d never tell them he did comics.

That’s how he was.

CBA: Do you remember when the company was sold to Perfect Film?

John: That was a little nerve-wracking, because Perfect Film was not known by us. If DC or Archie Comics or somebody like that had bought us, I would’ve felt better, because Perfect Film was a completely unknown entity to us, and sure enough, they almost fouled us up.

CBA: Did the collapse of the Saturday Evening Post—also owned

by Perfect—make you nervous?

John: Sure, all of us artists always feel nervous about things like that. Magazines were dying, and we thought comics were next, and we were always disturbed by those kind of things. They destroyed Saturday Evening Post overnight, didn’t they?

CBA: Well, yeah. It took a number of years of bad business decisions.

John: Actually, it had been dying already, but they didn’t help it. It was terrible. They had nobody with taste in that whole organization.

CBA: And yet, Marvel was given a relief as far as being able to publish an expanded number of books.

John: Oh, yeah—and getting rid of Martin Goodman was a good Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

thing.

CBA: When did Martin go?

John: Actually, he had a period where he stayed on….

CBA: That was part of the deal, right?

John: Yes, like a three-year deal, and the other interesting thing was that his son, Chip, was supposed to be president. I think the deal was, “I’ll stay on for three years—the transition period—and then, when I leave, I’d like my son to take over as president.” Of course, they probably chuckled up their sleeve at that, and as soon as Martin was gone, Chip Goodman was gone, too.

CBA: And what happened then?

John: That’s why Martin started Atlas Comics, and also he did about three or four men’s magazines to give his son a job.

CBA: That was out of revenge, wasn’t it?

John: Well, actually, he was mad at Perfect Film so bad because they double-crossed him, that he put out Atlas Comics and his plan was to try to destroy Marvel Comics!

CBA: Did they try to get you?

John: You know, he never did. I don’t know why. I think Roy Thomas might have gotten an offer, but I was always hurt that he never asked me! I don’t think he really thought much of me, and I also suspected he thought I was in Stan’s hip pocket; he thought I was a Stan-loyal man.

CBA: Was there any concern when those books came out, or did you just dismiss them on sight?

John: Well, it was a little disturbing, and they did look like an interesting package, and they were getting some big artists!

CBA: And they looked like Marvel Comics.

John: Yes, they looked good, and you know, his plan and his vow 17

Above: John tells us this was a rejected cover sketch for an Italian magazine featuring Marvel reprints. Now, when did John ever rest, exactly? Courtesy of the artist. Spider-Man and Mysterio ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

18

was to stick with this until they became the top comic company in the business, and he promised… oh, what promises he made! The artist friends of mine were promised royalties that were outlandishly good, and none of it ever came to pass. Inside of 18 months he quit.

He just dropped it; he lied to everybody.

CBA: Yes, with the comics, it was about six months wasn’t it?

John: He screwed Stan’s brother Larry, too, because he gave Larry the editor-in-chief job of the comics, and then he brought some young guy in, Jeff Rovin, and that undercut Larry immediately, and made Larry’s life miserable until Larry quit. A terrible company.

CBA: What happened when Sol Brodsky [Marvel’s Production Manager] went to form Skywald?

John: Sol actually never had any problem with Stan. Stan was all for Sol, and he trusted Sol with his life. Stan just wished Sol good luck, even though—Sol had promised not to do anything but reprints, and then when he started putting out original stuff, I don’t know if Stan ever got mad, but he never said it to me. And then when Sol went bust and came back, Stan took him without a murmur—he was always for Sol. CBA: Sol was head of the production department?

John: Yeah, he was head of production, and then he was vicepresident/administrator; and Stan, I think, was going to make him editor-in-chief, but I think there was a hue and cry among the staff, and a lot of freelancers said they wouldn’t work for Sol if he were editor-in-chief, because Sol was a bottom-line guy, and there was a general dissatisfaction, and Stan backed off from making him editor-

in-chief, and offered it to me. I turned it down, I said, “I have no interest in becoming the referee between the freelancers and the front office.” I would’ve been a punching bag.

CBA: What was your relationship with freelancers? If they were late, did you have to call them?

John: There were times I had to call up John Buscema (which is like me calling up Milton Caniff and saying, “Milton, your pencils are a little hairy”). I had to tell John that the Filipino artists didn’t understand some of his breakdowns, they were unclear what certain shapes meant. And John, of course, would scream over the phone, saying, “What the hell kind of clowns do you have working out there?!” He would really do some very rough breakdowns, but most of us would know what they meant. The Filipino artists, not knowing the comics vernacular, didn’t know what all those shapes meant.

CBA: What was the deal with the Filipino artists? Was it just trying to get cheaper labor, or were you making more books?

John: We were starting a black-&-white line of books then, outside the comics, and we felt we needed a bunch of guys who were more illustrators than comic book artists. And these were pretty good comic book artists. They had about 50 guys in the Philippines who were doing comics, and maybe 20 of them were top-of-the-line, just great artists. I even spent a week in the Philippines at Tony DeZuniga’s house, talking to 40 artists who couldn’t speak English!

Tony and Mary DeZuniga were interpreting, and I don’t really know what they told them, and I don’t know what the artists said to them!

CBA: As far as you remember, did Tony and Mary have an “in” with the [dictator Ferdinand] Marcos regime?

John: I remember Tony couldn’t have been in too good with the government because he had bought a car, and it was up on blocks in the inspector-general’s office area for months and months—they wouldn’t release it to Tony! If he had any pull, it didn’t help much.

CBA: I had heard that Mary was related to Imelda Marcos.

John: She might have been. So they came to New York and set up on Lexington Avenue a very big operation, and brought some artists over. That’s how Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala came over. They were all having trouble getting over, and then Tony found a way to get them here, and he opened up a stable of artists, figuring he was going to clean up, and then they found out they were living with rented furniture in the studio for show! It was so strange.

CBA: What happened to Tony?

John: I don’t know, I know that they moved first upstate, then they moved to the Midwest, and then to the West Coast. I never heard about them any more after that. I haven’t seen any work by him for years.

CBA: I’d love to devote an issue to the Filipino school.

John: I’ll tell you, there was some wonderful work. I think Alex Niño was a genius; he was one of a kind. He and José Garcia-Lopez are in a class by themselves.

CBA: Did you ever try to get Garcia-Lopez?

John: If Stan did, or if editors-in-chief tried, I don’t know about it.

I never heard any attempts, because we figured he was locked up.

CBA: The cover designs of Marvel Comics in the early ’70s conformed to the same rigid format. There suddenly was just a square for an illustration with the title of the story underneath, with a lot of verbiage around. Do you remember this really locked-in design when Gil did most of the covers?

John: We did it for about a year, with a margin in it. They were looking to stand out from the rest of the crowd. I think Roy was involved. I think Gil might’ve designed it. I don’t remember how much input I had on it; all I remember—that may have been when I was doing special projects.

CBA: Were you involved with the overall look of the books?

John: No, the only thing I was ever involved in was if they had a guy who they didn’t think told the story clearly, or well enough, they’d ask me to talk to him. I never was in favor of the look of the books, or the techniques particularly. Jim Shooter would use me to try to indoctrinate artists on technique, a formula for “clear comics.”

He asked me to do things that I’d never done on my own, things I hated to ask artists to do, like to do everything as a diagram.

CBA: Now that you were working on staff for Marvel Comics, did you keep an eye on the competition?

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

John: Not as much as I should have. I really should have. The only time I did is when Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe or somebody else would show the books around, and once in a while, I’d go to a comics shop and look at stuff and notice. For instance, I was very interested in Neal Adams, who I thought was a sensational, new breath in the life of comics. Then I thought that perhaps he had brought along a whole generation of clones that followed him, but they didn’t know as much about it as he did. Sienkewicz did the same thing later, in the ’80s.

I know the covers that Roy, Gil and I did together—Roy would use Gil as his volume man; in other words, we’d get together once every week or two weeks, and plot out a batch of covers. We would go over The Avengers, Captain America, and all the other titles that needed some hype, creative design, and big profile characters. So, Gil would do a very quick ball-point pen sketch on a pad, and Roy would tell him to do this, make the figure bigger, make the figure smaller, turn it this way, turn it that way, and he’d ask me, and I’d say, “Yeah, why don’t you reverse it?” and that kind of stuff. Then Gil would go home and do the pencils in two days for five or six covers, send them in, and then I would be given the problem of making them accurate, because the costumes were invariably irregular and needed correcting (some characters had a cloak on who shouldn’t, and vice-versa). Gil’s pet trick was all of his background characters had circles with dots for eyes, and I would have to put some flesh into them, some hair and coats and put a bag of groceries in some woman’s hands. Gil was in such a hurry to turn these covers out that I used to do a lot of the sidework, and that drove me nuts— that’s when I used to grumble; but it was in the interest of speed, and I certainly didn’t disagree with Roy, because I thought we couldn’t get that much work out of anybody else, and we might as well do it with Gil. He had such a flair for covers—and, as you must know, many a great artist doesn’t translate into a great cover artist. For instance, I think John Buscema, as much as I admire him—and I would kill to be able to draw like him—was not a good cover man; he didn’t think in terms of covers.

Some guys had a flair for covers, and Gil was one of those. Roy harnessed that power, and I helped by filling in a lot of details, and making a lot of adjustments. Gil had a tendency to make everybody six-foot-nine….

CBA: The idealized Burne Hogarth version.

John: And let me tell you, whenever I inked Gil’s Spider-Man, I used to always enlarge the head on Spider-Man, to make him fivefoot-ten instead of six-foot-nine.

CBA: Did you try to get Gil in-house?

John: No, I thought he was too valuable on the outside turning out pages! And of course, we couldn’t keep him very long, he would always go back-and-forth to DC, and then do his own, like….

Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

CBA: Blackmark and His Name Is… Savage!

John: He was ambitious… anybody that fast, you can’t control them. He once told me this work was a joy to him.

CBA: Do you remember Bill Everett?

John: Oh, I worked with Bill in the office for years.

CBA: What was Bill like?

John: Oh, Bill was great! I also worked with Jerry Siegel for about six months, right next to me.

CBA: Jerry Siegel?!

John: Yeah, he was up at Marvel doing staff writing.

CBA: When did he come on board?

John: He was there very early on, like ’68, I think.

CBA: Wow! The creator of Superman at Marvel?

John: We were at 635 Madison then. I have to tell you: Here I was, in the same room with the man who created this whole industry, and I was in awe of him. He was a soft-spoken, gentle guy… and Everett was like the same kind of man. Everett had ruined his health. I knew him the last two years of his life when he wasn’t drinking, and he was taking care of himself, and things were going well. He was turning out some damn good work. His inking used to make me feel so inadequate. He created Daredevil while he was still doing greeting cards; he did the first Daredevil. When he came back on staff after I was doing Spider-Man, a year or two, he was on staff, coming into the office, working on stuff right there in the office! So I

Above: Look, Ma! Johnny made it into The New York Times! Stan and John comment on the 1972 Presidential Elections. Now, the “usual fee” guy is Eugene McCarthy, right? So, where’s Dem nominee George McGovern, hmmm? Taken from FOOM #18.

Spider-Man ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

19

Above: Another Spidey promotional drawing by John Romita Sr., one of several billion, we believe (courtesy of Mike Burkey). What the world needs, CBA advocates, ain’t another Spider-Man sketch (fine as they are) by Mr. R., but a sequel of John and Stan’s mondo wild Femizon story which appeared in Savage Tales #1. A sketch of one of John’s warrior women appears at far right, thanks to Jerry Boyd. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

20

had Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, and Bill Everett, and for a little while Jerry Siegel, and then Chris Claremont was a college intern; I mean… you know what kind of people I was rubbing shoulders with—a lot of talent!

CBA: Did you see a difference between the Marvel books and the DC books? It seems to me now that I’m studying both companies so closely, it seems the DC books under Carmine Infantino were pretty much art-driven books….

John: They were, and in fact, I think that was the history of the whole thing. They did the cleanest, most beautiful drawing for years, they were the Cadillac of the industry. When I was over there in the romance department, I was proud to be there, because it really was the Cadillac of the industry— they had the best coloring, the best lettering. And Marvel was making inroads into the sales with the wildest stuff you ever saw in your life. I remembered a time they had discussions in the bullpen at DC, and I was getting my artwork cleaned up or accepted, I would hear things like, “What the hell is Stan Lee doing that’s getting people to buy these books?” And they’d look them over, and there would be a big discussion and somebody saying, “We think the young fans identify with it because it looks like it was done by kids!” and other remarks like that.

CBA: But they didn’t read Marvel Comics?

John: They might’ve read them. I think it was an open secret what Stan was doing: He was telling people in interviews what he was doing, giving relative reality to the characters, giving them real lives—relevancy, social context and social impact—and DC knew the story, knew what he was doing, and they still overlooked it.

They’d say, “Oh, no, that can’t be. It must be something else.” DC was blinded by their own arrogance. They didn’t really want to believe that anybody could do that kind of stuff and sell books, when their beautiful stuff was not selling. It was denial!

CBA: Whose decision was it to put Marvel books up to 48 pages at 25¢? Roy said it was Martin Goodman’s decision. Do you remember that?

John: Yes, it probably was some distributor’s suggestion for marketing, or maybe Stan Lee had some kind of input. I don’t remember why it was done, but I know that during those years, DC and Marvel were constantly trying to outsmart each other, they were trying to outthink each other on the price increases and decreases. You know, DC still claims we shafted them once when they agreed to go to 25¢, and we stayed at 20¢.

CBA: Now, actually, both of you guys went to 25¢ and 48 pages, then the next month, Goodman dropped down to 32 pages and 20¢, giving a better cut to the distributor, kids being able to buy five comics for a buck instead of four comics for a buck.

John: I think Carmine or Dick Giordano or Joe Orlando had said that was underhanded, but very clever.

CBA: That’s when Marvel took the lead?

John: Yeah. I think that was the final straw, because we had been gaining on them for a couple of years. The whole thing was so bizarre, and I’ll tell you, frankly, most of the time if you came into the Marvel offices you would’ve just seen the top of my head, because I used to be so immersed in daily problems, I had very little attention span for all the policy making… I’d hear about them, but it would go in one ear and out the other.

CBA: After Ross Andru took over Spider-Man, did you want to get another book?

John: No, I was glad to be out from under the deadline. I was shuddering that they’d ask me to do one.

CBA: So you were designing characters….

John: And doing cover sketches, covers, training artists, and then I was doing a lot of the promotions—when they needed a poster, I would be the one they’d come to; even if somebody else did the artwork, I’d design a sketch—so I had a full plate, and I certainly did not miss the deadlines.

CBA: When did you first hear about the syndicated Spider-Man strip?

John: Five years before. 1977 was when the strip came out.

About ’72—here’s another Chip Goodman story—Stan and I had a strip and a nibble from the syndicate, and we did two weeks of daily samples. Chip was supposed to get in touch with the syndicate, and close the deal. Stan found out a year later that Chip never took the pages off his desk, and never took them around. So, we missed the boat on the first go-around (which might’ve been a better syndicate—I think that was Universal Press or something, a syndicate that was very hot to do Spider-Man). Chip Goodman single-handedly screwed up the whole deal. Then in 1976, we got the deal with the Register-Tribune, which was a minor Midwestern syndicate, and Stan jumped at it. They sandbagged me, because they told me it was going to be either a daily or a Sunday, and I said, “Okay, I want to do it.” So I prepared a couple of weeks of dailies, and they said they loved it, and the deal was signed, and just before we needed to go into production, they said we had to go daily and Sunday; but I stayed with it, and I just killed myself for four years. It was hard work. I didn’t want to quit my job, because I had no faith in the future of the strip. I didn’t think it was going to last 22 years!

CBA: I don’t know if you remember this, but for some reason, there was an editorial strip in late 1976 about the Presidential elections called “The Adventures of Candidate-Man” [See pg. 15 of CBA #2]. It was by you and Stan. Do you remember doing that for The New York Times?

John: I do recall an election-time comic strip, for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. It was about Nixon and Humphrey, all the candidates. Stan ripped all the candidates, even Shirley Chisholm, everybody. I still have that original. You know, what I wrote in my high school yearbook was that I’d be the first guy to get a strip in The New York Times (because that was the only paper that didn’t have any comics), and when I got that assignment, I almost flipped because I said, “My God, I never dreamed I would!” They didn’t use mine on the cover, and that broke my heart, because I was really counting on that; they used Pogo, I think, which really made more sense. I’ve got that one page in the Sunday Times Magazine, and nobody can ever take that away from me! It’s like the perfect game that David Cone just pitched!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

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“Toon Comics!” History of Space Ghost in comics, Comico’s Jonny Quest and Star Blazers, Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera line and Dennis the Menace, behind the scenes at Marvel Productions, Ltd., and a look at the unpublished Plastic Man comic strip.

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“Halloween Heroes and Villains”! JEPH LOEB and TIM SALE’s chiller Batman: The Long Halloween, the Scarecrow (both the DC and Marvel versions), Solomon Grundy, Man-Wolf, Lord Pumpkin, Rutland, Vermont’s Halloween parades, and… the Korvac Saga’s Dead Avengers! With commentary from and/or art by CONWAY, GIL KANE, LOPRESTI, MOENCH, PÉREZ, DAVE WENZEL, and more. Cover by TIM SALE!

“Tabloids and Treasuries,” spotlighting every all-new tabloid from the 1970s. Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, The Bible, Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, The Wizard of Oz, even the PAUL DINI/ALEX ROSS World’s Greatest Super-Heroes editions! Commentary and art by ADAMS, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GRELL, KIRBY, KUBERT, MAYER, ROMITA SR., TOTH, and more.

Wraparound cover by ALEX ROSS!

“Superman in the Bronze Age”! JULIUS SCHWARTZ, CURT SWAN, Superman Family, World of Krypton miniseries, and ALAN MOORE’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, art & comments

by ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, CHAYKIN, PAUL KUPPERBERG, OKSNER, O’NEIL, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SAVIUK, and more. Cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ and SCOTT WILLIAMS! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page TABLOID with color) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

CBA Interview

More Than “Just Marie” The Glorious Artist Marie Severin Talks Up Marvel Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by John Morrow

Right: In the late ’60s/early ’70s, Marie designed many covers for Marvel. Here’s a rejected Captain America layout circa 1971.

Courtesy of R. Gary Land. Cap ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Possibly Marie’s apex at Marvel was her collaboration with brother John Severin on Kull the Conqueror, one of the most exquisitely produced books of Marvel’s line. This is one of the plates from the Severins’ Kull portfolio. Courtesy of the artist.

Kull ©1999 The Estate of Robert E. Howard.

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Marie Severin started in comics as a colorist for the EC Comics Bullpen, sharing an office with genius Harvey Kurtzman. Then she went on to become, along with Flo Steinberg, the heart and soul of the Marvel Bullpen. The artist is a superb caricaturist and highly underrated cartoonist. Still working in the biz, Marie was interviewed via phone on June 16, 1998, and she copy-edited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: You left Marvel and Atlas in 1957.

When you came back, how'd you hear that they needed help?

Marie Severin: In 1964, I needed help! [laughter] After I left Mad in the early ’50s, I went up to Atlas, with Stan, Joe Maneely, John Severin, Bill Everett, and all those guys in the bullpen. There were a lot of really nice guys in and out; in those days they dressed up. The didn't look like hobos. [laughter] They wore ties and shirts, sports jackets. No sneakers, none of that. This was the ’50s. You could leave the office and go into the Plaza and still look okay.

I left Stan when everything collapsed. It was the aftermath of when comics sales went down. They flooded the market, as everybody knows. I think they had 600 titles. Everything just died. Stan had to decimate, and it was just awful for him. He must've been miserable.

I had a friend at the Federal Reserve Bank, and they wanted to put out a book about the automated check system; those funny numbers you see at the bottom of checks. So I did a comic book on that, and I wanted it to look really nice, so I had my brother John do the final illustrations. At the time it was the most-printed comic book every published.

CBA: Was it cartoony?

Marie: Yeah. I did the layouts for it. Producing a comic for the Federal Reserve Bank is like working for the Catholic Church. [laughter] You had to go through committee and be sterilized and looked at and turned over and redone. I have infinite patience, and when I finally got it okayed, I had John do it, and it really came out a nice-looking book.

CBA: So you did the breakdowns, and

he did the finishes?

Marie: Yeah. I did the production on the whole thing. John's artwork was more finished than mine, and who better to do it? It was reverse nepotism, [laughter] but I wouldn't trust anybody else with stuff like that.

But the bank wasn't exciting work. I did some film strip work, but they thought I was too comic-booky. So I left there, and I thought I'd go back into comics until I got into something else. I went up to Harvey Comics, and they gave me the runaround. I didn't like to backtrack, but I figured I'd go see what Stan was doing—and I never got out of the office. [laughter] I went in to Stan with this portfolio with all this stuff in it, and Stan never looked at it. "Marie, Marie!

Oh, this is great! Look Solly, it's Marie! Give her some work; we need somebody on production." So I started doing their production, and Sol was happy. Then I started doing some corrections, and all of a sudden they had a one-person production department, because I could correct some of the art. I was not a Gene Colan or a Jack Kirby, but I knew enough about it to do some corrections. The Bullpen was just Sol and Flo Steinberg and myself. Morrie Kuramoto would come in, and so would Artie Simek to do the lettering.

Then the comics started to grow, and the next person who came in was John Romita, then John Verpoorten came in out of the clear blue sky. He started doing a lot of the production stuff; because Ditko had left, I started doing “Dr. Strange.”

CBA: How'd you get that job?

Marie: They had nobody else to do it. I was never that ambitious; COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

I never came into the office saying, "Ooh, I want to do Dr. Strange."

I said, "Okay, I'll do that," or "Gee, you need a correction? Okay."

It's a job and I got paid, and it was a man's world and subject matter, and I wasn't pushing it. One time Esquire magazine wanted Kirby to do a spread on comics and the college culture, because the college kids were into comics, and the dope culture was just beginning to get noticed. Stan or Sol—I don't know which—decided they didn't want Kirby taken off what he was doing, because he was essentially doing all the major stuff, and they didn't want him to lose any time doing this Esquire stuff. I'm sure he would've been delighted and charged a lot more than I did, but I went over to Esquire representing Marvel.

They gave me a page to do, which I brought in the next day, and they were delighted and gave me a five-page spread. I thought, "Gee, that's nice, and it's freelance!" Martin Goodman saw it, and said, "What is she doing in production? Give her artwork to do." So that's when Stan said, "Oh, okay." So I started doing art as well as designing covers and whatever.

CBA: Before you did Dr. Strange, how much finished art—penciled and inked—had you had published?

Marie: Just fill-ins, letter pages, stuff like that, even at EC. I wasn't doing stories; I just had learned along the way. I was following so many people and looking at their stuff and handling it at Marvel, I suddenly discovered when they asked me to do it that I wasn't afraid, and I just did it.

CBA: You were doing inter-office cartoons, so they knew you could do humor. Did they just not consider you for the work?

Marie: They didn't know where to put it; and also, Stan isn't that funny. I mean, he's funny, but he's no Harvey Kurtzman. Well, who is? [laughter] That's no insult to Stan. I think if Harvey had seen what I started doing, then he'd have found somewhere to use me.

CBA: You and Harvey shared an office at EC, right?

Marie: Yes. I did some cartoons for office parties and stuff, but I was not skilled and ready to jump into stories, and I never even approached anybody to do that. My stuff was very amateurish. I had an essence of something, but I wouldn't even approach it. My technique was hardly perfected; I don't think I ever perfected it. [laughter] They knew I had a talent, and some things I excelled at.

When you're surrounded by guys like John Severin, Davis, Wood, Craig, etc., you know your place! [laughter] I hadn't really worked at it. I was not as good as those guys.

CBA: Other than just assimilating what was around you, did you have any direct influences? Did you check out other cartoonists?

Marie: Sure. You must recognize the best storytellers and try to understand them. I always communicated with people all my life, and I'd write letters to somebody and draw a little cartoon on the envelope. My brother had done this, and I thought it was very funny.

When I was in grammar school, I thought everybody drew, because at home everybody could do this stuff, so I didn't think it was unusual. It was when I went to school that I realized only one or two people in the classroom could do stuff like that. When you are in the field, the background you came from, your education, and means of communication all come together—then you see how techniques work. Some cartoonists are pure genius.

CBA: Did you work on your high school yearbook? Did you do cartoons for that?

Marie: Some. It was a Catholic school, so I wasn't about to be that rambunctious anyway. [laughter] You did holy pictures and portraits of other kids.

CBA: I've heard how unbelievably small the bullpen office was.

You were literally shoulder to shoulder.

Marie: It was disgusting. [laughter] Thank God we were all clean and bathed. [laughter] No windows—we were stuck in this little matchbox; but that's the way it was at Marvel in the early days.

When we moved again, bookkeeping and all the advertising people had windows, and the art staff was stuck in the middle. [laughter] It was so annoying. When they offered me a [freelance] contract at Marvel many years later, I said, "When? When can I leave?

Please…" [laughter] CBA: Do you remember when Roy Thomas arrived?

Marie: Yeah! I thought, "Who is this little guy? [laughter] Gee, he must be good, because Stan is surrounding himself with productive people, so he must be okay." Roy was a riot. He was so young and Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

such a fan, and I had my doubts; but of all of them that came, he was the pick of the bunch. He was the first and the best. He knew everything about comics, and besides being absolutely obsessed with comics, he could write. He really could write, and he had respect for the stuff. I really liked working with Roy. CBA: You did hit it off with Flo, right? Did you guys socialize?

Have lunch?

Marie: She's great. Oh yeah, we had lunch a lot. She was a funny lady. She had the same attitude toward comics that I do. "Aren't they funny? Aren't they weird? These people; what are they doing?

These fans are a riot!" [laughter] CBA: Do you remember when the fans started showing up at the offices, bothering you guys?

Marie: In the beginning, it wasn't bothering. I remember the first time I really knew things were beginning to move. Flo had a little sculpture on her desk: "Look what I got from the fans! They gave he this award!" It was a little statue—nicely done. "And the mail is coming in like crazy!" Stan was beginning to be very happy, because he was getting some respect from the industry, because his books were beginning to sell!

CBA: Who were you working with on the Dr. Strange stories?

Marie: I was very lucky in that Stan worked closely with all the artists. Gene Colan would develop a method of taking a tape recorder in, because if he missed something in the conversation with Stan, he'd call Stan and ask him, and Stan wouldn't know what he was talking about. Stan created so quickly, it was just out of his head.

"Next, please." [laughter] It's just wonderful, the juices he revs up.

Me and Romita and Trimpe were the last ones he had time to use the old method on. At that time, he'd talk a plot with you, and you'd make notes and come back with it sort of layed out. Maybe he'd type something up, I forget. You'd come back with a rough layout and notes in the margin and he would go over it, standing all the time by the drawing board.

Panel by panel, inch by inch, he went over it quickly,

Above: Marie tells us this was a gag cartoon she drew for a proposed (but never realized) college newspaper syndicate venture featuring Marvel’s beloved characters

by Stan Lee. The Man penned the ’toon’s risque gag line: “12 bucks to find out she’s only got a vitamin deficiency!” Courtesy of the artist. Dr. Strange ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Marie even includes cartoons with her change of address notices! I received this one, a caricature of the artist herself, after her move to Long Island last year!

Ain’t she sweet? ©1999 Marie Severin.

23

This page and next: Above are Marie’s pencils to the splash page of Kull the Conqueror #2, the first time Marie and brother John collaborated on the series. Across you’ll find John Severin’s ink job.

What a team!—the only brother/sister collaborators in comics, methinks. Courtesy of Marie Severin. Kull ©1999 The Estate of Robert E. Howard

24

and you had to pay attention. Some of it he liked; some of it he'd say, "Marie, whatta you write so much in the margins for? You're not writing it, I am!" And I'm thinking, "Yeah, and I shouldn't draw so much, either." [laughter] But that was Stan. You got your money's worth. I'd come out of there, and I'd be, "Hey, I know what to do now"—and I understood it, and I did it, and I thought it was a great learning experience.

When Romita came from DC, Stan loved his romance work. Stan always felt lucky with romance artists, because he liked pretty girls, and he knew that sold to the boys. I would love to know how Stan feels about the way the women are drawn these days. He loves girls, and these things that are being drawn are not possible.

By then I was up to my waist drawing and designing and doing production; some art, some story, some corrections.

Anything you want, I'll do it.

CBA: How many hours a week did you work in the office generally?

Marie: Nine to five.

Sometimes I would do pages at home, and sometimes I would finish up stuff in the office. I usually was pretty honest about how I vouchered it, and there usually wasn't that much time in the office, but I tried. It was okay.

CBA: After “Dr. Strange,” you worked on “The Hulk.”

Marie: Yeah, the same way, with Stan going over it panel by panel.

CBA: Then you worked on “Sub-Mariner.” Did you work closely with Roy on it?

Marie: Not really. I'd get more of a typed synopsis from Roy. Then I did a Hulk Annual, and I think Gary Friedrich did it. He gave me a paragraph for a 64page book. I was ready to kill him. [laughter] CBA: Did you invent those Inhuman characters in that annual?

Marie: Yeah. I thought it was a mental exercise. I figured it was a test of my patience and creativity, and this son of a gun was getting away with it, [laughter] but it was fun; I was able to control the whole thing, and I realized how far I could go. As all artists and writers do, you use gimmicks you’ve seen or read— shuffle it about the head and get it in board.

CBA: Did you like working the Marvel Method? How did you know the pacing?

Marie: Yeah, I did, because I had enough to give. Stan worked with you, but also I've always said that my generation was lucky in storytelling, in that we watched movies so much in theaters, where there were no commercials. You either knew what was going on or you didn't.

In those days, they had subplots for adults that I didn't realize until 20 years later. The other stuff—the chase and the murder and all that—was another story for the kids. Also, I read as a kid; we always had books in the house. The storytelling thing was always with me. All of the guys my age will talk about that.

CBA: Did you clamor to do more humor work? Was Not Brand Echh easy?

Marie: I liked it, sure; it was very easy to come by, because I'm a little nuts, so I fit right in. [laughter] I always had a good time with humor, and I had a background working so close to Mad magazine as a comic book; not that I worked on the stories, but I colored all of them, I'd see the artwork come in, I'd hear Harvey jumping around COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

and carrying on. Also, my family was funny; they were happy people, and I think that has to do with how you communicate.

It's all a matter of communicating.

CBA: Was it joyful to work in the bullpen?

Marie: Yeah. All those years, I didn't mind going to work. It was only later on that it got so big, you lost contact with people. It got wacky, and I was very glad when they offered me a contract. I got out of there as soon as I could.

CBA: When you went for the contract at Marvel, was that an exclusive freelance contract?

Marie: Yeah, it was freelance.

I think it was 1982 or ’83. I was delighted; I didn't think they would give me a contract. I was surprised.

CBA: Do you remember when you first met Barry Smith?

Marie: Yes. I had heard about him; glory be, I had heard about him! "Oh, Barry Smith is so good," and here's this artwork coming in, and I thought, “He’s a Kirby clone!” What's going on with this stuff? I had no idea what lay beneath, but that was how he got his foot in the door.

All of a sudden he started doing his own thing, and I loved it! I thought he was nuts, because he worked so hard on this stuff; but he really wanted to make his mark, and he did.

CBA: Barry remembers a moment in the bullpen when Herb Trimpe was there, you were there, John Romita was there, all shoulder to shoulder in this really small office, and the Beatles came on the radio, and you guys all at once were singing "Hey, Jude." To this day it still sends chills down his spine.

Marie: [laughter] Really?! I don't even remember that—but we would tolerate those conditions. The artists today lose so much time with their nonsense; some don't last that long, because they demand so much.

But you have to know how to have fun or try to enjoy work.

CBA: So do you think you had a healthy dose of humility back then?

Marie: If I was a woman's libber before it was in fashion, I would've been slapped down so fast you wouldn't see me for dust.

CBA: You have a feistiness about you.

Marie: When it's necessary.

CBA: You stood your own.

Marie: Not most of the time. Remember, I wasn't really that interested in the subject matter for the most part. I could do it; give me anything and I'll try it. It was obviously geared to boys, and some of Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

this stuff you have fun drawing, but after awhile, it's exhausting to think that way all the time! [laughter] I don't want to kick every car that I pass! [laughter] I'm not Kirby, and I can do a panel or two like Kirby, but to do it every day would be exhausting. Who needs it?

CBA: Are there strips you would like to have done?

Marie: Not necessarily. There are strips I wouldn't have liked.

CBA: What about other genres, like romance or westerns?

Marie: I wasn't good enough for westerns, because I don't know how to draw a horse the way it should be drawn. Only my brother and a few guys in the business know how to draw horses well. I liked western stories, and I think I could've done some, but I didn't have

We had hoped to interview John Severin for this issue but got no response to our letters. John was just extensively interviewed by our esteemed colleague, Gary Groth, for The Comics Journal, and let’s hope we find out something about John’s Marvel days in TCJ! And here’s hoping someday CBA will get through to the great artist!

25

Above: Great (though unused) cover comp by Marie for Fear.

Interestingly, contributor R. Gary Land tells us the logo for the original title of the comic— Fright—is taped over on this layout. ©1999 Marie Severin.

26

any desire to fight for that stuff. I'm beginning to sound like such a Pollyanna! [laughter] And then, westerns were out of style.

CBA: Did it occur to you, when Millie the Model and Patsy and Hedy were dropped, that girls were leaving comics?

Marie: No, it didn't occur to me. I just thought those comics were dopey too. They were as extreme to girls as the other comics were to boys. I wouldn't have wanted to do Patsy and Hedy either.

CBA: So really, none of the content interested you.

Marie: For the most part, I really always liked the old fashioned story books; you know, King Arthur, mystery stuff, fantasies, sciencefiction. Stuff boys and girls would like to read. I don't look down on comics; they were my income for 40 years, and still are to a great extent. But I wasn't crazy about the content of it, and I wasn't a crusader. I just was taking care of my income, and I didn't want to walk around Manhattan with a portfolio and high heels, trying to get jobs.

I guess I was lazy; I don't know. [laughter] CBA: Do you remember when Frank Giacoia became art director?

Marie: That's a very mixedup thing. I think Stan gave him that title off-the-record. Nobody was art director but Stan. I think Johnny or Sol said that's how he can justify his salary, because he does everything. The way to get Giacoia—who was an excellent inker—on staff was to give him a title. That's the time all the guys were jealous of Infantino at DC because he was art director over there.

CBA: Giacoia was an outsider, right? He was doing his own syndicated strips.

Marie: Hey, all the guys were insiders. I was the outsider. [laughter] All these guys talked to each other, went to each other's houses, knew each other personally. I'm not saying they were cooling me out; it's just that they had worked together for years—which didn't bother me. I didn't want to be in their clique. A bunch of the guys had a “stock” thing they got into. I said, "Hey, that sounds like a good thing to get into. I know Wall Street guys." They just looked at me and turned away, and I thought, "Uh-oh, don't interfere with the party." So I let it drop; I wasn't going to push it. It was the little boy in the tree house: "No girls allowed. But we respect you!" [laughter] And they were nice guys; it was just the tone of the times.

I always had a life outside comics. I didn't pal around with comic book people. Then when the fans started working, there was less communication. In the EC days I was—with Williamson—the youngest; when I returned to comics, I was one of the oldest.

CBA: You did an enormous number of covers in the early 1970s.

Marie: Yeah. They were so far behind on schedules, and I'm very fast. I guess people didn't want to do one-pagers because Stan was very critical about the covers. The books were selling, so…

CBA: You understood the dynamics of Kirby.

Marie: Yeah. I had a lot of Kirby in me, and I was blessed with that. It's not a masculine thing I don't think; I understood the emotion of the characters.

CBA: When you were working on Kull, were you involved in the plotting at all?

Marie: Most of the time Roy would have either a story from the books, and he typed up a breakdown, and sort of left me alone. The story was there; you just had to make it all fit. He seemed to like it; I found it very pleasant. At one point, the letterer had made some of the balloons too big, and they cut into the artwork. Unbeknownst to

anybody, I went in and had all the lettering photostatted down, and on my own time, I repasted the whole story so the lettering would be pleasant looking with the artwork.

CBA: Did you feel like you were living under the shadow of 1957? Did you fear that would happen again?

Marie: No, I wasn't afraid of losing my job. We discussed the “decline” cycle of comics but it kept sailing along until a few years ago.

CBA: You once told me an interesting story about the cover of Beware The Cat #1.

Marie: Oh yeah. As I recall, I had penciled the book and, when Wally Wood’s cover came in, I said to Stan, "Oh my God, Woody drew it like she's wearing Saran Wrap! I don't want my name on that!" [laughter] CBA: Do you remember when they started returning artwork?

Marie: I remember I wanted my Kull art, and Stan had asked me to do a double-page spread for some magazine. I said, "Well, how am I gonna get paid?" Stan said to do it on staff, but I said, "If you get me my Kull art, I'll do it for nothing." I got the art, and I was so pleased. This was before the art return. I think it was a crime all the art for years was lost, stolen, etc. I believe Neal Adams had a lot to do with the art returns.

CBA: Was Stan really the one in charge most of the time you were there?

Marie: He was in charge until he went to Hollywood; his life's ambition was to be another Fellini.

CBA: When Stan went to Hollywood, did the mood at Marvel change?

Marie: Well, the mood had already changed, because all these funny people were running in and out. Everybody needed more Stan, and Stan was going away. Also, the thing was making big money, and the minute you have something that's making money, and you have heavy duty politics, there is no time for new staffers to be assimilated into the normal mood of the place. It was slipping away.

I can't blame everything on the fans coming in and taking over.

Everybody took over; the money people, the people coming in who were supposed to do merchandising. They were all scratching around for as much as they could get. The best people were not assigned to do some of the merchandising stuff. It wasn't like a Disney operation, where they had to go along with the style. As soon as the printing got good enough, you had somebody like Todd McFarlane coming in. He sold; more credit to him, but you couldn't have had that kind of artwork in the ’50s, because the printing then… it would disappear! It was everything; printing was getting sophisticated, comics were getting out of the realm of subject simplicity. The adult culture, and nudity, and all this dopey stuff was trying to sneak into comics— but it was selling, and if you do that, everybody accepts it.

CBA: Nobody seemed to have Stan's command of management; it seemed in the mid-’70s to be turning into chaos, opening the door for a personality like Jim Shooter to come in to take control.

Marie: Shooter was the only one who was organized. I went through seven editors; I think Gerry Conway lasted overnight. Guys like Archie Goodwin were too classy to put up with the nonsense that went on.

CBA: Did it ever bother you to do cover corrections?

Marie: No. I always figured, first of all, Stan's the boss. I never thought Stan was foolish in his decisions. I just thought that so many times, he was looking for an idea, and he'd go around, come around, and all of a sudden it was almost exactly the way it was in the beginning, and that's his prerogative. That's what I'm being paid for, and it didn't bother me that much, except sometimes when I really thought I had something going and it was chucked out. At the point where Stan was popular, he knew what sold. If he came back full scale now, would the books sell? It's a different time.

CBA: Would you say you were ever well-paid?

Marie: Mmmm… not as much as I'm worth. I did it mostly because I like it; I liked the security, I was sought-after. I could get a job in comics because I have talent, was good at teamwork, and getting books out. I wasn't afraid to attack any assignment. I don't think I ever really gummed anything up. I never assumed too much! I was just me.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

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by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, and more!

WRITE NOW #8 crossover! MIKE MANLEY & DANNY FINGEROTH create a comic from script to print, BANCROFT & CORLEY on bringing characters to life, Adobe Illustrator with ALBERTO RUIZ, Noel Sickles’ work examined, PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ, art supply reviews, and more!

RON GARNEY interview & demo, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and others discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ on Adobe Illustrator, interview with MARK McKENNA, links, and more!

STEVE RUDE on comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On Life”, Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER on merging traditional and digital art, MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, and more! New BAKER cover!

Demo of painting methods by ALEX HORLEY, interview and demo by COLLEEN COOVER, a look behindthe-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more!

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In-depth interviews and demos with DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, and more!

Covers major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/interview with BILL REINHOLD, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, and more!

In-depth interview with HOWARD CHAYKIN, behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on HOW TO USE REFERENCE and WORKING FROM PHOTOS (by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY), and more!

Interview and tutorial with Scott Pilgrim’s BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY on how he creates the acclaimed series, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS creates his series, more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview & demo by R.M. GUERA, Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE demo and interview, DANNY FINGEROTH’s new feature on writer/artists with R. SIKORYAK, BOB McLEOD critiques a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and tool tech, COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on penciling & more!

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WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, book reviews, and more!

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, designinspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, FRANK MILLER interview, plus MILLER and KLAUS JANSON show their working processes. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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CBA Interview

Dave “Blackhawk” Cockrum The Marvel Days of the Co-Creator of the New X-Men Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Dave Cockrum got his start as a fan artist way back in the ’60s and broke in the field as Murphy Anderson’s assistant at DC Comics. After a memorable run on “The Legion of Super-Heroes,” Dave went on to the House of Ideas where he co-created, with Len Wein, The New XMen, the franchise that went on to give Marvel enormous financial success in the following decades. Dave was interviewed via telephone in July, 1998, and he copy-edited the transcription.

Below: Dave’s seminal creation, Nightcrawler, depicted in way-cool horrific fashion. This illustration appeared in a 1975 art portfolio.

Courtesy of Al Bigley.

Nightcrawler ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Comic Book Artist: You were involved in comics fandom quite a bit. What did you do?

Dave Cockrum: The fanzine I did the most for was called Fantastic Fanzine which was published by Gary Groth (who now acts as a super-critic against comics in The Comics Journal). He was a big fan in those days. I also did some work for a tabloid called Enterprise Monthly and stuff for Buddy Saunders and the Star-Studded bunch in Texas.

CBA: You invented characters and had an eye on creating heroes….

Dave: I had a huge stable of my own characters. It’s a story that Len Wein loves to tell about the creation of the New X-Men; the famous “Dave’s Comics Super-hero Sketchbook.” I had this huge sketchbook filled with characters I had come up with. Len keeps remembering that I took the X-Men drawings out of that book but that’s not actually true. I made them up separately, but I did have that book of characters. That’s one of the things I loved to do: invent characters.

CBA: Who were the greatest influences in your drawing?

Dave: Guys whose work I really loved were Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Murphy Anderson, and Joe Kubert. A little later, Jack Kirby because I hadn’t seen his work until Marvel started up. I didn’t discover Will Eisner until later but I just loved his stuff, too.

CBA: You obviously collected comics for some time….

Dave: I started in the ’50s, but every time I blinked, my folks would take the books and burn ’em. I started collecting when Fawcett was still publishing Captain Marvel, and I have very strong memories of Captain Marvel Junior.

CBA: Were you attracted to the more realistic style of Mac Raboy’s work?

Dave: I loved C.C. Beck’s work but when I first started working in comics, DC had revived the Captain Marvel stuff, and I openly agitated to do Captain Marvel Jr. because I

loved Raboy’s art. That was just before I quit DC and went to Marvel. Had I stayed, I think that I would have been the regular artist for Junior.

CBA: There was another comic in the ’50s that you liked a lot: Blackhawk.

Dave: Oh God, I’m a major Blackhawk fan. I had an opportunity to do the book at one point, but because there was a $30 a page difference in my Marvel rate and my DC rate, I couldn’t afford it. It would have been giving away every third page for free. So I settled for doing some covers and two back-up stories. Dan Spiegle ended up doing it. I’m kinda sorry.

CBA: What is it about the group you liked?

Dave: I dunno. I just always enjoyed them. I first discovered them in the ’50s, when they were flying jets, but I went back and bought the older Quality issues. I have nearly a complete run of Blackhawk.

It’s the only book I still actively collect.

CBA: When did you first have professional aspirations?

Dave: Real early. Drawing was something that I always could do and I started drawing super-heroes early on. I also wrote letters to the comics. When Marvel first came on the scene, there was a time when I wrote a letter to every Marvel book, every month. (Then I realized that it was too much work and I would right one letter that would address all of the books.) I met my first wife through the letter page of Fantastic Four #34. At the time, they were publishing full addresses and she read the letter and became interested because I was a sailor. We exchanged letters, she comes to California, and we get married!

CBA: Did you draw fan material during your time in the Navy?

Dave: Yeah. I was stationed in San Diego and later Guam. I would draw in all of my spare time, even drawing cartoons for the ship’s newspaper. I got out in 1970 and came straight to New York, just in time for Phil Seuling’s convention in July. I met all kinds of professionals there and then went up to DC first—but their attitude was that I was close to professional quality but just on the wrong side of it. And Marvel wasn’t ready for me yet, so Neal Adams sent me over to Warren. So that was where my first professional stuff appeared. It would have probably benefited me if I had stayed on and done more stuff for Warren because I was learning black-&-white techniques that I later quit using.

CBA: You had a real strong inking presence with a heavy use of blacks.

Dave: Yeah, I was imitating Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. At Marvel, they just wanted me to ink but I wanted to pencil. I clamored about it and finally they just let me go ahead and pencil. (I’ve been a penciler for so long, that I’ve pretty much lost my feel for inking.)

CBA: You went over to DC from Warren?

Dave: Yeah. I started doing background inking, first for Tony DeZuniga (who was doing a lot of House of Mystery and stuff like that). They weren’t running a stable yet, at that point. He was okay to work for, but his wife, Mary, was something else. She looked at my stuff and said, “Ehhh! Ten years, maybe, you might make it.” I stayed long enough to work on five or six issues, but Murphy Anderson needed a background inker for the work he was doing on Curt Swan’s Superman and Bob Brown’s Superboy. He also got the “John Carter of Mars” strip, which I desperately wanted to help out with (being a John Carter fan all of my life) but Murphy wouldn’t let me touch that. He’d say, “This is mine! Go away!” I worked for Murphy for about a year in a downtown Manhattan studio. It was COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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great and I learned a lot, but the only trouble was that we did more bullsh*tting than working!

So it turned out to be not that profitable and he finally closed down the studio.

While I was working for Murphy, the “Legion of SuperHeroes” strip became available.

Murray Boltinoff, the editor, got Murphy to agree to ink it.

Murray figured that Murphy would be responsible for the quality of the book and fix anything that I did wrong. Because Murphy was an old-time professional and I was the newcomer, Murray listed Murphy’s name first on the credits, so everybody thinks that Murphy penciled those first three or four strips, when actually I did. It was the other way around: I penciled and he inked. But Murray thought that Murphy would be offended to be listed second, though he wouldn’t have.

By the fourth “Legion” strip I did, Murphy was embroiled in “John Carter” and Superman, and he just couldn’t help anymore. So he said, “You’re on your own!” There was a lot of snowpaque on that art from correcting mistakes, but I got through it. It looked pretty slick and people said that it wasn’t bad, so after that it was my book. Fan reaction was pretty good, because I was young and enthusiastic—and obviously the first one in a long time who much cared what was being done with The Legion—I even badgered Murray into allowing me to introduce new costumes, but he was timid about that.

That was my best early work.

CBA: Around the same time were you doing some inking for Marvel? The Avengers come to mind….

Dave: I didn’t start working for Marvel full-time until I had my little go-around with Murray and Carmine Infantino. DC wasn’t returning artwork at that point, and Marvel was, but I asked for the double-page spread of the wedding of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel to be returned. I just wanted it for a souvenir, and Murray had said, “I don’t see why not,” and he apparently had it set aside to give to me. But Carmine came in the day I came by to pick it up and he said, “What’s this?” Murray told him, and Carmine said, “You can’t give this back to him. We don’t do that.” It was the only artwork that I had asked for back and I said, “Gee, guys, can’t you bend the rules? It’s all I’m asking for.” He said, “Nope, can’t do it.” I said, “All right. See ya.” (Just prior to this incident, I had gotten the Captain Marvel Jr. job from Julie Schwartz.) I then went over to Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Marvel and got some work, and asked Julie and Roy Thomas, “Do you guys mind if I keep doing Captain Marvel Jr.? Because I really tried hard to get that.” Both of them said fine, but Carmine said, “No, he can’t.” So I made a clean cut with DC. CBA: What were your first assignments at Marvel?

Dave: I did a “Gulliver of Mars” story in a black-&-white maga-

Above: Dave’s pencils for a “filler” page used to pad the reprints in X-Men Classics. This page, featuring Colossus and Storm, appeared in #12. Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Dave Cockrum, as photographed at a mid-’70s Seuling Comic Art Convention.

Below: John Carter of Mars, a perennial favorite character of Dave’s, as drawn by the artist.

Courtesy of Jerry Boyd. Characters ©1999 ERB, Inc.

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zine.

CBA: How many pages could you do in a day?

Dave: I was never very fast. These days, I’m lucky if I do two a day. Inks are probably one a day, so it was difficult to do a monthly book. I was doing X-Men on a monthly basis during my second run on the book but they had to stick in occasional fill-ins to take up the slack.

CBA: You did Manphibian. Was that your creation?

Dave: Yup. It was hopefully going to become an ongoing series but it just didn’t work out that way. I’m a Creature from the Black Lagoon fan, but we couldn’t do the Creature, so we did that. I did two covers and two interior pages for a Creature from the Black Lagoon book to show to Roy Thomas, to try and talk him into having Marvel do a Creature book, but ultimately he said that Universal Studios wanted too much money to license the character. I’ve never known if that was the truth or basically, “Go away, kid, you bother me.”

CBA: Mike Friedrich told me a story that back in 1972 you had an idea for an international team book that eventually turned into the new X-Men. Is that true?

Dave: It wasn’t my idea. Roy brought up the idea that he wanted to do a new X-Men book but he was talking about approaching it as “Mutant Blackhawks.” That was Roy’s suggestion when he took us to a fancy restaurant, telling us to order whatever we wanted—he had a hamburger. That was Roy’s proposal: He wanted them international and to operate out of a secret base. Part of the rationale, as I understand it, was that Marvel was looking for foreign markets. And then, ultimately, we picked a bunch of nationalities whose countries weren’t liable to buy the book! It never wound up fitting that proposal anyway.

CBA: After that, how long did you work on the proposal?

Dave: I had gone home and started designing some characters, but for some reason, there was a pause in the development, and they just hung fire for months. When it came back, Mike Friedrich wasn’t involved any more but Len Wein was. I had drawn up a number of characters: The original black female in the group was to have been called The Black Cat. She had Storm’s costume but without the cape, and a cat-like haircut with tufts for ears. Her power was that she could turn into a humanoid cat or a tabby. She wore a collar with a bell on it. When we came back to the project, after the hiatus, all of a sudden all of these other female cat characters had sprung up— Tigra, The Cat, Pantha—so I figured that we’d better overhaul this one!

She wound up getting white hair, the cape, and becoming Storm.

Vampyre—pronounced vampeer—was discarded because we had Nightcrawler, too, and they thought that the two of them were a little too similar.

CBA: In the back of the paperback X-Men Masterworks, there’s mention of a group called “The Outsiders,” planned to be used in The Legion of Super-Heroes. Were they a precursor to the New X-Men? Dave: I intended for them to be a supporting group for The Legion but Murray just wasn’t interested.

Nightcrawler was one of them. Most of the characters never got used or at least not in those forms.

Below: Dave’s concept drawing of his unrealized character Vampyre. From X-Men Masterworks Vol. 1. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

CBA: Where did Nightcrawler come from?

Dave: When I was still a fan and in the Navy, my first wife and I were living on Guam in a house in the boonies (which was infested with roaches and rats). There was a terrible storm going on overhead, we had no lights, it was noisy and loud and raining like hell with thunder and lightning. To keep ourselves occupied and keeping ourselves from being scared to death, we sat around making up characters. We made up this duo, a guy I called the Intruder (a cross between the Punisher and Batman, with a chrome skull and black jumpsuit) and his demon sidekick, Nightcrawler. The original concept was a lot different in that Nightcrawler would howl at the moon, run up the sides of buildings and do all kinds of weird sh*t. He really was a demon who had screwed up on a mission from hell and, rather than go back and face punishment, he hung around up here with this do-gooder. So he was considerably overhauled when he wound up in the X-Men. CBA: What input did you have with Colossus?

Dave: I drew him up and brought him in, saying, “Here’s Colossus, our muscle guy.” Len came up with the civilian name and origin. So it was my visual. Storm was pretty much the same, though when I wanted to put the white hair on her, everybody said that she’d wind up looking like somebody’s grandmother. I said, “Trust me.”

CBA: Was Thunderbird your character?

Dave: Yes. When I brought in the first design, everybody said, “He looks like an Air Force pilot!” I had this strange helmet on him that was an Indian design but nobody liked it, so I went back and redid it.

CBA: Were you excited about working on the New X-Men? Dave: Yeah, because it was a potentially hot series and I looked forward to the opportunity to do lots of neat stuff. I worked closely with Len to start but it didn’t stay that way too long. He was in the process of becoming editor-in-chief at that point, and had gotten too busy to stay on. He plotted the next issue of Giant-Size X-Men (which became X-Men #94 and 95), but Chris Claremont came on and stayed as writer for 18-odd years. I knew from the start that I wasn’t going to ink it myself but I did ink the first issue because, well, I wanted to.

CBA: So you stayed with the book for two years?

Dave: I stayed through to #107. I couldn’t stay with it because I was on staff by that time—my job was to design covers—and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I was tired and I gave it up. Later on, they asked me to do that Marvel Fanfare with the X-Men in the Savage Land and it was fun! I called up Chris and said, “This is really fun! If Byrne ever wants to leave the book, give me another chance at it.” And Byrne left the book that following Monday. That was a weird juxtaposition! So I got the book back and I was enthusiastic again. It was fun for a long time.

The only reason I left the book the second time was because I had previously put in a proposal for The Futurians. It sat on Jim Shooter’s desk for about a year, and he finally said, “Yeah, you can COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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do this if you want.” I was in some doubt whether I should quit the X-Men and do that but I really wanted to do it. Chris and Louise Simonson, the editor, talked me into giving up the X-Men because they thought I was more enthused about The Futurians. That was probably the biggest mistake of my life! That was about the time they started paying the royalties and reprint money. It takes nine months after an issue goes on sale before you get a royalty check so I hadn’t received one yet by the time I quit the X-Men. When the first one came it was $2000 right out of the air! I thought, “Geez!” And it got better, and from what I heard, people like Jim Lee were making $40,000 a month on royalties. (That’s why they could afford to go off and start Image.) If I had known about that kind of money coming in—even the $2000 a month—you couldn’t have pried me off that book with a crowbar. The Futurians was never that successful.

CBA: What was your assessment of working at Marvel in the ’70s?

Dave: It started out as the greatest fun that a kid could have. It was a lunatic asylum, filled with all these nuts who could draw! It was wonderful in the early days, under Roy, Len, Marv, and Archie. It was inspired chaos.

We’d run caption contests, for instance, where someone would tack a bizarre photo on the wall with a piece of paper underneath it, and everybody would write a caption for it. Sometimes the list of captions would run ten or twenty feet long, trailing across the floor. It was a little insane and great fun. It wasn’t until Shooter came in when things started looking grim.

CBA: Did you get to meet Jack Kirby?

Dave: Only once or twice. I had a run-in with him of sorts when I was designing covers. I would normally sketch out a rough and attach a logo to it, and send it out to the artist who was supposed to do it. They were doing “What If Jane Foster had the hammer of Thor?” and they wanted Kirby to do the cover for that. Well, me being me with the peculiar twist of mind that I sometimes have, the logo I put on said, “What if Thor wore a bra?” I sent it out and Jack and Mrs. Kirby were totally scandalized, sent it back, and refused to have anything to do with it. The powers-that-be demanded, “What are you doing to Kirby?! You’ve pissed off Jack Kirby!” I said, “But, but, but…” and they wound up having the cover done by John Buscema.

There was another time when I was working with Stan on the Fantastic Four cartoon. For whatever reason, they couldn’t use the Human Torch, so I had the task of designing Herbie the Robot. I thought the whole notion of replacing the Torch with a robot was so lame, all I would come up with were stupid ideas: One of them looked like a trash can on wheels with a “4” on it, another was a lamp on wheels with a “4” on it. After a half-dozen of these, Stan says, “You know, you’re really hard to work with!” And he called up Jack and had him do it.

CBA: [laughs] Was that your one collaboration with Stan?

Dave: No. We went round and round about Ms. Marvel’s costume, too. Remember she started with a female version of Captain Marvel’s costume only with an open belly, and we all bitched about that because none of us could figure out a rationale for it. So they closed the belly opening, but we said, “No, she needs another costume.” We hassled Stan about it for so long that he said, “All right!

If you think you’re so smart, design a new one.” And I must have gone through 50 designs! Some of ’em I would xerox and try out in different colors, and Stan would go, “No, no, no, no! Get that out of here.” Finally I did the one with the lightning bolt and sash, and I took it to Stan who said, “That’s what you should have done from the start! That’s what I like: Shiny leather and tits & ass!”

We also went around about Wolverine. I don’t remember who I was arguing with on that, but we were trying to design a new cosFall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

tume when he was wearing the yellow and blue one. I wound up putting him in the “Fang” costume, and Byrne hated it so much that as soon as he took over the book, he got him out of it again and put him into a new one with the same color! I kept doing costumes and the response was always, “No, no, no, no!” At one point, I turned in a drawing of him nude but hairy, but they said “No! Get out of here!” Another time I put his head on Red Sonja’s body—this is the sort of thing that went on over at Marvel in those days.

CBA: Along with Gil Kane, you’re one of the best costume designers in the business.

Dave: That’s one of the things I like to do. Possibly my costumes have a dated look now because everybody likes bandoliers and bolts and tennis shoes today. I still like stuff that looks like super-hero costumes.

Above: More Cockrum pencils, this page from X-Men #155.

Courtesy of the artist. X-Men ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Retrogaze

Weirdness on the Planet of the Apes Examining Doug Moench’s “Gonzo Demolition” of POTA

by Chris Knowles Quick! Name an artistically successful and challenging movie adaptation in comics. Take your time, now. Having trouble? Okay, name a comics series based on a licensed character or concept that wasn’t just a slapdash cash-in or just a serialized toy commercial. It’s tough, right? Well, this is a bit of a trick question. For my money there’s been only one truly memorable licensed comic book and it was published in magazine format. Oh, now the lights come on out there. Yes, folks, I am referring to Doug Moench’s gonzo demolition of Planet of the Apes.

Above: Commingled human/ape gypsy tribes? Why the hell not?

Writer Doug Moench was just warming up! From POTA #6.

Planet of the Apes ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Below: Wonderful example of Alfredo’s mastery of tonal art.

From POTA #7. POTA ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

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The Planet of the Apes movie series in many ways was the prototype for Star Wars. Not thematically, of course, but commercially.

Back in the ’70s, you didn’t have the kind of vertical integration of media and manufacturing that exists today, so licensing arrangements were often haphazard and muddled. Disney was the most aggressive in marketing their concepts—and had been from very early on—but by the ’70s, they didn’t have anything really worth licensing. Star Trek continued to spawn all sorts of spin-offs and tieins, but without new episodes to promote the line, the merchandising was low-key by today’s standards. It was Planet of the Apes that was the original model for today’s instantaneous licensing blitzkriegs—but unlike today, when boatloads of merchandise are readied before the movie is even finished, the Apes avalanche didn’t start until six years after the release of the first film.

The story goes that in 1973, CBS ran Planet of the Apes as the movie of the week on the night of a blizzard or some such and it garnered the highest ratings in the network’s history. Battle for the Planet of the Apes had been released that same year and didn’t dazzle anyone, but apparently the kids were hungry for a new obsession and Planet of the Apes , with its fashionable dystopianism, fit the bill. Soon your local K-Mart was bursting with Apes-junk of every conceivable variety, most of it as shoddy and miserable as most of the other junk that was peddled to kids in the ’70s by aging and miserable schlock merchants. One particular item that springs to mind was the hollow plastic Cornelius doll that

came, of course, with a parachute (proof positive that some inept product manager didn’t even bother to actually watch the Apes flicks). Not all of it was lousy—there are few 30-something guys out there who don’t have a warm spot somewhere in their hearts for Mego’s Apes action figures—but most Apes merch was rubbish.

However the era’s laxity in trademark protection also allowed a young comics writer immersed in radical politics and the Counterculture to take the Apes concept on the kind of rocket ride unimaginable in this day and age.

Planet of the Apes was not published as a standard comic. It premiered as part of Marvel’s late and unlamented black-&-white magazine line. In the early ’70s, publishers were placing their bets on horror and Kung Fu to get their circulation up and Marvel released most of their excursions in those genres in the format they cribbed from Jim Warren. Unfortunately they usually didn’t utilize their A-list talent on the books and most of the titles were short-lived. The idea with the POTA mag was to sandwich articles on the films between Ape funnies and fill whatever pages remained with advertising.

A Few Apes up his Sleeve Planet of the Apes started simply enough. Under the helm of Tony Isabella, POTA #1 featured a relatively straightforward adaptation of the first Apes movie drawn by Marvel stalwarts George Tuska and Mike Esposito. Charlton Heston didn’t allow his likeness to be used for the adaptation so Tuska drew Colonel Taylor looking like Tony Stark on a bad hair day. It was the opening feature that provided a portent of things to come. “Terror on the Planet of the Apes” was Moench’s concept of the Apes mythos. The themes of racial warfare in the films was made explicit and the villain of the piece was General Brutus, a gorilla with a double life. By day he was the local Peace keeper, mouthing Nixonian law and order platitudes and by night he was the murderous grand dragon of the Klan-like Ape Supremacists who murdered and terrorized the docile human population. The protagonists were Jason, a embittered human whose parents were murdered by Brutus, and Alexander, a Roddy McDowallian chimp.

Not content with this tableau of racism and murder, Moench then introduced a mutant race of drones who bred human-ape hybrids as slaves and were themselves in the service of a bunch of giant talking brains. The brains were using Brutus to do God-knows what and supplied the Apeists with futuristic rayguns to facilitate more efficient human killing. The Brains themselves were par for Moench’s course. One spoke in a typical portentous ’70s Marvel fashion, another spouted his pronouncements in rhyme and yet another spoke in a Yancy Street tough guy dialect. Why is anyone’s guess.

Moench collaborated with Mike Ploog on Terror. Ploog, formerly an assistant of Will Eisner, pulled out the stops and showed off the considerable facility he developed under the tutelage of the master.

After a last-minute hatchet job by inker Frank Chiaramonte on #4, Ploog began to do his finished art in soft pencil which gave the series a lush and moody look, reminiscent of the Filipino artists. On one of Ploog’s off-issues, Moench took the opportunity to riff on both Jack COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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Kirby and The Incredible TwoHeaded Transplant with his story “Evolution’s Nightmare” (POTA #5). Drawn by a very green Ed Hannigan, this tale was Moench’s first shot over the bow of true license desecration and foreshadowed his later bizarro takes on the Apes universe.

After Tuska and Esposito wrapped up their adaptation of Planet, new editor Don McGregor brought Alfredo Alcala on board to handle the adaptation of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Seeking perhaps to make a good impression on his new audience, Alfredo rendered the first chapter in a rich and creamy inkwash. Having the Filipino master onboard, with his old school chops and otherworldly ambience, set the tone for the rest of the magazine. Soon Moench’s own stories got even weirder.

Perhaps inspired by Kirby’s maniacal Apes-inspired Kamandi, Moench began to take extreme liberties with the property. “Terror” soon was bursting with giant amphibians, co-mingled humanape tribes of gypsies and mountain men, a eccentric historian who lived in Abe Lincoln’s nose on Mount Rushmore, and what was perhaps the first interspecial romance in comics. All of this was serviced and made credible

by Ploog’s solid renderings—but Ploog was having trouble staying on schedule so Moench took the opportunity to introduce another bizarre twist on the Apes idea.

A Connecticut Chimp in King Arthur’s Court?

Planet of the Apes #9 featured a new Moench creation: “A Kingdom on an Island of the Apes.” This story, drawn by the almostpromiscuously gifted Rico Rival, told the story of Derek Zane, an underachieving loser who builds his own time machine. After being dumped by his girlfriend, Zane flies to NASA to pitch his invention.

Zane’s idea is to recover the missing astronauts Taylor Doge, Landon, and Stewart by traveling into the future where Zane has postulated they reside. After having his brainchild shot down by a faceless bureaucrat, Zane goes home and decides to take the old time jalopy for a spin himself. He ends up in a familiar situation: Humans reduced to savagery, gorilla hunting parties, blah-blah-blah, but Moench was just getting warmed up.

As the story continues in #10, Zane witnesses a stock evil gorilla murder a stock imperious orangutan, then builds a raft and ends up on an island that boasts, you guessed it, its own orangutan King Arthur. As the story proceeds Derek is shown the ropes in this simian Camelot and is soon convinced to go hunt a giant iguana. After dispatching the overgrown lizard with his Smith and Wesson, Zane is dubbed Sir Derek. Then, Sir Derek jousts with a gorilla Sir Gawain and helps fend off an invasion from the mainland. He then marries the human Lady Andrea and they live happy ever after. (The tremor reported in L.A. after publication of the story was actually Apes producer Arthur P. Jacobs spinning in his grave.) Alcala was still holding down the fort on the Beneath adaptation, but little Apefan heads were being scratched in bewilderment.

Moench was just getting started. Ploog and “Terror” returned in #11 with another tale of interspecies enmity, but #12 boasted another new artist and another round of nose-thumbing at the Fox Fall 1999

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licensing department. The story was called “City of Nomads” and it not only had nothing to do with any of the movies, but was drawn by an artist who wasn’t terribly concerned with drawing the Apes “on model.” Tom Sutton had been kicking around Marvel and DC for a while, spending most of his time inking. On “City of Nomads,” Sutton exploded, displaying a set of ferocious chops rivaled only by his feverish visual imagination and apparent desire to produce the

Above: Stunning example of Tom Sutton’s boundless visual imagination. From POTA #20. POTA ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

most highly-detailed artwork in comics history. The story itself was another Moench off-road excursion, this time into sword-&-sorcery territory. In this tale, the apes dressed like extras in a Sinbad movie and traveled around the ocean in gigantic “city-ships” powered by human slaves. In a foreshadowing of V for Vendetta, a masked liber-

Above: Interspecial smooch from POTA #19. Art by Ploog and Sutton. POTA ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

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Above: Hey Vicente, stop drawing so gorgeous! You’re giving everyone a complex! Alcazar art from POTA #23. POTA ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

CBA would like to welcome our pal Chris Knowles (of Secret Sun Studios, and one fine designer/ cartoonist) onboard as Associate Editor of our mag! Chris brings an eclectic viewpoint on the comics biz and he’s relentless in getting the job done. Generally CBA has shied away from series overviews but Chris brings such enthusiasm for the unabashedly weird (and oft little-seen) comics of the past, we just can’t resist! Thanks, Chris!

(And as always, thanks to our everlovin’ proofreader Richard Howell for keeping our Ps & Qs in their proper order.)

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ator bounds about sabotaging the apes little floating playhouse and then finally liberates the humans and destroys the massive ship. Luckily there was a relatively faithful adaptation of Escape from the Planet of the Apes in the issue to placate the suits at Fox. Moench dubbed this new series the “Future History Chronicles” and would do some of his most disturbed work for it.

In the following issue (#13), Ploog and the “Terror” series returned again and brought in a tribe of savage apes and a traveling indigent named Lightsmith who worshiped the ancient artifacts he found from human society. Lightsmith was a familiar character for ’70s Marvel books—the eccentric hippie wizard— who just happens to live in Abraham Lincoln’s nose. Moench balanced these original stories with the Escape adaptation (easily the dullest of the Apes films) and was probably going overboard with his own stories to keep himself awake. As the “Terror” storyline ambled its merry way it alternated with the “Future History” stories, which kept getting more and more insane. The next installment, “Dreamer in Emerald Silence” (POTA # 15) introduced Ambrosia, an ape who lived underwater in a giant mollusk named Dwelleron whom was trained to destroy the Ape city-ships because Ambrosia hated violence (got all that?). Sutton took the opportunity to create baroque seascapes and ever more frightening looking ape characters. After a snooze-inducing Escape double feature in #16, Doug and Tom entered in with the “Graveyard of Lost Cities,” a densely rendered tale of war, flotsam and an elderly ape named Grimstark who pulls an Icarus with his flying machine. The story boasted another doublepage spread by Sutton that nicely showcased his disturbing visual imagination. The adaptation of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, drawn by Alcala, had also started in the same issue.

Moench still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Perhaps inspired by Sutton’s maniacal approach in the “Future History Chronicles,” Moench brought him on board for “Terror” in #19, which played down the race war overtones in favor of some primo ’70s style psychedelic madness. Sutton worked over Ploog’s layouts (as Mike was just getting out of the comics game) and drenched them in Suttonian nuttiness. Moench weighed in with a story that featured Pueblo apes, peyote hallucinations (just imagine what Sutton did with that!), a human-ape makeout session, and a giant underground city inhabited by flying monkeys with a hankering for hooking up visitors to EST-ian brainwashing machinery. Sutton was unburdened of Ploog’s layouts in the second part of the story and went to town turning in some inspired graphic insanity that was at once beautiful and hideous.

Trouble in Monkeyville Not all was well in Monkeytown, however. Marvel kept trimming the package to hold the price point at 75 cents and the next issue (#21) brought the much more prosaic penciling of Herb Trimpe aboard. Trimpe did a nice, serviceable job on a new installment of “Kingdom on an Island,” but he lacked Rival’s elegance and Sutton’s ferocity. It is likely that Marvel was trying to bring Apes closer into Marvel’s house stylings, but then again it’s possible that no one else was available at the time and speedster Trimpe was pinch-hitting.

Issue #21 also wrapped up the Conquest adaptation and Moench now only had the dreadful Battle for the Planet of the Apes left to adapt.

Moench pulled off a coup in the following issue writing “Quest for the Planet of the Apes,” an original story that bridged the continuity gap between Conquest and Battle. Moench closed the plot holes and ensured that the Battle adaptation would segue nicely. He also got some superlative work out of Rico Rival and Alfredo Alcala for the two chapters—but with one Apes flick left to play with, time was running out.

Lovers of graphic insanity were elated when Sutton returned in #23 for ”Messiah of Monkey Demons,” a continuation of the “Terror” storyline. As usual, Sutton’s art was dense, chaotic, wacky, and totally captivating. He brought in a strange blend of Ditko and fantasy illustration to all his Apes work and those elements were increasingly coming to the fore. He even did his variation on the old “flying-monkey-devils-splattered-on-the-windshield” riff beloved of so many cartoonists. The Battle adaptation began in the same issue and would be one of those rare occasions where a comics adaptation was superior to its source material. Moench worked from the original screenplay of the film and a revolving cast of Filipino artists helped Battle overcome the visual cheesiness that was the film’s downfall.

Battle must have been passed around the Redondo shop when it was being done because after Vicente Alcazar and Sonny Trinidad split chores on the first chapter and Alcala drew the second, there was a musical chair approach to the art, and the tune had a very Filipino lilt. Sonny Trinidad, Dino Castrillo, Virgilio Redondo, and Yong Montano tag-teamed the feature and even made room for a freshout-of-the-fanzines Marshall Rogers to draw a splash for issue #25.

The confusion didn’t detract from the story much, since there was an effort made to keep the look consistent—well, sort of consistent.

In the midst of this chaos, Moench and Sutton sneaked in their most depraved “Future History” tale. Tucked in the back of issue #24, “The Shadows of Haunted Cathedrulus” used a Rashomon narrative device to tell the tale of New Order Born of Old Sins, a cult of human-ape mutations with a grisly past and a predilection for cannibalism. Like the muties in Beneath, they lived in a giant church and worshiped an atom bomb. Sutton did some nasty interior decorating in their abode, stuffing irradiated vegetation into every square millimeter of white space on his bristol board. The tale ended with a battle scene of hideous graphic violence. The non-movie Apes stories had reached a new summit of mind-scarring lunacy in this twisted tale and editor Archie Goodwin pulled the plug, at least temporarily.

Apes was winding down. Most of Marvel’s b-&-w line was gone by this time and Ape-fever had peaked and receded. Issue #25 featured a double dose of Battle and Trimpe was brought back on board to cool down the book’s tone. Unfortunately Moench had run out of ideas and he attempted a mix of the Planet of the Apes and The Six Million Dollar Man in the Terror Series (“Apes of Iron,” POTA #27) but failed. Trimpe’s standard issue Marvelisms made the story seem more stupid than it probably was. Sutton came back for a uninspired chapter of “Future History” in #29, but Battle was over and so was the book.

It was a wild ride that Moench and his cohorts had taken their readers on, and if it didn’t always have much to do with the Apes movies, it never failed to be entertaining and scary. Marvel probably banked on fitting POTA into the horror end of its magazine line, but Moench had a different kind of horror in mind. His Apes tales tapped into contemporary fears of cults, race war and nuclear holocaust, and he added a good dose of hippie paranoia in for leavening. Moench, of course, would go on to write about a squillion comics after Apes and it’s unlikely that too many of his fans even know about his work on the POTA series—but it was one of those rare convergences of art and commerce that could only have taken place in the 1970s. After Star Wars hit, licensors became extremely protective of their properties and no one would let a writer run as far afield with their babies as Doug Moench did. During a time when so many comics were a mess of relevance and cosmic navel-gazing, Moench showed us what a fevered imagination could do with a multi-million dollar franchise. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this lightning to strike twice.

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Fall 1999

Mini-Interview

Tom Sutton: “I Went Apesh*t!”

The Artist and His Journey Through the Planet of the Apes

by Chris Knowles Apes master Tom Sutton began his career drawing cartoons for Stars and Stripes while in the service in 1959. Since then he has drawn hundreds of comics for nearly as many companies. And though his output pales in comparison to, say, Jack Kirby, he has probably grinded more graphite and drained more bottles of Higgins ink than any cartoonist alive. Sutton began doing work for the Marvel line in the late ’60s. In a recent interview, he recalled an encounter with Kirby at the House of Ideas: “You sit there and watch this guy pencil two entire pages right while you’re sitting there, and you say ‘I think I’d better find something else to do.’ This man could draw like other people write letters.” Despite this humbling encounter, Tom Sutton soldiered on.

His elaborate, fantasy-derived stylings would not be one’s first choice for a sci-fi pot-boiler like Planet of the Apes. As Sutton said, “I would have been the last consideration.” And obviously, former Apes editors Tony Isabella and Don McGregor were not ringing Tom’s phone off the hook. It was the late, great Archie Goodwin, who took the Apes helm midway through the series, bringing Sutton aboard.

“Archie was my pal,” Sutton recalls. “He came and visited me when I lived in Newburyport. I’ll never forget Archie getting out of his little rental car. Archie had never been out of New York before, and trees—there were all these trees!” Sutton and Goodwin had first worked together for Jim Warren on titles like Vampirella. Later, when Goodwin went to DC, he had Sutton write and draw for some of his titles. Sutton has nothing but the highest regard for his departed comrade. “Archie was a real editor,” Sutton said wistfully.

So Sutton took on the Apes assignment, even though he wasn’t terribly familiar with the source material. “I don’ t think I knew what Planet of the Apes was. My wife said, “Here’s the paperback,’ and I read it which of course had very little to do with the movie!” Sutton’s lack of Apes expertise was probably an asset in the eyes of POTA scribe Doug Moench. The writer’s plans were to take his new Apes story far afield of the Apes films’ mythos.

“Future History Chronicles” wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with Planet of the Apes per se. Sutton explains, “It was supposed to be a parallel story that they need for backup. As I recall it being explained to me, this was not about the movie; this was a parallel universe Apes thing.” Moench was pressed to create non-adaptive stories for the magazines to satisfy the insatiable demand in the UK for anything Apes-related, so he created new storylines to cope with the demand and to compensate for Mike Ploog’s slowing output. “Ploog was not a ‘Merry Marvel Marching’ person,” Sutton explained. Not long after he left POTA, Mike took off for Hollywood.

Sutton was captivated by his new assignment. “The thing to me was the apes, the idea of drawing apes,” the artist recalls.“That’s what attracted me; you know, how would apes make this? What would their domestic situation be like? What would they worship and what kind of Gothic weaponry would they have?” Sutton’s immersion in this assignment consumed a great deal of his time as well. He recalls that he took “an incredible and stupid amount of time. I would screw with them until they just had to go. Doug would ask me, ‘What are you doing up there?’ I’m inventing a world.”

World inventing was no easy task. “I did drawing after drawing after drawing,” Sutton said. “It was an obsession. I did a great big painting of the cathedral ships,” all in preparation for his pages. “I went apesh*t, appropriately. I had these gigantic pages, they were using 18” tall pages for the b-&-w books, and I was using pages 6” Fall 1999

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taller than that. I was also drawing on mylar drafting film. It was beautiful material to work on ’cause you could use it as scratchboard—it took ink, it didn’t care what you put on it; indestructible.”

Not that Sutton’s Herculean efforts were compensated in kind.

“It was a little bit better pay than the color books but nothing spectacular,” he explains. “The attitude of these people was if you want to go and kill yourself out of enthusiasm, go right ahead.” He was never told why Marvel pulled the plug on the “Future History” series after the grisly “Shadows of Haunted Cathedrulus” story in #24.

“When it all so abruptly collapsed, I was really crushed. I never went anywhere near Marvel while working on the book. I would be the last person in the world to know the machinations of the company. I remember getting the impression that they had no interest in the thing to begin with.” “Future History” did return for the last issue but it was clear the game was over.

Tom Sutton is not one to dwell in the past. He sold the Apes pages off long ago, and isn’t particularly interested in old glories. After Apes, Sutton did a number of books for Marvel and DC, including a long and lucrative run on the 1980s Star Trek book. His mind is on the present and he continues to work in the comics field.

Whatever his feelings about the project are today, I told him that it was obvious to me that his Apes work was an amazing labor of love. “That’s the only way to do anything,” he replied.

Above: Sutton’s pen is again set on stun in this hideously beautiful triptych from POTA #23.

Below: ”Unspeakable rites” weren’t what Marvel had in mind for a movie cash-in. From the mind-scarring “Shadows of Haunted Cathedrulus” (POTA#24). POTA ©1999 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

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CBA Interview

Of Doctors and Ducks Interview with Artist Frank Brunner on His Marvel Days Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Frank Brunner was almost immediately a fan-favorite artist when he came into his own as artist on “Dr. Strange” in the early ’70s, joining the ranks of Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, and Barry Windsor-Smith as a top artist on the Master of Mystic Arts. After a relatively short stay at Marvel, Frank went on to do distinguished work in animation design (notably on the X-Men cartoon series). He was interviewed by phone on July 22, 1999 and the artist copy-edited the transcript.

Right: Frank pitched this risque one-page (unpublished?) strip to National Lampoon in the early ’70s. ©1999 Frank Brunner.

Below: Portrait of Frank Brunner in the ’70s.

Photo taken from the book, After-Image: The Art of Frank Brunner (1978).

Courtesy of the artist.

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Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?

Frank Brunner: Brooklyn.

CBA: Did you get into art early, when you were young?

Frank: Well, I grew up in a very poor neighborhood, and I got my break while in junior high school in Brooklyn, and attended the High School of Art and Design. This was when I was about 15 years old.

CBA: When did you get interested in comic books?

Frank: From the first comics I read in the late 1950s.

CBA: What comics were you into?

Frank: First I was into the Barks kind of stuff, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny. Then I went on to other things, like Batman and Superman.

Actually, my favorite first “serious” comic book I read was Turok, Son of Stone. I was reading Uncle Scrooge and Turok around the same time.

CBA: Were you too young for the ECs? Frank: Yes. So, when I found out I’d missed them, well, I ran around to every second-hand store, and got as many as I could, later on.

CBA: What particular artists were you keyed into?

Frank: Immediately, all of them had something. I guess at the time, fine artists like Wally Wood, Frazetta, Williamson, and Kubert.

CBA: When did you realize you could draw for a living?

Frank: When I realized I couldn’t do anything else! [laughs] I didn’t have any interest in doing anything but draw. As a matter of fact, when I went to the New York School of Visual Arts briefly, they asked what I was doing there. They saw what I was doing in the comics, and they said, “Get out of here!”

CBA: What, they didn’t support comics?

Frank: No, they just felt I could make a living. They said, “You don’t need to be here unless you’re trying to learn something about existential art.” By the way, it was at SVA when I first met Burne Hogarth, one of the founders of the school. I showed him a Tarzan-like story I was working on called “Carnak.” He looked at the pencils with

interest, then put them down, looked up at me and (with a deep sigh) he said, “This is very good, but don’t do comics! It’s all over; it has no future!” He looked very serious. Interestingly enough, a few years later, when he was rediscovered in France, he quit the school and was drawing Tarzan again!

CBA: The first work I recall seeing of yours was in the fan pages of the Warren black-&-white horror books.

Frank: Yeah, those were my little drawings that were at the bottom of my letters which I’d draw on whatever paper I had lying around.

CBA: Was that your first published material?

Frank: I would say so, yes.

CBA: When did you discover fandom? Were you a frequent contributor to fanzines?

Frank: It sort of happened at the same time. I was a comic book fan, and I’d go to the earliest conventions and see all the old Golden Age stuff, whatever; when I started drawing, it was for fanzines.

CBA: Do you recall who you hung out with at the shows?

Frank: Who did I hang out with? Not particularly. They were friends I’d met in school and college who were also into comics.

There was a kid who was a class behind me who became a writer for a while, named Bill Mantlo, who went to the same school. But we didn’t really hang around that much together.

CBA: Did you start seeking work from the mainstream comics?

Frank: Actually, I’d intended to become an underground artist. In New York at the time, there was an underground Sunday comics supplement that was part of the paper, Gothic Blimp Works. It was in color. I was out to get a feature in there. When I looked around, in COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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1969, suddenly the whole underground scene had gone to the West Coast. I then went to National Lampoon, where they’d published some pretty weird stuff, and I almost got a strip going for them.

Lampoon happened to be in the same building as Marvel at the time, and I remember my experience very vividly. I was going to the offices of National Lampoon trying to sell this one-page strip for their comics section. Anyway, when I went up there, nobody was laughing, they were all dead serious. I was hearing from other offices, people shouting, “Is this funny?” Then I went downstairs to visit Marvel for a while, because I knew Marie Severin and a couple of the other artists down there, but they were on the floor, rolling around on the floor laughing! And I thought, “Maybe this is where I should be working!” I remember what they were laughing about, too. It was an issue of Amazing Spider-Man; Romita had just done the cover, and the character was holding his head down, and I guess it was the death of Aunt May, or Mary Jo, or whoever—holding his head down, before John put the spider-lines in the head, it looked like Spidey was holding a large grapefruit in front of his face, and everyone was just hysterical.

CBA: Do you recall who you dealt with at National Lampoon?

Frank: Yeah, Michael Gross. Strangely enough, I didn’t know his name was Michael Gross when I first visited the office. I had a strip called, “Gross Tales from the Drive-In,” and so, I showed him this strip, and then I realized, “Oh, my God, his name is Michael Gross!”

He tried to act like he was not too thrilled with it because of the concept, but I knew it was the title of the strip. Then Gross told me this other weird story; he said, “You know, we had Frazetta do a recent cover. Well, I did a cover, too. And you know what? I offered to trade original covers with Frazetta, and he turned me down!” This guy was not on the same planet with the rest of us!

CBA: What was the name of the other strip you tried to get in the Lampoon?

Frank: Oh, yeah, it was “Smash Gordon,” obviously a satire of Flash Gordon.

CBA: Whatever happened to that stuff?

Frank: It wound up being published in Castle of Frankenstein and the last installment appeared in Marvel’s b-&-w Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1.

CBA: You were obviously submitting to Warren, and to…

Frank: Yeah, it’s a long and winding trail. Actually, I still have a 10-page story I’d done for Warren just out of high school, that was commissioned while he was on vacation, or out of town, or something. He saw it, and he rejected it. Then, I went to work for Web of Horror, they obviously liked my work. And the funny thing is—or not so funny—the way things worked out, Web ceased publication after three issues, and we all, Bernie Wrightson and Mike Kaluta and everybody had stories that were sitting on the shelf! So, I went out there to Long Island where Cracked magazine, the parent publisher, was located.

CBA: Robert Sproul?

Frank: Yes. I’ll tell you a little story about that—stories within stories. Sproul only allowed Web of Horror to be published because he wanted to keep Terry Bisson as editor of Cracked. Terry was preparing to leave unless he could start a horror magazine, so they allowed him to do Web. The guy had a good idea, because Warren’s books were going down the tubes really fast at that time, and Warren had lost all his original artists from the first 10 issues or so, and was just reprinting that stuff and some awful new art! So, it was a good time to get in, and Web was kind of popular. I sold my first story to Terry Bisson that I wrote and drew, called “Santa’s Claws.” I wrote it on a Christmas Eve, and it was about a vampire pretending to be Santa Claus. Terry bought that, and I thought, “Well, I’m off and running now!” Of course, like I said, three issues and Terry, for some reason or another, decided he was going to move to California and become a flower child. Immediately, Sproul cancelled the book, regardless of sales. Anyway, I went out to Long Island, I retrieved a lot of the artwork for a lot of the guys on my own, and then I heard through the grapevine that Warren was interested in hiring the artists from Web of Horror, so I went over to the office and I sold him a story that was originally intended for Web, and did some more stories for him.

CBA: Overall, how was your experience at Warren?

Frank: I remember one time I brought in a story, and there was a Fall 1999

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climactic scene where the monster is confronting this girl he’d been chasing, and Jim looked at the pencils and said, “You know, I’ll bet you $5 you can do this better.” He then took out his wallet and showed me a $5 bill, and I said, “Fine, you’re on,” because $5 actually meant something in those days. I went home, redid it, brought it in, and he said, “You know, I think you won the bet,” and he takes out his wallet and there’s nothing in it! Then he calls in his editor, who was Billy Graham at the time, and borrows the $5 from him to give to me!

CBA: I’ve heard he did that a lot to poor Billy.

Frank: I heard Jim did a lot worse things to people; sometimes if he didn’t like their artwork, he’d take out a stamp that said “Bullsh*t,” and he’d stamp it right over the artwork.

Basically Jim had a Hugh Hefner complex—except that he was no Hugh Hefner! That job was taken. At a convention, somebody overheard me calling him a bastard, and he confronted me with it. He said, “I heard you called me a ‘bastard!’” And here I am, sitting there trying to get work from him! I looked at him, and said, “I think I was misquoted!” At the same time, while I’m sitting there, he gets a phone call from Ralph Reese, and Ralph had just finished a job for him, and was bringing it downtown in a taxi; he was right outside the building, calling him to say

Above: Frank ‘s portrait of “The Doctor as I see him.” From After-Image. Below: Commission piece. Courtesy of the artist. Dr. Strange, Howard ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Pencils from Frank Brunner’s work in Dr. Strange #4. Two other penciled pages from this issue appear in CBA #2. Courtesy of David “Hambone” Hamilton. Dr Strange ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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he’d left the artwork in the taxicab! And Warren’s looking at me, saying, “Ralph Reese is on the phone, you talk to him, you tell him, you would never leave a job in a taxi!” Jim was fuming mad, so I say to Ralph (trying to control my laughter), “Jim’s right. No, I would never do that!” Anyway, the timing couldn’t have been better because Jim forgot all about the “bastard” remark.

CBA: You only did about four stories for Warren?

Frank: Yeah, and then I got the axe from his henchman. I had just sold a story to Warren called “The Wizard’s Venom,” I was writing some of my own stories before I went to Marvel, where it was almost taboo, and so Warren had bought the story, and I thought, I’d go and draw it. But before I could leave, [editor] Bill DuBay stops me and says, “We don’t want you to draw this story, we’ve got all these Spanish artists who work for $10 a page and we want them to draw it.” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m not interested in that—I didn’t write the story for another artist! Why take the trouble to write a story and not draw it?” And that was the parting of the ways at Warren.

CBA: What was your first experience at Marvel?

Frank: I took a staff job at Marvel for a while, and that went for six months or so. They hired me to do whatever needed doing and they told me I couldn’t draw well enough to have my own strip at that time. So they had me doing redraws and minor corrections on

the art. I never understood that! I’m not good enough to draw, but, “Here, can you fix this Barry Smith drawing?”

CBA: Did you work directly for Frank Giacoia or John Romita?

Frank: I worked directly for Sol Brodsky in production. I was in the same room with John, Marie, and Herb Trimpe.

CBA: Was it as fun an atmosphere as when you walked in there after National Lampoon?

Frank: Yeah, it was kind of fun. I was a bit out of place there, because I had long hair down to my shoulders at the time, and I wore weird clothes. They never invited me to lunch, but we managed to have a few laughs at the office!

CBA: How would your characterize your job as an “art corrector?”

Frank: Well, that wasn’t the only thing I did, they also had me doing whatever somebody else couldn’t handle, kind of like a “Man Friday.” On Tuesdays, they had “portfolio day” at the office, nobody else wanted to do it, so they always sent me out there to look at the kids’ portfolios.

CBA: Did anybody of merit show up there?

Frank: Not that I remember (but I’m sure they probably do!).

CBA: What was the quality of the art that you saw?

Frank: About what 14-year-olds could do when they attempt to draw comics, basically not looking at real human figures, just taking what they saw in the comics and butchering it!

CBA: Would you give them advice?

Frank: Yeah, I would tell them, “Well, get yourself an anatomy book, if you don’t have the money to go to the Art Students League where they have models. Get anatomy books by Loomis or George Bridgman.”

CBA: A lot of the young guys, some of your buddies at Web of Horror, were going over to DC Comics. Did you think about going there?

Frank: Yeah, I went over there. Joe Orlando took an immediate dislike to me for some reason. I think Joe didn’t like seeing that my early drawings had some obvious influences from other artists. I thought that was an extremely hard-nose attitude to take with a young, struggling artist looking for a break—especially hypocritical since Orlando himself broke into comics as a Wally Wood clone!

Anyway, I did some samples for him and he referred me to Carmine Infantino, who was the publisher at the time, and Carmine said, “Now, listen, I’m not drawing any more, and I don’t want you to think I’m just telling you that you have problems with your drawing, I’m going to take you in and we’re going to show Joe Kubert, and I’m not going to say a word, and let him tell you what he thinks.”

So, there I am, I’m going, “Oh, my gosh, Joe Kubert is going to look at my artwork.” And we walk in, and Joe’s real nice, “Yeah, I’ll take a look at it.” And while he’s looking at it, Carmine’s pointing out everything that’s wrong with it! And Joe says, “Well, there you have it,” and I said, “Well, thanks for telling me, Joe!” CBA: It was just that one meeting?

Frank: Basically… I was trying to get on the horror/mystery books.

CBA: Joe Orlando’s books.

Frank: I never saw myself as a super-hero artist, I was always into the science-fiction, horror, even satire….

CBA: Were you concerned that the other genres were a shrinking market? Did it feel at the time like super-heroes were beginning to dominate?

Frank: Well, that’s how I got my foot in the door at Marvel.

Marvel was trying to copy DC, quite frankly, with their mystery books, which evidently were selling pretty good at the time, even though it was a shrinking market, and they came out with a bunch of titles. I did my first Marvel stories for those books—earlier some inking I did on staff. I inked a “Watcher” story in the back of Silver Surfer (which was really a redrawn old Atlas sci-fi story). That’s what I did a lot of back then.

CBA: What was the chronology here? Because I thought the Surfer book ended in ‘70?

Frank: When it ended, yeah, I was on staff at Marvel for a while, but basically, they wouldn’t give me a penciling job, so I left Marvel and went to work for Web of Horror and then Warren, and the fanzine work, then I went back to work at Marvel again, and this COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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time they let me pencil stories for Chamber of Chills.

CBA: So, just prior to going to Marvel, that’s when you made a pit stop at DC? Frank: Well, that was early on. Carmine was running things. And Orlando wasn’t going to give me any work.

CBA: So, you went back as a freelancer, so you obviously weren’t working in the offices?

Frank: No, I worked at home.

CBA: How’d you adapt to the Marvel “style”?

Frank: That was the best part of it. I had a synopsis to work with, and I could pace the story on my own, whereas at DC there was a script, it felt like a prison, because they’d map out every panel. It was very tight descriptions of what was going on—“A guy walks into the office from the editor’s point of view”—blah-blah-blah—that was too restrictive.

CBA: Do you think that you received adequate credit as a co-creator?

Frank: No. In fact, I just had a fight with Marvel about that on a reprint of Howard the Duck #1. I co-wrote that story. They wouldn’t give me that credit. They labeled me the “co-plotter,” because otherwise, Steve Gerber would’ve had to share the writing money, which I really had no interest in fighting over. So I decided, “Look, it doesn’t matter, as long as we get a good story,” but when they reprinted it recently, I said, “Well, I should get half of the royalty on the writing,” and I went back and forth with them, I sent them copies of the original pages, all the border notes—half of which is dialogue that wound up in the story—and they still said, “Well, we can’t pay you.”

CBA: So, it’s still remains a sticking point to some degree?

Frank: Yeah, well, I mean, there’s nothing to be done about it. I was co-writer with Gerber (as well as Englehart), and that’s the way it goes. I was happy with the way the stories came out.

CBA: So, you did some short stories, as I recall, for Chamber of Chills?

Frank: That was my first sold work for Marvel—three stories for Chamber of Chills.

CBA: And you were starting to be pretty much a regular cover artist, right?

Frank: Yeah, well, everything had to have a cover, the interior artist sometimes didn’t want to do it, and I really liked doing covers!

CBA: And what was your first regular series?

Frank: It was “Dr. Strange.” Roy Thomas was editor at that time. When Stan was editor, you’d show him artwork, and if it didn’t look like Jack Kirby’s, he’d say, “I don’t know what to say about it,” so he’d give you no decision. Then Sol Brodsky would say, “Well, it just isn’t the right Marvel style.” But by the time Roy came in, the “Marvel style” was not so ultra-important, and it wasn’t so restrictive to just Jack’s or Steve Ditko’s styles. So, Roy called me up—he’d seen my Warren work—and he said, “Hey, you do great monsters, we’re doing ‘Dr. Strange’ with a Lovecraft motif, where he’s battling various monsters. Would you like to do the book?” I said, “Sure.” I was actually delighted! I did an issue of Marvel Premiere, #4. I was finishing off a story that Barry Windsor-Smith had started. Smith got sick or something, and basically he did the first five pages, and I was sticking to his layouts, and completed that book, penciled and inks.

Archie Goodwin wrote it. Next thing I know, I’m already late for the next book! I had only two weeks to do that. Archie had left, and Gardner Fox was the writer, he sent me a script, and I read it, and I said, “I’m not going to kill myself for this script!” Gardner was not working Marvel style, he was working DC style, and the story was dull!

CBA: Full scripts?

Frank: It wasn’t just that it was full scripts; I just didn’t like the story, the way he was handling Dr. Strange. It wasn’t “cosmic.” It was like Dr. Strange was a detective who had magical powers.

CBA: Were you interested into taking Dr. Strange into more H.P. Fall 1999

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Lovecraft kind of territory?

Frank: Not really. As much as I like Lovecraft, I didn’t think that was ultimately what we wanted to do with him. I skipped #5, I did #6 with Fox because I guess I figured maybe something would happen. I don’t know. That story wound up being inked by Sal Buscema in a week, or something like that. Then, I quit again, and they had a couple of fill-in artists. Roy came back to me and said, “Hey, who would you like to work with?” I had just met Steve Englehart, and we had talked about where Dr. Strange should be going, and Steve could understand the future I was conceiving for Dr. Strange, and he was into it, so I told Roy I’d like to work on it with Englehart, and from Marvel Premiere #9 on, Steve worked on “Dr. Strange” with me.

CBA: How did you guys work together? Did you have meetings beforehand, or…?

Frank: Yeah, before the first word was written, we’d get together and spend an afternoon or evening going over the plot and how it would develop.

CBA: It seemed like almost from the word “go” there were no

Above: Pin-up of “The Trinity: The Ancient One, Dr. Strange and Clea, who will ultimately inherit the mantle of ‘Master.”

Image and quote from AfterImage. Courtesy of the artist.

Characters ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Great commission piece

by Frank featuring Marvel’s muck monster, the Man-Thing.

Courtesy of the artist. ManThing ©1999 Marvel Comics.

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holds barred. You had him meet God! You dealt with some pretty extraordinary questions. Was it, “This is freedom, so let’s push the envelope”?

Frank: Well, yeah… like I said, with Roy as editor, there were a lot more things possible. It still was quite restrictive as far as the Code went, but since the book was neither dealing with sex or violence particularly, we thought, “Well, let’s take it cosmic, we’re going to deal with theology, the meaning of existence, life, death, and God!” CBA: One thing you may have noticed in the second issue of CBA: I got some xeroxes of your pencils. I think I got them through David “Hambone” Hamilton. Have you retained your pencils?

Frank: No. First of all, they were inked. So how could I have the pencils? I had copies of most of them, Xerox copies, but I lost about half of them in the ‘94 Northridge earthquake due to water damage. The water heater decided to take a walk across the room during the quake, and got them wet, and when old xeroxes get wet, they turn to powder. So I lost about half of them.

CBA: That’s too bad. They were extraordinarily tight pencils.

Frank: If I wasn’t inking it, I wanted it to be—in other words, I didn’t want there to be any question in the inker’s mind what I had in mind. Even down to the stipple effects and Zip-ATone patterns.

CBA: Did you have a close association with Neal Adams?

The “Crusty Bunkers” seemed to help out a lot.

Frank: After Neal did “Deadman,” I used to visit him a lot, and he would go over my drawings, and show me how to improve them. It was kind of like a father-son relationship, which was kind of nice. That was in the good old days!

CBA: What did you learn from Neal?

Frank: Idealism, really. He was a very idealistic person. I haven’t spoken to Neal in years (we all get old and bitter).

Anyway, we—the newer artists from both Marvel and DC would meet on the first Friday of every month (each time at a another location) and generally party! And later we’d perhaps go to an all-night café in New York. We’d be sitting there and Neal would say something like, “You’re supposed to be artists, so look at everything with an artist’s eyes. Observe the world around you, even, say, a telephone—how is it shaped, what is unique about the cord? Look at the trees and people—especially people; they’re all different!”

CBA: He opened your eyes?

Frank: Neal made me more observant of the environment and everything, so when I was drawing, I’d have a better idea of what I was drawing.

CBA: carried over into your creative thinking and storytelling?

Frank: I had my own theories about storytelling. I felt my stories were a bit more cinematic-oriented, like certain movies, Citizen Kane, for example, where you have your establishing shot, your medium long shot, close-in, where you have your close-ups, reaction shots, radical angles—all the stuff like that. I tried to pace them all. It became a method for telling the story.

CBA: With “Dr. Strange,” did you lobby to do the character?

Frank: Oh, he was my first choice. I don’t know if I told Roy that I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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really wanted to do “Dr. Strange.” He sort of read my mind; here was this character who was like a super-hero, but he didn’t go around punching people, and that kind of character was what I wanted to do. I wanted to do a hero that wasn’t predicated on hitting people or throwing things, like Captain America, or someone like that.

With Doc, it was done with magic, and that he could basically do anything, anytime, anywhere, yet he was still human with all our weaknesses! I always thought that while your typical super-heroes were battling to save our lives (or us from ourselves), Dr. Strange was in the ultimate battle for our very souls!

CBA: It was the non-violent aspect?

Frank: I guess. Not that it was totally non-violent, of course— he fought monsters and even had to kill his mentor—but compared to the other books, it was not the low-brow physical violence.

CBA: Like Kirby….

Frank: Look, I enjoyed Kirby, don’t get me wrong, but I just didn’t want to do that! I loved Jack’s work, but it’s not like I ever wanted to draw like him, or do his kind of stories. Jack was the kindest man in comics I’d ever met—he always had time for young artists.

CBA: When did you meet him?

Frank: At Marvel, he took me out to lunch a couple of times, he did some basic drawing for me, showed me construction.

CBA: What other creators do you remember meeting and hanging with?

Frank: I met a lot of people!

My God, the ones who made impressions on me were Neal, Jack, and Wally Wood.

CBA: What was Woody like?

Frank: He was a great guy; unfortunately he gave more to comics than he got, and it kind of destroyed him.

CBA: Did you hang out with Herb Trimpe?

Frank: Only during office hours. I met John Buscema, at the time he was doing Silver Surfer, and he was like one of my gods at that point.

CBA: Did you meet Barry when he first came to Marvel?

Frank: A couple of times. Barry’s always been… I mean, I’m the kind of person who wants to relate to exceptional people, like John Buscema, who’d been in the business for 20-30 years. I looked at them in awe. I looked at everybody else my age as equals, we’re all out there trying to do something, but I never got the impression that Barry saw things that way!

CBA: So, you weren’t particularly interested in joining the Studio?

He seemed to be the kind of person you would…

Frank: Well, it wasn’t my choice if I would join the Studio or not.

It was their choice, and except for Barry, they all lived in the same apartment building. So, it was like a private club in that respect, even Fall 1999

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though I admired Jeff Jones, I admired Bernie, and I used to visit them, because they were 10 blocks away from me. It always seemed like it was an exclusive club!

CBA: Who did you bond with in those days? Did you spend a lot of time socially with Steve Englehart, for instance?

Frank: Yes, and I spent a lot of time with Alan Weiss. Al and I were pretty good buddies for a long time. I was also friends with Jim Starlin, Steve Skeates, Ralph Reese, and later in California, Steve Leialoha.

CBA: Was Starlin living in New York at the time?

Frank: He was in California. Alan, Jim, Englehart and I left New York around the same time.

CBA: All leaving Marvel?

Frank: Oh, no, we weren’t leaving Marvel—I remember while I was driving to California I was trying to get some layouts done!

CBA: So, overall, how was your feelings about working on “Dr. Strange?” Do you feel you were successful?

Frank: Oh, yeah. It was the high point of my career, because as I said, every book I did I considered to be like a movie unto itself, and

Above: Rejected cover of Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 by Frank and Alan Weiss. Courtesy of the artist. Man-Thing ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Get down, America!

Detail of Bernie Wrightson’s portrait of the only fowl 1976 Presidential candidate. Courtesy of Jerry Boyd. Below: Cover art to Howard the Duck #1. From The Brunner Mystique (1976).

Courtesy of the artist. Howard the Duck, Spider-Man ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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I was making a statement somewhere in the story about my philosophy and beliefs.

CBA: Was it on the success of your run in Marvel Premiere with Englehart, that it was spun off into its own series again?

Frank: Absolutely. Well, I don’t want to brag or anything, but when we took over the book, it was about to be cancelled.

It was in the dumper, and they were selling—I forget. It was abysmal.

CBA: Fantastic by today’s standards, I’ll bet.

Frank: Oh, well. Comic books were selling tons when they were 15¢ or 20¢! Anyway, like I was saying it was about to be cancelled, and to me, it was like my super-hero job to save “Dr. Strange,” as well as my stumbling career. We helped each other a lot, and I feel about “Dr. Strange” like Boris Karloff felt about the Frankenstein Monster; we’re forever linked, and we’re always lumped together, Doc and me!

CBA: Were you socially tight with Steve Englehart?

Frank: Well, we shared a house together when we moved out to California.

CBA: Were you sharing an apartment in New York?

Frank: No, he lived in Connecticut, and I was in New York.

CBA: Did you guys go over the art together in person, or was it…?

Frank: We got together for our plotting sessions; he’d always come down to New York.

CBA: Did you get together when you finished the art, or finished the pencils?

Frank: Oh, sure, we’d get together then.

CBA: Did you ever consider or lobby to reproduce a story straight from your pencils?

Frank: No, because at the time it was not very successful.

CBA: Neal had done it a couple of times…

Frank: Yeah, but Smith tried it over at Marvel and half the art fell out. He didn’t have enough time to finish a Conan issue, so they printed it from the pencils, and they were very tight, but it still fell out. The reproduction, especially Marvel reproduction, was about two levels below DC’s anyway, and that was my one regret about not working for DC, because they had better production quality.

CBA: So, what happened with the “Dr. Strange” book?

Frank: Well, we kept asking Roy, “When is Dr. Strange going to get his own book?” We were aware that sales were suddenly going up, and Roy said, “Oh, Marvel Premiere is Dr. Strange’s own book.”

The next thing we knew, about two weeks later, we got a call from Roy, saying, “Guess what? Dr. Strange is getting his own book!” So, what do you know, Marvel Premiere wasn’t his book. After the first five issues of Dr. Strange, they wanted to go monthly, but I just wasn’t fast enough to draw it and maintain the quality!

CBA: The “Crusty Bunkers” were known to come in and do miracle jobs in a short period of time.

Frank: Yeah, that’s because there was a whole bunch of people at the studio, so whoever was around would pitch in.

CBA: Were you late with deadlines, for instance?

Frank: No, I usually made my deadlines, but the point was, there were no good inkers available at Marvel. I had some people volunteer whose names I won’t mention, and I ran out screaming, and ran over to Neal and begged him to do a “Crusty Bunkers” job until I could find a regular inker, and it became Dick Giordano, because he was inking on it anyway as a Bunker!

CBA: I think that was Dick’s first ’70s Marvel work, right?

Frank: I think it was! It was a great thing for me.

CBA: What did you think of the “Crusty Bunkers” overall?

Frank: Well, it was kind of inconsistent, it was good, better than anybody else could do it, especially when Neal inked it.

CBA: Yeah, Neal was focusing on the main characters, like Dr. Strange.

Frank: Yeah, Neal would go through all the pencils, and he’d pick out all the best panels, and say, “This is mine.”

CBA: That’s what Neal could do!

Frank: And I’d just stand there and say, “Whatever you say…”.

CBA: He did a fine job on that. So, what was the genesis of Howard the Duck?

Frank: I was realizing in order to make money in comics at the time—they really didn’t care about individual artists unless you were somebody like John Buscema, who had a special deal—but the only way you could make money (it was like we were all interchangeable parts) was to do more books. That was not my “Pollyanna philosophy”; I thought the comic books were becoming a medium, with more mature and adult themes, or at least retaining a college-age audience, because we got most of our letters from college kids. I saved those—amazing letters from people in college about “Dr. Strange,” discussing philosophy with me, and so on. So I thought, “Wow, this is it, we’re going to break loose of this kid crap medium that you’d throw away after reading it.” Unfortunately, mainstream American comics have never really broken through that barrier.

Anyway, back to your question… what was your question, anyway?

CBA: I don’t know… [laughter] You know, what was very surprising was for a very short period of time, Marvel would reprint “Dr. Strange” in a Treasury Edition—was it the “Silver Dagger” storyline?

Frank: The Treasury Edition reprinted the “Shuma-Gorath” story, from Marvel Premiere #10. And the rest of the book was other artists.

CBA: You did the cover, though.

Frank: I did the front and back covers. That was it; they asked me to do the covers, and I asked, “Who’s in the book?” And they told me Ditko was in the book, Marie Severin, Barry Smith, and I said, “Hey, Barry Smith did one ‘Dr. Strange’ story. You’re going to tell me you can’t have one story of mine?” So, they relinquished to my COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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request. I guess it was Marvel’s policy at that time to only reprint the oldest material.

CBA: Stuff that was at least 24 months old.

Frank: Well… older than that!

CBA: I know….

Frank: The thing was, my story wasn’t much newer than the one Barry did, and I said, “If you’re going to use that, why don’t you have Barry do the cover?” And they said, “No, no, you have to do the cover!”

CBA: So why did you leave Dr. Strange?

Frank: Dr. Strange was going to go monthly, and—I’ll tell you the truth, I was out of storylines at that point. I mean, I felt I had done everything I could do, we’d taken him from just a magician to sorcerer supreme and he took the place of The Ancient One, and I didn’t have another idea! At that time, I was looking at a “ManThing” comic and this duck comes walking out with a cigar, and I said, “That’s what I want to do!” Something funny! Evidently, the “Man-Thing” books got a lot of attention; Steve Gerber wrote a short story to appear in the back of Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, and I bumped into him at a cocktail party, and I said, “Hey, I really like the Howard the Duck character, I’m off Dr. Strange, and I’d like to do it.” And he said, “Great! It’s been sitting on Neal Adams’ desk for six months!” Actually, Neal was scheduled to do it originally.

CBA: Had Neal started it, as far as you know?

Frank: I never saw anything. I think he wanted to do it, but he was doing a lot of other stuff.

CBA: You became a fan favorite with Dr. Strange, and Roy has mentioned that books sold really well when you did them.

Frank: Well, when Howard the Duck #1 came out, it was the best-selling book Marvel ever had (that wasn’t based on a movie).

The only other book that sold as good at the time was Star Wars.

CBA: But even before Howard the Duck, were you being courted?

Frank: No, Marvel—outside of maybe Roy, and no one understood this more than Roy—to them, I guess, I was just the same as John Romita or Herb Trimpe or anyone. That’s when I started to get disillusioned at Marvel; I thought, “My God, I have to bust my hump to really make a living at this, and they don’t care.”

CBA: Were you doing work outside mainstream comics at that time?

Frank: Yeah, I would do illustrations and paperback covers, and I was doing portfolios for Looking Glass, and actually, after Howard the Duck, that became the main thing. We sold T-shirts, portfolios, posters….

CBA: Were you the singular artist at Looking Glass?

Frank: Yeah, I was the only artist. After all, it was just me and my wife running it!

CBA: Getting back to Howard, you did the short story in GiantSize Man-Thing #3….

Frank: (There was never a more obscene title for an overground comic than Giant-Size Man-Thing.) Actually you caught me in a lie; it was supposed to be in Giant-Size Man-Thing #3, but it wound up in #4, and Steve Gerber never forgave me—he wrote a nasty editorial about it, something about “As we were going to press on GSMT #3, we don’t have the ‘Howard the Duck’ story, it’s probably sitting on Frank Brunner’s sun-drenched drawing board in California.”

CBA: When did you move out to California?

Frank: While I was doing Dr. Strange #1.

CBA: This was well before FedEx, right?

Frank: Yeah, but we could mail everything “Special Delivery.”

Marvel didn’t like it, but there were so many of us doing it, they had no choice. There were still people coming into the office, however.

CBA: Did you have any dealings with Stan?

Frank: When I was on staff? Yeah. Like I said, it was mostly, I’d show him the artwork, and he’d say, “All I know is Jack Kirby.” And when I’d bump into Stan in the elevator, he’d say, “How’re ya doin’, Rich?” (He thought I was Rich Buckler!—and I think he still does!)

CBA: Did you have regular dealings with Roy as editor-in-chief?

Frank: When I was in New York I’d see Roy whenever I came in, and when I was living in California, we made a lot of phone calls. He wanted me to do the Red Sonja book, but I couldn’t do it. I told him the reason I’d quit Howard the Duck wasn’t that I didn’t like it; there Fall 1999

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were two reasons: Steve Gerber started writing full scripts, DC style, and giving them to me in pieces—in other words, six pages here, six pages there, and I couldn’t pace the story! After the sales figures came in for Howard the Duck #1, I called up the font of wisdom, the editors at Marvel—and Roy was gone by this time—it was Marv, and I said, “How about a little raise?” And he said, “Well, we can’t give any raises right now, call us back at Christmas time.” And I said, “I’ll tell you what, I quit. Let me know what the raise is around Christmas time, and maybe I’ll come back.”

CBA: Was it a fait accompli—did you kind of walk in knowing you’d get that kind of answer?

Frank: I really expected that… we were talking something like three to five bucks a page… I had hopes that after the enormous success of that first issue, that they could spare a small raise in my page rate!

CBA: How did you learn about the success of that first issue?

Frank: We were aware, we had spies who’d tell us. Hell, dealers couldn’t keep it in stock!

CBA: During that time, I remember, oddly enough, for such a bigselling issue, it was extremely hard to find. I was in New England, and it was virtually impossible to find, and I’d have to go to conventions, where it’d be $3-5 apiece, or something like that.

Frank: And you know why? I don’t know exactly how it hap-

Above: It looks like Gorko, the Man-Frog is taking on disco-era Venice, California girls and looking for a rematch with our favorite water fowl! 1999 commission piece by Frank Brunner.

Courtesy of the artist. Howard the Duck, Gorko ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Frank shared with us the original art for the cover of Red Sonja #14 before her face was altered by the Marvel art department—done to look more like Frank Thorne’s version, we suspect. Red Sonja ©1999 The Estate of Robert E. Howard.

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pened, but they printed what they thought they could sell, and obviously, it wasn’t enough. It was the first Marvel comic that went back to reprint as a first issue—not really a reprint, they just went back to press again and printed more.

CBA: Do you think a lot of the sales had to do with speculators and dealers buying up enormous runs?

Frank: I don’t know if that was entirely responsible… I don’t think it was quite like Shazam! #1, which was a total speculator thing. I think that the colleges, they were ready for this kind of stuff… I keep running into people who say, “Oh, I remember reading Howard the Duck when I was in college.”

CBA: Howard started off as a bi-monthly book, and how many issues did you last?

Frank: Well, it’s not that I “lasted” or didn’t “last.”

CBA: You stayed…

Frank: I did two short stories in GSMT #4 and 5, and the first two issues of Howard the Duck.

CBA: So obviously, with a bi-monthly book, by the second issue you were getting sales figures back.

Frank: Yes. CBA: Did you have a script in hand, were you ready to go, or did you start the third issue?

Frank: Actually, I’d done a layout rough of the cover—in fact, it

was my idea, “Master of Quack-Fu” issue—and I did a little cover sketch, and sent it off, and they did a version of it, and by that time, I had left the book.

CBA: Oh, so was that your concept from the word “go”? That was before there was even a story, you came up with “QuackFu”?

Frank: Yeah, I wanted to do a satire of the television show Kung Fu, which was very popular at that time, so I came up with “Quack-Fu.” CBA: How did you work with Gerber?

Frank: Well, it was something new. I guess the best time I had with him was when we co-wrote #1. I flew into New York City just for that reason—he lived in New York—and I started writing down notes, and we put it together, continuity and page synopsis, I got into a taxicab, and left it in the taxicab!

CBA: That damned taxicab! [laughs] There’s one taxicab in New York still driving around the city with that Neal Adams portfolio, that Ralph Reese story, and your Howard the Duck continuity!

Frank: When I got back to my apartment where I was staying with a friend, I immediately called him, and we had to re-create the whole thing over the phone before I went back to California!

CBA: You say Steve suddenly started giving you full scripts?

Frank: For #2, I was delivered a full script in pieces, and full script is one thing, you can at least pace it, but when you get it in pieces, I don’t know where to put the big dramatic scenes!

CBA: Did you have your fill of comics by that point?

Frank: Well, about a year or two later, I adapted and drew an elaborate, long story which took me forever to draw. That was issue #30 of Savage Sword of Conan, a 45-page adaptation of one of the original Robert E. Howard stories. I had picked that story years before, when Roy was lining up the assignments, and everyone would call him to say which ones they wanted to do. I picked “The Scarlet Citadel,” and since he was doing them chronologically, it came up in the middle of ’77. So I spent about 10 months on that.

CBA: I’d assume you had the limited edition art business, Looking Glass, going at the same time?

Frank: I was just starting it.

CBA: Because you couldn’t survive 10 months doing a 45 page story, right?

Frank: Not really. I was selling originals at the time.

CBA: Was the print business successful while it lasted?

Frank: Yeah, but I guess the market got saturated, especially the portfolio market. A lot of publishers were jumping into it and doing cheapo portfolios, selling them for $10 a pop—27 Neal Adams drawings printed on toilet paper for $10. It just wrecked the whole market. The idea of a limited edition portfolio was that you were getting the finest print job possible on the best paper, in a nice package. Here it was, they were printing this stuff on toilet paper and putting it in plastic bags! So, the portfolio market died, I discovered laser engravings, and I did that for about a year, very successful. The initial edition sold out.

CBA: You were selling directly to the collector’s market?

Frank: Right, I would advertise in Comics Buyer’s Guide.

CBA: By that time, when you were being an entrepreneur, was it leaving comics behind? You occasionally did covers, right?

Frank: I did covers. Now we’re getting back to the end of my days at Marvel. I was doing covers for Dr. Strange and Red Sonja, and then in 1979, the copyright laws were changing. Marvel created “The Contract.” I never worked on contract, and so they came up with this contract that said, “We own everything you ever did, are doing, or ever will do for us.” I said, “I’m not going to sign that. I’ll sign it for everything I’m going to do, but I’m not going to sign it for stuff I’ve already done.” And that was that. Jim Shooter cut me off.

Shortly after that, about a year or two later, I did Warp for First Comics.

CBA: You had a very public resignation from Marvel, actually…

Frank: A lot of people were saying that I was fired, and I wanted to make it clear what my reasons were for leaving Marvel. And it appeared in the Comics Journal. I had a lot of anger to get rid of.

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CBA: Did it work?

Frank: Yeah.

CBA: What was the fallout of the article?

Frank: I was probably blacklisted from Marvel, but there was no point to it anyway.

CBA: Did you want to seek—like Gerber eventually did, not too many years later—some ownership of Howard? Howard the Duck was a daily comic strip, was made into a movie, and the comic was quite successful for a period of time. Did that annoy you?

Frank: Well, yeah, I wanted to create my own comic, there was very little opportunity, because companies would say, “Yeah, yeah, sure,” and then they’d go out of business. All these places where I thought I might get a start with a character, and then they would fold. I just was a little bit off in my timing, because it was a little too soon for the direct-sales market which later took off.

CBA: Moving back a little, I think in roughly 1974, 1975, Marvel began a policy of returning artwork. The way they divvied it up was— to say the least, it was interesting—delivering the majority of the art to the penciler, then some to the inker, and then I’ve heard that roughly two pages per story went to the writer. What was your take on that?

Frank: Well, none of the artists liked that. In fact, Jim Starlin went so far as to cut the captions out and send them to the writer in an envelope! I didn’t do that, because I didn’t want to destroy the artwork.

CBA: How long, as your memory serves, did that last?

Frank: I don’t know, because by the time I quit, I stopped being aware of what their policy changes were.

CBA: Didn’t you lose some of your art to the writers?

Frank: Yeah, yeah, unless I negotiated with them. I had some arguments with Steve Gerber about it.

CBA: Craig Russell, for instance, said that Don McGregor gave him McGregor’s “share.”

Frank: Right, a lot of the writers who felt the artists were really breaking their buns doing the best job they could, they felt the artists deserved the artwork, and really, it was a way of subsidizing your income if you could sell the originals—but Gerber was argumentative on it.

CBA: When Roy Thomas was editor-in-chief for a while, it seemed an awful lot of creators enjoyed being under his editorship.

Frank: Roy was terrific. He was a breath of fresh air for Marvel.

Stan was getting kind of crotchety, basically. He really wasn’t coming up with anything new. When he went around the college circuit speaking, he was asked about Howard the Duck, and he replied, “Howard the who?”

CBA: Why did Bernie Wrightson do that Howard the Duck button? Did you ask him?

Frank: It was because Gerber and I had a falling out.

CBA: When Roy left being editor-in-chief, the company went through a period of being a revolving door for editor-in-chief.

Frank: Yeah, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman… Len… and Archie.

CBA: Shooter?

Frank: Yeah… I’ve burnt his name out of my mind. There is no more of a dislikable person I’ve ever had to deal with. Besides blacklisting me, I remember one time when he had Al Williamson do some work for them, and he’d never worked for Marvel—and somebody said, “Hey, you should get Frank Brunner to do this,” and it was a specialty one-shot. And he said, “Yeah, yeah, maybe…” and that was all I ever heard; later he rejected my graphic novel out of hand!

CBA: Was there any discernable management style? Was there chaos at Marvel?

Frank: Total chaos under the revolving-door thing. Nobody could handle the position.

CBA: Was it First that did Warp? What was the deal with that?

Did Stuart Gordon still own it, did Neal own it?

Frank: The writers of the play owned part of it, and the publisher owned part of it. They wrangled that out amongst themselves, and my deal was that any new characters I created were mine, which they later threatened to sue me over, because I did a graphic novel called The Seven Samuroid, which was based on one of the robot Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

characters I created for Warp. They threatened to sue me over it, and by the time I’d gotten a copyright lawyer (who actually worked on changing the copyright laws), and showed him my original contract, and showed them what they were threatening, he wrote them a letter saying they had no case: “What’s the case?” Finally, when that was cleared up, Pacific went belly up! So, the graphic novel sat around for about half a year trying to find a publisher, and finally it was published by the company that printed it in New Zealand… so it got published, and of course, it didn’t get much distribution, and that was probably it for me and comics.

CBA: Really? Have you done much comics work since?

Frank: I’ve done some comics related work—covers, pin-ups, and

trading cards for Topps. But let’s not forget that before the graphic novel debacle, I did a full-color adaptation of Elric for Heavy Metal, and “Duckaneer” for Quack. And that story Warren wouldn’t let me draw? I did it for Star*Reach as well as other work for the so-called ground-level press.

CBA: Did you have any desire to return, to do some sequential stories?

Frank: Only in terms of doing my own characters. I went to

Above: Commission drawing by Frank of “The She-Devil with a Sword.” Courtesy of the artist.

Red Sonja ©1999 The Estate of Robert E. Howard.

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Above: Double-page spread (sans captions) from Frank’s extraordinary 42-page Conan story, “The Scarlet Citadel,” which appeared in Savage Sword of Conan #30.

Reproduced from After-Image.

Courtesy of the artist. Conan ©1999 Conan Properties, Inc.

Above: Frank made a very public resignation from Marvel with his essay, “Farewell to Comics,” appearing in The Comics Journal #51, Nov. 1979. ©1979 Frank Brunner.

Comics Journal ©1979 Fantagraphics, Inc.

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Image with some story ideas, and they evidently weren’t too thrilled with them.

CBA: You were an entrepreneur; with the Looking Glass company, did you think of self-publishing comics?

Frank: I thought about it, but it’s awfully expensive, and then you’ve got the publicity and distribution and everything else. I didn’t want to become a businessman, I wanted to stay an artist. Running the limited edition business and the T-shirt business, my wife did most of the business stuff there so I could still be an artist. By getting into publishing and distributing, my goodness, that’s a can of worms I don’t want to get into, especially full-color printing.

CBA: In a nutshell, how would you characterize your time in mainstream comics?

Frank: The agony and the ecstacy.

CBA: What was the high point?

Frank: Probably doing Dr. Strange.

CBA: And the low point?

Frank: The graphic novel, and having two companies die right before printing.

CBA: Do you still attend comic shows with any great frequency?

Frank: Occasionally. I was down in San Diego last year.

CBA: Are you going this year?

Frank: No. I’m busy working on my own animated concept for a CGI direct-to-video called Dino-Force. It could fit into a lot of slots. I originally envisioned it as a Saturday morning show, but considering what happens on Saturday mornings, that’s probably out of the question. On Saturday morning, you have to be completely PC now. The slightest hint of violence, and they don’t want it. It’s a cross between dinosaurs and Camelot, basically, and they battle with swords. That’s probably a little too violent for Saturday mornings now!

CBA: King Arthur and dinosaurs?

Frank: Hey, stories from the Bible are violent! So, we’re looking at

either direct-to-video or maybe something like the timeslot that Hercules and Xena have in syndication.

CBA: Have you done much work in animation?

Frank: Oh, yeah. 14 years. I first got in with Hanna-Barbera, in 1984, right after the collapse of the comic business. I worked on the second season of Jonny Quest, which was 1986.

CBA: Were you doing presentation boards?

Frank: I was mostly doing presentations. Most of the people in the world haven’t seen that material. The actual shows I was the art director—or the main person doing the design work—were Jonny Quest, Sky Commanders, and the feature film Once Upon a Forest.

But the other stuff, I did tons of work, they have a whole archive on me over at Warner Brothers (who now own Hanna-Barbera). I haven’t been over there, but they’ve told me they have a whole stockpile of my stuff for all kinds of shows from the interesting to the really stupid!

CBA: That’s animation. Did you work with other artists that have any comic book background people might recognize?

Frank: Yeah, I worked with a lot of the Filipino artists who were doing work over there.

CBA: Alfredo Acala?

Frank: Acala, Niño, guys like that. There were some older guys who used to do comics, like Ric Estrada and Mel Keefer. Basically, most of the older guys were from comics or comic strips.

CBA: Did you have particular animation ideas you wanted to push at that point?

Frank: No, I’d just gone through a very horrible divorce, and I just wanted a place I could recuperate and draw whatever they wanted me to draw.

CBA: And did you get paid very well?

Frank: Yeah. Better than comics work, definitely. And animation has a union and benefits! Paid vacations! Things that were unheard of in comics! You know, I was one of three people who refused to sign that nefarious contract that said they owned everything—there was Jack Kirby, Mike Ploog, and me who never signed it—everyone else capitulated. We had a fledgling organization in New York called COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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ACBA—the Academy of Comic Book Arts. Neal was the second president, and I immediately joined, and we were hoping to get—not a union, because that was a dirty word—but at least a guild going, something that would give us health insurance! That’s all we wanted!

You know, if you got sick when you were drawing a book, guess what? They took it away from you and said, “That’s it, you don’t get paid.” So, you couldn’t afford to get sick, that’s why I’ve always said comics is a young man’s medium. When you get old, you get sick!

Finally, the companies killed ACBA, and everybody knuckled under.

Anyway, when I came down here from the San Francisco area, I said, “Oh, my goodness, a union! Health benefits and a pension!”

CBA: Initially, what brought you out to California? The sunshine?

Frank: In New York, I was living like a vampire. I would work all night and sleep during the day, because New York was so noisy, at least for me, and it was so quiet at night, comparatively, so I came out to California for a visit, and really liked what I saw, and I moved out… and I switched to working during the day!

CBA: Do you still continue to draw constantly?

Frank: Pretty much. I’m finishing up a commission that’s a Dr. Strange/Howard the Duck crossover!

CBA: Is there anything else you wanted to cover about those old days?

Frank: I’ve got so many stories I could tell you, but most of them are probably irrelevant. I mean, a lot of stuff went down in those days. I’ll tell you one story: This is the story of Sise-neg/Genesis. We had just completed Marvel Premiere #14—well, I had just completed the pencils, most of the art, but for some reason or another, nobody took notice of what we were doing. When the book came out, Stan finally got a hold of it, and I don’t know, somebody pointed it out, or he read it, and he wrote us a letter saying, “We can’t do God. You’re going to have to print in the letters column a retraction saying this is not ‘the’ God, this is just a god.” Steve and I said, “Oh, come on!

This is the whole point of the story! If we did that retraction of God,

this is meaningless!” So, Steve happened to be on his way to Texas for something, this is when we were in California, and we cooked up this plot—we wrote a letter from a Reverend Billingsley in Texas, a fictional person, saying that one of the children in his parish brought him the comic book, and he was astounded and thrilled by it, and he said, “Wow, this is the best comic book I’ve ever read.” And we signed it “Reverend soand-so, Austin Texas”—and when Steve was in Texas, he mailed the letter so it had the proper postmark. Then, we got a phone call from Roy, and he said, “Hey, about that retraction, I’m going to send you a letter, and instead of the retraction, I want you to print this letter.” And it was our letter! We printed our letter!

CBA: True confessions!

Frank: Hey, it worked! We thought, “Wow, this went perfect!” We later found out that Jim Starlin was in New York at that time, up in the Marvel offices, and he was reading the Dr. Strange fan mail, and he was the one who actually saw the letter, believed it was the real thing, and gave it to Roy, who showed it to Stan!

Right: Frank’s commission work featuring The Black Widow. As evidenced by the superb graphics that illustrate this interview, Frank was extremely generous with CBA in sharing much of his recent commission work, which reveals an artist who still very much has “it.” Check out the ad below for contact info if you’re interested in his commission rates. Courtesy of the artist. Black Widow ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

CBA’s Jon B. Cooke is back with his new mag, Comic Book Creator!

Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium!

TwoMorrows is proud to debut our newest magazine, COMIC BOOK CREATOR, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ‘40s and bullied in the ‘80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS, talks to TODD McFARLANE about his new show-all book, showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforgettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creator-centric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorrows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor JON B. COOKE, who helms the all-new, all-color COMIC BOOK CREATOR! (And don’t miss the double-size Summer Special #2, paying tribute to JOE KUBERT, this July!

80 pages, $8.95 • Full-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 Subscriptions: 4 ISSUES, $36 US with FREE Digital Editions • DIGITAL ONLY: $15.80 ($45 First Class US • $50 Canada, $65 First Class International) • Subscriptions include the double-size Summer Special

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

CBA Interview

Craig Russell’s Visual Poetry From Dr. Pym to Dr. Strange: Talking with PCR Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Sam Gafford Beginning as an assistant (of sorts) for Dan Adkins in the early ’70s, P. Craig Russell very quickly flowered as an artist during his stay at Marvel. His astonishingly sensitive work matured in dramatic fashion in those years, particularly as collaborator with writer Don McGregor on the series “Killraven.” [Please note that in this interview and the next—with McGregor—the terms “Killraven,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Amazing Adventures” are used interchangeably to describe the s-f series.] The artist was interviewed by phone on July 21, 1999 and he copy-edited the final transcript.

Below: Craig shared with us this treasured photo of Don McGregor (left) and the artist having a talk at a mid-’70s New York comic convention.

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CBA: Let’s get right down to it: Craig, where are you from?

Craig: Wellsville, Ohio. Across from the tip of the panhandle of West Virginia.

CBA: When were you born?

Craig: October 30th, 1951.

CBA: When did your interest in comic books begin?

Craig: Oh, as a little kid. You know, we had the Walt Disney comics and the Harvey comics. You know, Casper and Hot Stuff—all that sort of thing. So I had little kid comics when I was a little kid, and then Archie comics when I was in elementary and junior high school. Then one day, I was at a friend’s house and he had #3-14 of Fantastic Four. (So this would have been about 1963, I suppose.) I sat down and started reading those and I was hooked big time!

CBA: Yeah? Were you familiar with Kirby’s work?

Craig: At the time, no, it was the stories!

And, of course, Kirby’s artwork but I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. I wasn’t sitting there and thinking, “What great artwork!” I was just reacting to it. It was about that time that I started becoming interested in the artists who drew the book and discerning styles; you know, detecting one from the other.

CBA: Were you drawing all this time in childhood?

Craig: Oh, yeah. Not obsessively, but it was certainly a pastime that I enjoyed. It seemed that from third grade on, I was always the kid in the class that could draw and I always got a lot of attention. That’s real positive enforcement for a kid.

CBA: Did you do comic strips and stories as a kid?

Craig: No. At the time I

started working for Marvel Comics I had done maybe two dozen comic pages, tops. I did one story in college. I did a story for my brother for Christmas once while I was in high school about the place where he worked, and a couple of things that I would start and never finish; then my six-page portfolio application for Marvel. So two or three dozen pages, I suppose.

CBA: In one of the interviews you did with Comics Journal, you mentioned Dr. Seuss as an influence?

Craig: Oh, definitely. I think that still comes out in my work from time to time. I responded to pictures from an early age whether through Disney animation or Dr. Seuss or Carl Barks. All of those things had a real effect. But, yes, Seuss was one of the first ones where I was really affected by the drawings, really drawn in and emotionally affected by them.

CBA: Was it the whimsy, the fantasy element that turned you on?

Craig: Well, yeah. There’s an emotional sense to his work. The stories I first read were… what is it? The 500 Hats of Batholomew Cubbins and Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Those drawings so perfectly captured that feeling—that fantasy dreamlike feeling. It drew you into the story in a way that realistic drawings couldn’t do.

CBA: Did you clue into fairy tales with the intensity that you ultimately showed them?

Craig: Ah, I read some fairy tales when I was a kid but I didn’t have any big collections of them or anything. I didn’t have that many children’s books. I certainly have a lot more children's books now than I did then! We had the little Golden Books but not very many fairy tales.

CBA: Were you increasingly becoming obsessed with art as you were going through adolescence?

Craig: In spurts.

For days on end I would produce drawings and then I would forget it for a few months and then I’d play the piano obsessively or I’d read

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obsessively. It went from one interest to another but I always came back to drawing. By high school, it was a fairly constant thing. I was the class artist—the guy who drew backdrops for the band concert or did drawings for the school newspaper and the yearbook, and designed the sets for class plays, did banners for pep rallies, that sort of thing. So it was a real practical kind of application. Not much fantasy involved unless there was a fantasy element to the backdrop painting for the prom or whatever. So I was constantly involved that way.

CBA: When did you realize that you can actually make a living doing this? Were you conscious that you could actually get a job?

Craig: Well, when I got a job at Marvel!

CBA: [laughs] When it happened?

Craig: [laughs] Yeah, when it happened. Exactly. Even then, I figured I would be living in near poverty all my life! At that point I was so slow! I never had much facility. There are certain restrictions, of course, in comics that you have to draw certain pictures, you know, to connect the dots that you wouldn’t draw otherwise. Before that, I would only draw pictures that interested me. Not every single picture in an Ant-Man story really, really interested me. But you have to do them! For the first time in my life I was being disciplined to produce material that I would not do otherwise. And that’s good for training.

You really stretch yourself. If you don’t, you just tend to repeat yourself over and over again, although you might become very good at it!

CBA: What kind of challenges did you have in art school?

Craig: Well, I went to the University of Cincinnati and got a degree in painting. The tone of the school was certainly very antiillustration or any kind of representational drawing. Most of my teachers came out of the ’50s movement of abstract-expressionism.

Not all of them but certainly most of them and they discouraged any study of anatomy which plagues me to this day! So I got very little training for aspects of drawing or draftsmanship which I could apply to comics. But I did get a lot of exposure to elements of drawing such as design and shape, the use of color, that people don’t get who go directly into comics with no formal training.

CBA: And when did you first meet Dan Adkins?

Craig: I was, I think, a sophomore in college, so I was about 18 or 19. He lived just outside of East Liverpool, Ohio. He’s from the same area as me. My dad had met him after hearing about this artist that lived out there and he needed some artwork for a sign or something— and he told Dan all about this son of his who had 5,000 comic books in the attic and Dan told him to tell me to come out and meet him sometime; which is what I did. Dan told me that if I would work with him that he could get me into Marvel Comics. I showed him my drawings. I didn’t take him up on it right away. I did another year in school and then took some time off in my junior year and started working with Dan. CBA: Were you familiar with his work?

Craig: Oh, sure. I knew he lived in the area. I found out when I was a junior in high school. In choir, there was a kid there who was his paperboy and he said, “Yeah, I know Dan Adkins, the guy who works for Marvel Comics”—and I was just amazed that these people lived somewhere where ordinary mortals could meet them! So, yeah, I knew his work in Warren comics and the amazing stories he did in Creepy and Eerie, and I knew it from the Adkins and Wood stories that he did as Wally’s assistant, and his time as an inker at Marvel.

CBA: Those “Dr. Strange” stories....

Craig: Right, right. The “Dr. Strange” stories he did.

CBA: Right. That’s outstanding stuff. What was he like?

Craig: [laughs] Oh, my! We could spend the whole interview telling Dan stories! Everyone has a Dan Adkins story. If you just met him for five minutes, you had a Dan Adkins story! Well, he certainly washed the stars out of my eyes as far as comic book artists being a race apart! [laughter] Although with Dan, he is a race apart! He was a unique individual, very down to earth.

CBA: He tended to swipe a lot.

Craig: Oh, yeah. Almost everything had its source someplace else.

That’s the way he was taught by Wally Wood. Woody swiped enormously but he had such panache and native ability that he turned it into Wally Wood. His inking was so strong, no matter who he inked, it looked like a Wally Wood story. He’d ink Kirby and it’d look like Fall 1999

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Wally Wood! So he was really able to absorb the source material into his drawing. Dan’s influences sometimes could stand out a little bit more. But his inking style was so strong and when he was really at his peak, even though he was pulling images from all over the place, it had a veneer that gave it a consistency.

CBA: Did you think that was his greatest strength— his inking or technical facility?

Craig: Well, certainly technical facility, yeah.

Those Warren stories, every single one was an exercise, in a different inking technique. The wash story. The Zip-ATone story. The crosshatch story.

CBA: Did Dan always have a lot of assistants?

Craig: No. He went through a period there when he moved back from New York City, where he’d been for a number of years, and I was the first one that worked there with him in his studio, I think. Val Mayerik showed up a few months later and then there was another kid who showed up, Mark Cursy. His name showed up in the “Ant-Man” credits. He came for a little while. Then just about the time that I left to finish school, Paul Gulacy showed up. Dan never really considered us his assistants. We did very little assisting to him. He was sort of training us and sort of sponsoring us and acting as art director, you know, away from the Marvel office for us. He’d do thumbnail layouts to show us how to tell a story. When we did the pencils on the story, he’d show us what to redraw and correct.

CBA: Was he more of a teacher then?

Craig: Well, yeah!

CBA: What was he to get out of it?

Craig: Just the camaraderie. Here he is, stuck out back in East Liverpool, Ohio, and here comes somebody else who’s into comics.

You welcome them! You’re not exactly awash in members of your own profession out there—and he just enjoyed our company and having somebody else to talk to about comics. And he did have a dream there, for a while, of having a studio there that would turn out material. He would do layouts, we would pencil it, he would ink it. Didn’t really happen. I was there temporarily. I always knew that I wanted to go back to school. He had us all work on one Barry Smith Conan that Smith had done the layouts on and then Dan’s studio was supposed to do the finishes. Well, that was just a disaster! I read in that Smith interview that he’s never looked at it since for which I’m grateful! The way it worked out was that Dan had me do back-

Above: Detail from Craig’s splash page to Amazing Adventures #28, giving us a glimpse at the rapidly developing design sense of the artist.

Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Killraven ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: With mentor Dan Adkins’ help, Craig drew this Dr. Strange tryout page when he first sought work at Marvel.

Courtesy of the artist. Dr. Strange ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Right: It was this newspaper article— from East Liverpool, Ohio’s Evening Review, Sept.

19, 1970— which prompted Craig’s father to suggest the young man visit local comic book artist Dan Adkins.

Courtesy of Dan Adkins.

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grounds which was my strong suit at the time—and I really slaved. I did all these intricate backgrounds. All the trees, the patterns on the walls, the ornate palaces and all this. Val Mayerik did a lot of the figure work. And this Mark guy was helping out with the inking; he had a nice control with the brush.

Well, when it came down to the crunch time, Dan was supposed to do the finished inks. If he had done the finished inks, I think it would have worked. But it got down, the deadline was tight, and he enlisted all of us to help out on the inks. Which I couldn’t begin to ink. Val had a nice fleshy feel to his anatomy but a very sketchy, kind of undeveloped style to his inks at the time.

It was just a mess. It didn’t come off; and then it had to be one of the worst coloring jobs I think I’d seen. Everything was orange and yellow in the middle of the night! [laughter] So it was just a nastylooking book—really unfortunate because we started out, I know I started out, thinking that “Wow!

I’m just going to give it everything I’ve got here!” [laughs] And I just didn’t have that much to give—but I tried!

CBA: Did you feel like you were a part of something that was taking place in comics with the advent of talents like Bernie Wrightson and Jim Starlin?

Craig: I don’t know if I saw it as anything as an advent in comics; because, growing up in the last few previous years, reading Kirby at his peak and Ditko at his peak, with Steranko coming along, there was so much great stuff—visually speaking—happening that this didn’t seem like anything “new.” It was just more really good stuff; especially with Wrightson who really just blossomed almost immediately after he started—he was just amazing—but it seemed like more of the same in a way. We were lucky in that we were at Marvel at an odd time, you know. Stan Lee had sort of left so there was this whole succession of editors and there was so much going on that they pretty much left us alone to do what we wanted to do, which was real nice.

CBA: How long did you work with Dan? Craig: Six months. I would go out to his studio every night and he was a night owl just like I am now. We would work most of the night. I would go out in the evening and we’d work until 3, 4 or 5 in the morning.

CBA: And subsequently he still inked a bit of your work?

Craig: Yeah. My first stories were done with Dan. He inked them.

We did three short stories for their horror books and then I started “Ant-Man.” He inked my first issue of “Ant-Man” [Marvel Feature #7]. I also did two issues of “Dr. Strange” [Marvel Premiere #5 and 7] when I was working out there which he didn’t ink.

CBA: It shows.

Craig: Yeah, it shows. It was done by committee. Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, and Dave Hunt inked it—and Giacoia was, of course, a fine inker but not for the type of work I do. I needed someone who was clean and tight and he was much more painterly and bouncy. So, anyway, it wasn’t a success.

CBA: Were you cluing into particular artists and storytellers as the way you wanted to do it?

Craig: Oh, yeah. My big influences were, well… in a sense, everyone you look at is an influence. It’s hard to say who’s an influence and who isn’t. Alex Toth is just about the greatest but when I was just starting out he had no influence on me. The sort of thing he did was so far beyond me. There didn’t seem to be anything I could pick up on. I could just sit there and admire it. But the people I wanted to draw just like at that time would have been Steranko, Barry WindsorSmith and Wrightson to a degree.

CBA: With Steranko, I notice that there’s an influence there with your storytelling and sequential approach.

Craig: Yeah. He’s just such a master of design to this day. And he has his influences. It all sort of goes into the pot. Kirby, Wood, Krigstein, and Eisner—and it all gets mixed up and ends up as Steranko; but he has such a strong graphic sense that he brings to it

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that it really does come out genuinely as Steranko—in the same way that you throw in Frazetta, Krenkel, and Jack Davis into a pot, and Bernie Wrightson comes out—but I think an important distinction has to be made here. A lot of artists throw all these influences in the pot and all that comes out is a tasteless mess. There needs to be a strong graphic presence, an overriding intelligence at work and a personal vision that held it all together. Steranko has that in spades.

CBA: Right. So you did three short stories for the horror comics?

Craig: Yes. Everything before “Killraven” was those three short stories, that Conan fiasco, an Iron Man, a “Dr. Strange”…

CBA: Which Iron Man? Craig: That was a story with Whiplash. It would have come out in ’72. That would be issue #62, with another Esposito and Giacoia ink job with refines by Romita.

CBA: The first time I ever became conscious of your work was with “Ant-Man.” Craig: Yeah, that’s the first series.

CBA: Did you receive any “suggestions” from Marvel as far as drawing like Kirby or in the Kirby style?

Craig: No, never got anything like that—partly because I was working with Dan; so Dan made the suggestions, but that was always in the realm of me drawing: You know, “That figure isn’t right.” He would always have several places on each page where I would go back and redo something. But no, I didn’t get any sort of coercive direction from Marvel to draw like anyone else.

CBA: So you basically were developing under the tutelage of Dan Adkins—and subsequently developing on your own?

Craig: Yeah. I was pretty much self-directed. I think too, that the influences I had, were people who were already well regarded so they didn’t have to tell me to draw like the guys who were in the field. I was trying to do that already! I was never trying to draw like Kirby. That was never anything that was innately like what I did. I rarely would try to do a Kirby.

CBA: So you weren’t necessarily instructed by New York to redraw material?

Craig: No, no. Unless, by any chance, they told Dan to tell me.

No, he would go over everything and then we would send it in. I don’t recall anything. But if they wanted anything redrawn, they just did it themselves! [laughs] Like in that Iron Man: That splash page was completely redrawn. And there was an “Ant-Man” where, come to think of it, did I redraw that or did Johnny Romita redraw it?

There was something about the Wasp in one of those “Ant-Man” stories where she’s got the big stinger. Way I had it, it didn’t look like a big stinger between her legs!

CBA: [laughs] Did you have an epiphany about design? Did you start out with a consideration that you can design a whole page or a whole story—or was that a slow assimilation?

Craig: That’s what I think I had from the very beginning. An interest and facility towards laying out a page and the panel arrangement and thinking about the panels’ relation towards one another and telling a story. It wasn’t just six blocks on a page and that’s why I would respond to people like Smith and Steranko who were obviously in that direction, too. I think an epiphany for me—and I wasn’t a Smith fan from early on, and it wasn’t until he started doing the last stint on Conan where I became gaga over it—was just one day, looking over Barry’s “Red Nails,” when it suddenly struck me just what a good storyteller he was. Before that, I always related to the drawings themselves. Which is the way I think most people respond to Smith and don’t realize what a great storyteller he is. Knowing how to layout a page, what to focus on, knowing where they are in the square or rectangle or whatever. It was just terrific stuff. It’s much more lowkey than Steranko who’s like, you know, like a graphic brass band.

Smith is a little more of a string section. But it was a real telling moment when I started seeing him as composition rather than just rendering. Oddly, these two artists couldn’t be more different in their approach and execution. But they were the twin poles of my own early inspiration. Smith obtained his emotional effects within the panel, by the body language and “acting” of his characters in relation to each other. Steranko obtained his emotional effects in the total design of the page, by rising and falling lines of composition flowing through the panels. I see no reason for these methods to be mutually exclusive and have always worked towards a synthesis of Fall 1999

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the two in my work.

CBA: There’s a suspicion, when I look at your work, that you had really tight pencils and that sometimes the inking didn’t do it justice.

Where it seemed there was exquisite detail but it would be hard to tell because you just couldn’t see the pencils. Were you satisfied with the inking you were receiving?

Craig: Oh, no. Except for Adkins. Dan was always so crisp and clean. I was happy with that. Jack Abel was not bad. When they asked me who I wanted if I couldn’t get Dan and I knew I couldn’t get Joe Sinnott (who was always booked on the biggest books), I would ask for Jack Abel because he had a nice clean style. It was a little feeble in a way—you kind of lost structure with Abel but he was conscientious and had a nice line. But when I first had a chance to ink myself—and Don McGregor basically talked me into it because I was basically convinced by Dan that I couldn’t ink—and had a little control in spite of my imperfections, I didn’t look back.

CBA: And was it difficult to start doing your own inking?

Craig: Well, you see, Dan always used a brush and I could never get a grip on it somehow. I always have to feel something pressing on the paper. So, most people at the time used brushes, so I just gave up the idea of ever inking my own stuff. When I was working on my second issue of “War of the Worlds,” there was one panel of Vulcana displaying her fiery powers. There was a special effect that I knew would have little white dots of paint on her black surface as

Above: Craig Russell page from his “Ant-Man” strip in Marvel Feature #9. Words by Mike Friedrich. Courtesy of Tom Field. Ant-Man, Wasp ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Craig’s pencils (from a low-quality thermal photocopy) for the cover of Amazing Adventures #28. Note the change in the the flying woman’s posture with the inked version, opposite. Courtesy of Don McGregor. Killraven ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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she goes nova so I did that one little panel myself. Don liked it so much that he talked me into doing the entire issue. And I was saying, “No, this was just a little special effect, this doesn’t mean I can ink.”

And, of course, I was doing it with a pen. I was comfortable with a pen. But he just kept insisting, “Yes, yes, yes, if you can do this, you can do the rest of it.” So I gave it a try and it was a little awkward and clumsy but it was truer to what I was trying to do than most other standard inkers would do.

CBA: Did you immediately start receiving inking jobs? For instance, only two issues later, you did wonderful inks on a Gil Kane cover.

Craig: Well, I’m not sure how this came about because they usually did the covers. It could have been a deadline problem because I was always late back then (Don was even later so that covered my butt), but I’m not sure how that came about. Anyway, Gil was doing the cover and since I was doing the interiors they asked if I wanted to ink. I said yes, of course. Kane is such a clean, clear penciler that that was a good person for an inexperienced inker such as myself to try out on. Because it was about the same time that I inked an issue of “Black Panther” over Billy Graham. Don asked me to do it because he just thought I could do it. Billy is a much different penciler.

There’s a lot of shading and unresolved areas but it goes for a real emotional impact. And I think I really floundered on that. It’s really fussy and over-rendered but Don liked it so, you know! [laughs] That gave me confidence.

CBA: You were in Ohio working with Dan Adkins and then you were on your own. Were you still in Ohio?

Craig: Yeah. I went down to Cincinnati to finish school. Actually, there’s a funny story about that move: When I got there, I didn’t have a phone for a couple of weeks and what with moving in and

painting the apartment, I forgot to call editor Roy Thomas at Marvel. The second “AntMan” story was due and he had no idea where I was or if it was even being worked on. I finally got in touch with him and the first thing he did was to fire me. He told me they would be finding another artist for “Ant-Man” and wouldn’t be sending me any more scripts.

I think I was so amazed to be in this business to begin with that I didn’t even think to argue with him or get him to try to change his mind.

I just said okay. I told Roy what I had completed on the story and how it was coming along, and if he wanted me to finish it. We got to talking about comics, had a nice little conversation and, after about ten minutes, he said Mike Friedrich would be sending me the plot for the next issue in about a week. I said okay.

He never mentioned he had just fired me and I wasn’t about to bring it up. We hung up and I thought, “That was close.”

While I was at school I finished the last of the “Ant-Man” stories I did and that Iron Man story. Then I called them and said I was just going to take several months and finish school. Then when I finished school, I wasn’t able to get much work from them. They kept promising me stories and never coming through. So at the end of 1973, I decided to move to New York just to show my face in the offices. You know, if you’re there and they see you, you’re more likely to get work. Where if you’re off in Cincinnati, with only half a dozen stories in your belt they’re not likely to remember you. Turns out that the day after I left, the next day a script arrived for a Morbius story. So that was the first thing I did in New York.

CBA: Were you enthusiastic about a career in comics? Was that what you wanted to do or was it just a job?

Craig: Oh, I loved the form from Day One and loved the subject matter and had grown up with it. Yeah, I felt pretty comfortable with it right away. I knew I wanted to do this.

CBA: I’ve got a technical question for you: Do you have Fear #24 with Morbius? Could you turn to page 14 and 15?

Craig: Oh, I think I know what it is.

CBA: It’s just a thing that I’ve always wanted to ask you Marvel artists from the ’70s. Was this actually a regular-sized page drawn sideways and blown-up to make a double-page spread? It appeared in all of Marvel’s comics for a few months. What was the instruction with this?

Craig: [groans] I guess they were trying to save the cost. They were trying to get two pages for the price of one. So they would have you draw a regular page on its side and then they would run it as two separate pages.

CBA: Were you pretty cynical about this?

Craig: Oh, I was too naive to be cynical. I’m 47 years old and still having the naivete knocked out of me. I was just, “Yup, yup, yup!

Okay, boss, this is what we’re doing.” I didn’t think too much about it.

CBA: So as far as you know there wasn’t too much complaining about it?

Craig: Well, I have no idea. I wasn’t hanging out with a lot of the other guys.

CBA: Did that last long, do you recall?

Craig: I think I did in this one and in the first issue of “Killraven” that I did, Amazing Adventures #27.

CBA: Oh, yeah, there it is. Page 2 and page 3?

Craig: No, that would have been too early. Oh, yeah! You’re right!

Page 2 and page 3 are the two sideways ones.

CBA: I remember feeling cynical about that when I was 12 or 13 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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years old and reading it for the first time! “These cheap guys!”

Craig: Obviously it didn’t last too long because I just did it in those two issues.

CBA: You had a memorable collaboration with Don McGregor. Do you remember first meeting him?

Craig: Not distinctively. I just remember meeting him in the office.

CBA: What were the offices like?

Craig: Well, you know you ran that drawing by Marie Severin [of the Marvel offices in CBA #2]? Well, she nailed it! That’s the layout… I was going through it the other day and looking at it really closely. I remember going down this hall and turning and going into John Verpoorten’s office. It was just like that! It was a lot of fun and very busy. Real friendly, very busy. Much looser than it later became.

When I was working on the second issue of the “War of the Worlds,” we had a real tight deadline as usual and this was the first time I had ever colored a book. And they needed it Monday! So I stayed there in the offices over the weekend. I slept in the reception area. I didn’t even ask anyone if this was okay, I just did it! People would stay there and work through the night and just come and go. I remember sleeping on the couch and some suit coming in in the morning and just giving me an odd look. I figured, “Well, it’s time to get up!” and started working on my coloring again.

CBA: You always seemed to break free with “Killraven.”

Craig: Well, yeah.

CBA: So getting back to McGregor, did you guys warm to each other pretty quickly?

Craig: Oh, yeah! Right away. He was the greatest thing that could have happened to me.

CBA: What was it about him?

Craig: Well, just a total, unquestioning support! I knew that I wanted to do a book that was worthwhile, that I could really give something to and that would amount to something. It would be a book that I, as a fan, would want to look at. So I was, visually at least, very ambitious. And Don was a true believer in everything he did and everyone he worked with so it was great. Also the fact that it wasn’t one of their big books like Fantastic Four or Spider-Man so we could do pretty much whatever we wanted and it didn’t interfere with the corporate image or anything.

CBA: You started doing some pretty outrageous stuff—interesting, pushing-the-envelope kind of stuff content-wise with these complex relationships going on within the book.

Craig: Yeah, well, Don had a lot more trouble, of course, than I did since he was coming up with the ideas for the characters and the interpersonal relationships. He had to get that past the editors before I drew it so there were a lot of battles fought—but by the time it came down to me, it was pretty much settled so I was able to just draw the thing. What I was concerned about, you know, was telling the story the best way that I could visually.

CBA: So you weren’t necessarily involved in the fights? Don went to editorial with his initial plot or was it a combined plot?

Craig: He was doing all of the plotting. Oh, yeah, there was no input from me as far as that goes. He gave me the plot that would have some dialogue in it and then I would draw the thing—which was good training in that Marvel style of doing things. The bad side is that the artist has little control over the finished product. You can lay out the page but I think a real important part is the design of the lettering into the artwork.

Certainly that’s something that you look at Alex Toth and that’s Fall 1999

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just the most beautiful synthesis of lettering and pictures. Steranko, since he wrote his own scripts, was always very aware of that, it was always very much part of the design. If you’re not in control of that, and some other letterer is coming in, it’s just sort of imposed upon it and that plus the fact that Don wrote really heavy scripts and I was just inexperienced in designing a panel to leave room for word balloons—it made for something like two big guys trying to squeeze through the same door. So when, several years later, we did the Killraven graphic novel, I told him, “Write as much as you want but write the whole script first so I can design that into the artwork and it won’t look like it’s imposing on the figures.” As long as you know what they’re saying, you can have a heavy script and design it well.

CBA: Did you have an aspiration in comics? Where did you want to go? Obviously, super-heroes were very dominant at the time but there were mystery books around, war books, other genres as compared to today. Did you have any aspirations to a particular kind of book you wanted to do?

Craig: More in the realm of fantasy than in super-heroes. I wasn’t interested in Daredevil swinging through New York City. The Dr. Strange Annual I did [#1], I actually did the first 20 pages in Cincinnati and plotted it myself. It was my own story. Dr. Strange was the perfect character for me. The fantasy background, the otherworld feel and the surrealism, that was exactly what I wanted to be drawing; that’s what inspired me.

CBA: Your work really exploded with this book.

Craig: Well, I think part of what was happening, I know for myself and I think it’s Left: Detail of Craig’s cover for Amazing Adventures #28.

Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Killraven ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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true for a lot of people, you’ll do your best work if you don’t feel that someone’s looking over your shoulder and judging it as you’re doing it. When I did that, I did it on my own. I didn’t even know if it would be sold, or that they would buy it, I just did it.

CBA: The whole book?

Craig: No, the first 20 pages of it.

CBA: So what was [credited writer] Marv Wolfman’s input into this?

Craig: I had projected it pretty much as three 20-page books. And I penciled the first one and they bought it and put it in a drawer for several years—and then brought it out to use it as an annual. Then Marv and I sat down and figured out a way to wrap it up in 35 pages. He brought in some new story elements and we worked it out and I added the new pages and voilá!

CBA: Did you pick up your anatomy from Gil Kane?

Craig: Yeah, I was influenced by Kane then. I started drawing from life halfway through the “Killraven” series. Having people pose for me. Until then, I was just swiping everything. That’s the trouble. You can’t swipe Kirby or Kane. Their style is just so unique that you can’t disguise it. I swiped from John Buscema most of the time. In a certain sense, in my early work, he had a bigger influence than anyone. But there’s something very restrained about Buscema’s work where you can adapt it to your own and turn it into something else and it doesn’t show.

CBA: And when you start working from models, it’s quite apparent. Did you take photographic reference or did you sketch?

Craig: I was having people hold those poses. So that was certainly a very limited thing. You can’t have people spend hours and hours of their life if you’re doing an extended project. So it was just about a

Above: One of the few pieces of unpublished Russell art—a panel from a “dancing Carmilla” sequence that was scrapped from Amazing Adventures. Don swears there’s a full-page of M’Shulla’s honey dancing up a storm, but damned if the writer and ye ed couldn’t find it when we scoured the McGregor Brooklyn apartment this past September.

If Don does find it—along with that unpublished Jungle Action cover said to exist—guaranteed CBA will print it! Courtesy of Don McGregor. Carmilla ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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year or so or just about the end of the “Killraven” series that I got a camera and started using that for photo reference. You can get in about one hour what you’d be asking someone to stand there for 24 hours.

CBA: Right. Did you hire models or were they just friends?

Craig: No, they were just friends. I lived in an apartment where there were always five or six of us living there and just pressed friends into service which I do to this day.

CBA: How was New York when you moved there? Did you acclimate to it?

Craig: Oh, yeah. I really liked it. But when I moved there, I was living beyond Flatbush. You had to take a bus to get to the subway, Avenue N or something. It was just a blasted heath out there. I was living in a basement with Duffy Vohland who worked at Marvel for awhile. (He’s in the Marie Severin drawing. He’s the fat guy bending down with his ear to a keyhole, listening to someone talking. That was Duffy Vohland.) In Brooklyn, Paul Kupperburg had an apartment that I sublet for a couple of months. (Either Paul or Alan. It’s terrible because even to this day I get their names confused because they’re brothers.) So I lived there for a couple of months and then moved into Manhattan. I had a friend from Wellsville who was living there and had just moved up from Baltimore and we shared an apartment.

CBA: Did you start getting more and more exposed to the old

school of illustrators? There’s suddenly a design element that comes in your work that’s fine art, that’s poster-influenced. A lot of your material was very well embellished.

Craig: Well, I was certainly bringing in things from outside comics.

I studied art history for four years in college and I would just spend hours and hours pouring over picture books. The French and Belgian symbolists of the late 19th century were a great source of inspiration for me. And then the illustrations of Kay Nielsen. I had some books of his and they were a tremendous influence. He was a Danish illustrator who went on to work with Disney on Fantasia. He designed the visual “look” for the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence.

CBA: Did you start seeing a world beyond comics at a certain stage? In the mid to late ’70s there was suddenly a plethora of posters and prints coming out. A new market was emerging. Barry Windsor-Smith had left regular comics to do prints, for instance.

Were you aspiring to get more into illustration?

Craig: Oh no, I wasn’t. Any illustrations or portfolios were tangential to me. I always just wanted to do the comics, with the storytelling and layout of the page. That was always the thing that interested me the most. So I never aspired to break from comics into any other field. This was always what I wanted to do.

CBA: There were some issues of “Killraven” where it seemed that the art was late and they had to throw in a reprint or something.

There seemed to be deadline pressures. How do you look back upon that now? Were you having deadline problems?

Craig: Oh, yeah. I was very irresponsible and undisciplined. I never had to produce on a deadline before. I think one of the things that saved my butt was that, late as I was, Don was even later! His scripts would come in way, way past the deadline—and, of course, the scripting was done after the artwork was done so no matter how late I was, I was always a page or two ahead of Don! [laughs] So I hid behind him and they got mad at Don. CBA: Did you receive pressures to deliver artwork?

Craig: Ah, yeah, yeah. John Verpoorten would call us on the carpet occasionally and we’d be so contrite that he’d say something like, “Don’t look so sad!”

CBA: [laughs] Were editors having a problem, not disciplining, but creating an atmosphere where if the stuff didn’t come in, they’d be losing money?

Craig: Well, it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere. That’s what I was saying with the string of editors coming in like a revolving door there for a while and the fact that we were on an unimportant book as far as sales went. It wasn’t like being late with Spider-Man. We got away with a lot. It was just a more relaxed time.

CBA: You seemed to, though it was ignored in the offices, it wasn’t ignored by readers. For me, it was an immensely popular book; it was something to talk about, with your growing art style and Don’s experimental writing focusing on characterization over action.

Craig: Yeah, but there weren’t so many readers that they didn’t end up canceling the book! They eventually cancelled it. That last issue I did was primarily because it was the last issue! I don’t know what the sales figures were but I would love to know what they were compared to what’s going on now. Probably would be a mega-hit compared to sales figures today.

CBA: Did you attend comic conventions?

Craig: Yeah. I started attending conventions after I’d been drawing comics for a few months with Dan Adkins and Val Mayerik. I think we went to one in Cleveland or Buffalo—probably Cleveland. When I started doing “Killraven,” there was some popularity expressed.

CBA: Was it gratifying?

Craig: Sure! Everyone loves to be stroked! People coming up and saying how much they loved your work and would you sign this?

Sure, give me a spoon and I’ll eat that up!

CBA: Were you starting to be in demand? Were writers coming to you and wanting to work with you?

Craig: Yeah. When “Killraven” was cancelled, I was assured that they would find something for me and not to worry. My financial needs were so low that I never did worry about it. Also, I was never gluttonous for a lot of books. You know, where some artists would do two or three books a month? I was never interested in that sort of thing. I just wanted to “do my thing” in a most ’70s sort of way.

CBA: As far as delivering a book, did it become increasingly more COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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important to you in getting it right? Were you agonizing over and putting more time into the work?

Craig: No. I was always putting time into it from Day One. It just… I wasn’t very good! So when it started looking better, it wasn’t because I was trying harder. I was always trying hard. I started to learn more and that showed in the work.

CBA: Did that become a frustration—that art takes time? And having these mundane pressures of getting a book out on a bimonthly schedule. Did you have a growing frustration with that?

Craig: Oh sure. A big frustration is not being able to draw the picture that’s in your head. That’s why, especially with Dr. Strange, so much time is spent on the background and settings because I was so much more suited to that then the figures and faces. So if I was left to my own devices, I’d have tiny figures in front of this great big Indian castle or something. Of course, working with Don and his characterization, it really forced me to draw a lot of people in the panels interacting and, now, that’s what I like to do the most. Now I have to make more of a conscious effort to include backgrounds.

Because I can really let the characters carry the story. I can just introduce a few props and settings in the beginning and focus on the characters.

CBA: Did you have telephone conferences with Don? Craig: No, we just always talked in person. We met at the office because we both lived in New York. I’d bring in pages.

CBA: Did you say anything like, “Gee, it would be nice if you played up this, or introduce this aspect of this”? Is there anything that you can say that this is your influence in the book?

Craig: Only in the matter of visual design—costume design, character design. I never thought to second-guess the writer at that point. He was the writer. He came up with the idea and the story and I came up with the telling of the story.

CBA: Did you go to town with the costume design?

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Craig: Well, I don’t know. Did I? That’s not for me to say.

CBA: [laughs] Were you also looking for any work outside comics?

Craig: No, no. I had enough to do just trying to get out a single issue of “War of the Worlds.” I wasn’t out looking for any other work.

CBA: What was the chronology after Amazing Adventures was cancelled?

Craig: Well, that’s when I finished the Dr. Strange Annual. I added 15 pages and inked and colored the entire thing, and that was about the point when I left Marvel and New York, and just came back to Ohio. Just before I left New York I started working for Star-Reach, and doing my first opera adaptation and short story that wasn’t published for years after that. I wanted to get more into single projects rather than series because I still had problems with deadlines. If I was working on a project with an open-ended deadline—a single oneshot type of story or book—I just liked that better.

CBA: Did the Star-Reach material pay okay?

Craig: I don’t recall if it was competitive with what Marvel was paying. I really don’t remember. You’d have to ask Mike Friedrich.

CBA: But you were able to live on what you receiving?

Craig: Yeah. Although when I moved back to Ohio I was living at home with my family and didn’t have much expenses. It was about that time that I started doing more inking work at Marvel through Al Milgrom. That’s what really kept gas in my car.

CBA: You did some memorable work inking Gil Kane on those Jungle Book stories [from Marvel Fanfare]…

Craig: Yeah, “The Jungle Books.” That was mid-’80s. At that point, I had finally learned how to ink some other people’s work.

CBA: What was the plan for that? Was it planned as a book?

Craig: I think so. That artwork had been around since the early ’70s although Milgrom might have a better idea of its history.

Above: Glorious double-page spread by Craig on this, the last issue of the regular Killraven run, in Amazing Adventures #39. Courtesy of the artist.

Killraven & Co. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Cover art to the last issue of the McGregor/Russell run on Killraven, Amazing Adventures #29. Compare this altered art with Craig’s submitted piece on the next page.

Killraven & Co. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Compare the above submitted Russell art—the cover to Amazing Adventures #39— to the altered printed version on the preceding page. Courtesy of Don McGregor. Killraven & Co. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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There were two issues, like two 18- or 20-page issues, produced and they decided not to do it. So it sat there and it finally found a home in Marvel Fanfare as four eight-page stories.

CBA: Was it going to be a kids’ comic?

Craig: No, I don’t know. If it was a limited series, I mean, there are only eight Mowgli stories by Kipling. So maybe they would do those stories and then go off with the further adventures of Mowgli, I don’t know. I have no idea what they would come up with—but, of

course, I was always an enormous fan of Kane’s artwork, particularly his inks over his own pencils. When he was taking his time, really trying, I don’t think anyone else could ink Gil Kane like he could himself. If anyone else did, professional as it was, something just seemed to be lost. It seemed to be some weird sort of hybrid to me that I never cared for. So when I was inking him, I just tried to imagine how Gil Kane would have inked it if he was taking his time. Actually, that’s sort of my philosophy of inking anyone. I try to be true to the artwork. I sort of had in mind those sort of western stories that Gil penciled and inked for DC in the mid-’50s and early ’60s. Beautiful things! You could tell he was just coming into his own style and you could tell that every line was very carefully put down and thought out.

There’s just a sort of elegance to that work that’s always stayed with me and that’s what I tried to approximate. I didn’t do it as well as he did at his best, but that was what I was trying to do and he spoke well of it in some interviews and I felt great about that.

CBA: It’s interesting that two of his best inkers (besides himself) from that period were Dan Adkins and yourself.

Craig: Yeah, I was lucky.

Working with Dan I got to see this gorgeous artwork coming into the studio. He was inking Barry Windsor-Smith at the time and it was Smith’s best penciling work to date. And Gil Kane’s Warlock. He’d give me a call and say, “I’ve got a batch of Warlock pages here,” and I’d drive right out! I couldn’t wait to see it. I’d just pore over those pages that other artists drew. I’d never seen original artwork before.

CBA: During the ’70s, there was a movement to begin to return art to the artist. Did you advocate that? Were you pushing for that yourself?

Craig: No, no. I was such a babe in the woods that I wasn’t advocating anything! [laughs] I was just there at my drawing board and, “Give me the plot, thank you very much!” It sort of happened after my first year in comics. It started when I was doing “Killraven.” That’s when I started getting the artwork back and here’s another McGregor story to show what a prince he was: He insisted that I get all of the artwork back.

The editors had drawn up a system where the artist got 1/3 of the artwork back and the inker got 1/3, which was fair because the inker worked on the artwork, and the writer got 1/3. It wasn’t fair for the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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Craig: Yeah. Although there wasn’t supposed to be closure. It was supposed to be a series running in Epic magazine as four chapters of a Killraven story. Not a final chapter; just another Killraven story. It was closure for me because in the several years since I’d developed my own style and method of working, and I was finally able to do him in a way that was so much better than the original series—which was very shaky. That was a lot of fun. And I told Don to just give me the script so I can design the words into it. Visually, I felt that we worked so much better on that project. It became a graphic novel because they had a hole in the graphic novel line and Jim Shooter came into Archie Goodwin’s office (who was the editor of Epic), and asked Archie if he had anything Jim could use; and they advertised it as being the final word, the conclusion of the series, which was not true at all. It was never intended by Don and me for it to be the last one.

CBA: So you could have gone on?

Craig: Well, we talked about doing it. Don started writing a script for the final that would take them to Mars and I agreed to do it. It was going to run in Marvel Comics Presents as eight-page installments and then they could run it as a 64-page book. Well, Don was up to about page 150 and they hadn’t even gotten to Mars yet! I was still committed to doing it and I wanted a commitment from Marvel to do it as a graphic novel but they wouldn’t go for it. So I decided that the time it would take for me to do this… I didn’t want to put all this time into a project that would only appear as eight-page installments and never be collected. At that point I opted out.

CBA: Did you complete any pages from that?

Craig: I did pencils for a couple pages but they’re not even complete pages.

Some background pieces but very little. Just a couple of pages. Overall, I don’t have much unpublished stuff. Almost every single line I drew in those days was published and there was nothing else left over. It took everything I had to get a single issue completed.

CBA: So you never particularly scrapped sequences? Did you say, “This is just

writer to get the physical artwork back—it wasn’t right—and Don knew that and didn’t take advantage of the system and made sure I got all my artwork back.

As sort of as a sidebar to that, the first stuff that I did, the “Ant-Man” and “Morbius” work, was off in a warehouse for about 20 years. Because once they began giving the artwork back, they still had this warehouse of artwork for the previous decade or two. So they slowly started going through that and slowly returning that. That’s when they found out how much of the Kirby and Ditko stuff had been stolen, but I got every single page of my stuff back! Nobody stole my artwork! [laughter] What does this say?

CBA: But you don’t sell your original art?

Craig: Well, that stuff I sold. If someone else has inked my work, I sell that. And artwork I get back where I’ve inked other people, I sell some of that.

CBA: Were you involved with ACBA at all, or was that before your time?

Craig: No, that was right about my time. I remember going to one meeting at the Illustrators Club and they were talking about forming a guild. Everyone got hot under the collar. There was some illustrator who was slumming doing comics and he was just drunk out of his mind—and he started berating everybody on how he could draw better than everyone there. It was just a zoo.

CBA: That was your first and only meeting?

Craig: Yeah, I think so.

CBA: And were you also doing work for fanzines and the like?

Craig: I did one or two things for Bob Layton’s CPL. And that was about it.

CBA: Overall, how would you rate your Marvel experience as your introduction to comics? Was it a positive experience?

Craig: Oh, yeah! Definitely! It was a positive experience. I was learning on the job. I had a writer that I worked with who was very compatible and it served as a springboard to work on more personal projects for other companies.

CBA: Was it gratifying that you had some semblance of closure by doing the Killraven graphic novel?

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57

Above: Craig’s rejected Dr. Strange Annual #1 cover was reworked by the artist (by changing the costumes) and appeared in an issue of the legendary prozine, witzend. Minor reconstruction was made to the poor-quality photocopy by ye ed. ©1999 P. Craig Russell.

Preceding page: Craig went to the extraordinary effort of retelling (and complete redrawing!) his story in Dr. Strange Annual #1 (1976) for the prestige comic Dr. Strange: What Is It That Disturbs You, Stephen? in 1997. Man, I gotta find me one of the latter! Top features the original 1976 version; bottom is the revised 1997 page.

Courtesy of the artist. Dr. Strange ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. 58

not working out,” and come up with a new point of view?

Craig: No, I’d just erase it. Or I’d work it out ahead of time with thumbnails and get it the way I wanted it before I drew it. No, there’s no “outtakes.”

CBA: Was part of that an economic consideration?

Craig: No, it was not economics at all. Maybe I just didn’t have the discipline to redraw something or redo a sequence I wasn’t happy with. I guess I just tried to get it as well as I could at the time and move on.

CBA: When you wanted to do more personal projects, was that really why you drifted away from Marvel particularly?

Craig: Yes. CBA: You seemed to enter a stage of doing a lot of opera adaptations.

Craig: “Parsifal” for Star*Reach was the first. I decided a few years after that that I would do a cycle of 12 opera adaptations. I’ve completed six, am working on numbers seven through ten right now, and have scripted and layed out number eleven, tentatively titled “The Godfather’s Code.” It’s adapted from Mascagni’s opera “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Anyone who has seen the final section of The Godfather III is familiar with it.

But to get back to why I drifted away from Marvel: It was also

the fact that I didn’t like the idea that everything I did was completely owned by the publisher and I’m not just talking about the original artwork but the copyrights and everything—and, of course, I was doing them with characters they owned and I had no control over. I wanted to own my own material. Working with Star*Reach and then Eclipse gave me the opportunity to do that and also to do stories that I was really interested in doing. So that’s pretty much why I moved away and came back to do inking work which made for a nice break from these intensive penciling projects.

CBA: What other work did you do for Marvel over the years?

Craig: Well… oh man. A lot of inking. I did six issues of Rom over Steve Ditko.

CBA: That’s right. Was he a heavy influence on you?

Craig: I don’t think so. In high school art class I used to copy his drawings out of the Warren magazines. But, I was somewhat influenced by his Dr. Strange, because Ditko is the template for how to do that character. So in that sense, I was influenced in designing those other dimensions. Especially in the redrawing. I think more in the redrawing that I did a couple of years ago. Those other dimensions are more Ditkoesque and, of course, the city that comes out of the sea is called Ditkopolis; bit of a homage to him there.

CBA: Can you describe that redrawing? Why was it done?

Craig: Well, I tried to interest them for years in reprinting the first Dr. Strange Annual. I wanted to see it come out again with better production values and such. So I tried it again a few years ago and this time they went for it. I said I’ve got the original b-&-w artwork and it’s 35 pages which is a really awkward kind of size for a story. I said we could add 12 pages and make it a 48-page one-shot and they said fine. So I was working with the writer, Mark Andraco, at the time so we reworked the plot, reintroducing story elements I had had to drop from my original story—which wouldn’t fit in the 35-page annual. We had some backstory and completely rescripted it. I sat down and produced 48 pages of thumbnail sketches to be certain the whole structure worked, and thought, “Well, all I have to do is add the 12 new pages and, whiz bang, I’ve got a 48-page graphic novel.” That’s when I pulled out the photostats of the original artwork. I could see immediately that my style of drawing has so changed and evolved that there was no way the new pages could be combined with the old. My initial solution was to put the old pages on the light box, trace them, strengthen the drawing—particularly the anatomy—and then re-ink them. This turned out to be incredibly time-consuming. At one point, after several pages, I realized that I’m putting all this work into this and I’m a better storyteller now than I was then; why not reconceptualize the drawing of the pages and the structure of the story? So I started doing that and it became a completely new project following the same basic storyline. It mushroomed and became a whole new thing.

CBA: Did you renegotiate at that point and say, “Hey, I’ve gotta redraw this whole thing”?

Craig: Yeah and that was fine with them. I got my whole page rate.

CBA: This was printed as a graphic novel? What was the name of it?

Craig: Just Dr. Strange and it came out as prestige format. That little square bound thing came out in October, 1997. So I worked that previous Summer on the coloring, better reproduction and adding the computer effects you can do now do, just making it so much nicer a presentation.

CBA: Was it fun to do it?

Craig: Oh, yeah! I just had a terrific time. It was 48 new pages and I did it in maybe three months. It just flowed out of me. I had the advantage (like I was saying on the earlier stuff) on the time I would spend on backgrounds, some of them still held up so I was able to adapt those. I had done that thinking years ago so anything that was worthwhile I was able to adapt and put into this book and then add into it what I could do now. So it was like having somebody else do the spadework for me in a lot of scenes. I was able to bring in the best of it and leave the rest of it.

CBA: In a perfect world, would you also like to return to Killraven?

Craig: I’m not as interested in doing that as a character like Dr. Strange. For years, I wanted to finish it and get to Mars and that COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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whole thing. But I’m not as interested in super-heroes and that sort of stuff as I used to be.

CBA: What are your future plans?

Craig: Right now I’m working on a adaptation of The Ring of the Niebelung for Dark Horse Comics. I did the layout at the end of ’96 into ’97. I worked on that for five months. It’s 424 pages,14 books of 32 pages each. The last one will be 64 pages. I’ve got about 200 pages done. Just working away on it every day. I started talking about doing this in 1972, or ’73, when I was living in Cincinnati during my first year in comics. I decided I was going to do Wagner’s opera. I kept putting it off year after year, believing I was not ready to do it yet. Then, just a few years ago, finally decided that it’s time to do this thing! I had, by that time, been talking about it for 23 years and Mike Friedrich found Dark Horse and got a contract worked out. (It wasn’t as easy as it sounds—this is a really big project and negotiations went on for a long time. Friedrich worked his butt off.) I’m pretty much exclusive with Dark Horse right now. I can do other small projects as long as I meet my deadlines.

That leaves an occasional inked cover or layout sketches for another artist.

CBA: How do you like inking?

Craig: Oh, I like it fine if it’s an artist that’s fun to do like Mike Mignola or Steve Ditko, Gil Kane; Rick Leonardi was just a delight to do. And, of course, I’ve enjoyed working with Galen Shoman on The Clowns and the Star Wars story for Dark Horse. I inked a John Buscema Thor and that wasn’t a good match; I had a real hard time getting a grip on his pencils.

There’s been some other artists like that who are just great artists but it’s just not a great match. I like a nice clean penciler. With Ditko it was fun. He was doing layouts. It was kind of spare but structurally strong layouts and I was just trying to do the Ditko I liked from the mid-’60s.

CBA: Did you get a chance to meet Steve?

Craig: No. He’s like the Wizard of Oz; nobody meets Steve Ditko!

CBA: Did you ever hear what he considered of your work?

Craig: I did hear that he was in the office and saw some of the pages and said that he liked them. I heard from the editor that he remarked and approved so that was kind of nice. I’m still a quivering fanboy when it comes to things like that! 47 years old and it’s just like, “Oh, Steve Ditko liked my work! Joy!” CBA: Don McGregor was the main writer you were teamed with in those days?

Craig: Yeah. I worked with Marv Wolfman on the Dr. Strange Annual and Mike Friedrich on the “AntMan” stories. I think Gardner Fox wrote the early “Dr. Strange,” and Steve Gerber did the “Morbius” stories.

CBA: Was that basically a plot delivered to you?

Craig: Right. It wasn’t too much give-and-take on our parts. I think it was just another book for Gerber. He was putting all his energy to, I think, The Defenders and Howard the Duck, and things like that. With Don, I knew I had met someone who just passionately cared about his work and that made it easier to work with him.

CBA: Did you guys meet weekly?

Craig: Not on any set schedule. We met whenever we needed to meet. It was fairly frequent.

CBA: Did you start hanging around with other artists?

Craig: Yeah, I remember sometimes running around with Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Alan Weiss, and Walt Simonson—but I don’t think I hung around with them as much as they did with each other.

I had all of the people I lived with who were musicians just starting their career in New York so that was kind of the crowd I hung Fall 1999

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around with—people who were all singers and composers.

CBA: You mentioned before that you played piano. Were you a musician yourself?

Craig: I played the piano until high school and still play it; have recitals here a couple times a year with friends, amateur musicians.

Gives me something to practice for—classical and light classical.

CBA: When did you team up with Mike Friedrich, who’s been your art rep?

Craig: The late ’70s, early ’80s. I’m not certain when it started.

CBA: Was it through your work in his groundlevel, Star*Reach?

Craig: Yeah. He wasn’t representing me then. He was the publisher.

I’m not sure what the first contract he negotiated for me was for. It was sort of a freelance thing. While I was doing inking, work for hire, that was pretty cut-and-dried. I bring Mike in when there’s a larger project where we have to negotiate contracts and percentages and copyrights and all that stuff.

Above: Prompted by legendary writer/editor Archie Goodwin, Craig and Don McGregor reteamed to produce the graphic novel Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds (a.k.a. “Last Dreams Broken”) in 1983. Here’s a poignant page of Killraven embracing his long lost brother, Joshua. Courtesy of the artist.

Killraven & Co. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

59

CBA Interview

McGregor’s Rage!

Our Interview (finally!) with Writer Donald Francis McG.

Right: The “Dandy One” in a mid-’70s photo taken at a New York comic convention.

Above: Billy Graham’s exquisite depiction of the Black Panther in this detail from Jungle Action #17. Courtesy of Don McGregor.

©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

60

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson When I was a kid, my favorite comic book writer was Don McGregor. Don’s stories, particularly the serials in Jungle Action and Amazing Adventures, were multi-layered, mature, and downright dense, packed with verbiage and some pretty high falutin’ vocabulary for kiddie funnybooks. They were just about the only comics I advocated for close friends to read.

Don’s a passionate guy who never spoke down to his readers, and I’m proud to call him my friend. We spoke via telephone in June 1998, and the transcript was copyedited by Don. Comic Book Artist: When did you first become interested in comic books?

Don McGregor: When I was about four or five years old, I was actually on my way to kindergarten, and I remember going into the neighborhood variety store up in West Warwick, Rhode Island. In those days, they used to hang comic books from the ceiling on wires, and I saw all those comics hanging up there, with all this color, with words and pictures. It was just this incredible treasure I wanted to explore immediately.

I can’t recall a time when I didn’t read, and it was because of comic books. In those days, they believed people shouldn’t read when they had the measles, thinking it would be a strain on the eyes or something like that. I got the measles and my mother read Dick Tracy to me, and having Dick Tracy read to you was just not the same as reading it yourself!

The first comic book I ever picked up was a Hopalong Cassidy comic book, #65. I was six, and my dad gave me a dime allowance, and I went up and bought that comic book. When Dad came home from work that night, he said, “What did you get with your allowance?” And I said, [excitedly] “I got a comic book!” and I held it up in front of him.

Dad said, “No son of mine’s going to read comic books!” The next week, I get my dime, and what do you know, next month’s Hopalong Cassidy had come out. I’m sure I did not know a thing about comics coming out on a monthly basis, or any other time frame. Well, without a moment’s hesitation, I was in there handing over my dime and marching out with Hoppy!

When my dad came home, he said, “What did you get this week?” I said, “I got another comic book!” [laughter] And that ended my allowance for a while. So, from a very, very early age I loved comic books. And even though I was only in first grade, no one read those

Hoppy comics to me. I was reading them. Don’t ask me how.

CBA: Did you gravitate towards any particular comics, aside from Hopalong Cassidy? Did you read the ECs, for instance?

Don: I was very fortunate when it came to comics. I had an uncle who was a real jerk; he often treated other people terribly, but you had to give him this: He had great taste in comic books. So when I would go to my grandmother’s house, she had the comics up in her attic, and I spent a lot of hours up there. He had a lot of the comics from the ’40s—Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, the old Daredevil Comics and the “Little Wise Guys” stuff, Military Comics with the Blackhawks—I mean, we’re talking about Superman going back to the teens! So, I had a lot of that stuff, and I tease my mom to this day that she convinced me to get rid of those comic books when I was about 13; I never would’ve had to worry about what happened at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s if I had all those comic books, but that’s another story.

From the very beginning, I had a great deal of love—but not just for comics—I also really loved film and books. It wasn’t my intent to become a comic book writer, I wanted to be a writer, period. In the beginning, I was writing prose more than comics. Then, when I was about 16, I got ahold of my dad’s old 8mm Bolex camera, and I realized if I wrote the movie, and if I directed it, and I starred in it, I always won the fights! It didn’t matter if the people were six-foot-ten, and they would say, “But Don, I could kill you! I’d just pound you on top of your thick skull and lay you out on the ground.” And I’d say, “Yeah, yeah, but you see, in the script here, right here in black and white, it says [laughter] I win! So, here’s how we’re going to do it.” But better than that, you always got the girl!

This was definitely preferable to real life! And I thought, “I’m going to keep on doing this! This is great!” And I loved doing my own stunts, and did a lot of crazy ones.

When I finally got to do scenes with Alex Simmons, a few years later, we had a helluva time! There actually exists footage of Alex swinging an ax at my head, me ducking down below it, and it chucking into the tree over my head. Reason enough, for people who already consider me certifiable, to proclaim, “Ah ha! Here’s proof positive!” We didn’t have fake props! At that time, what the hell did we know about fake props? We hung off waterfalls, choking each other! Well, that’s a whole other area we could explore.

CBA: You didn’t pass on comic books at a certain age, like a lot of other kids did, when they’re 13 or 14, obviously, because you wrote letters to Marvel Comics.

Don: Well, there was a period when I got rid of my comic books when I was about 13, 14; yeah, I kind of did. I wrote about that transition time that faces all collectors in a Ragamuffins story, “The Pack Rat Instinct.” It was drawn beautifully by Gene Colan, and it was due to appear in a number of different Eclipse comics, but it never saw print. At the time, Dean Mullaney, the founder of Eclipse, said it brought tears to his eyes, and I had him hooked. I think anybody with that pack-rat instinct would relate. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house at the end of that story. But that artwork has been lost. I’ve been trying to track it down, I actually have my hand lettered copy placement with the art, but it isn’t clear enough to print, only good enough to show how beautiful those Gene Colan COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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pencils are. Twenty pages of Ragamuffins that may never be found!

(Anyone who has a clue as to where the art is, please, let me know.

I’m beggin’ ya! I’m beggin’ ya! Go to the <www.donmcgregor.com> website and lemme know. We’re thinking of putting out a Ragamuffins graphic album, and it would be wonderful to include this story I love so much, but which readers may never have a chance to see.

Anyhow, I guess there was about two months when I was divorced from comics. Right in that time frame, my folks went to Switzerland, and I was staying at my grandfather’s place, writing my stories and peddling my bike to a variety store in Coventry, Rhode Island, where I started buying comics again. I can still taste the Warwick Club Fruit Sherbert soda, or their Lemon & Lime soda that, as they put it on the bottle, sang in the glass as I read those comics!

That was just about the time that DC was coming back with Green Lantern and The Flash, and immediately I was back into comics.

There wasn’t a very long period of time there that I was away from them.

CBA: Did you notice something was happening at Marvel?

Don: You mean when Stan, Jack and Steve came out with Amazing Adult Fantasy with Spider-Man, and The Fantastic Four, and all that?

Sure, yeah. Stan had a really smooth way of making those characters real in these incredible situations; DC seemed to be very anal-retentive, even in Green Lantern where they might have a story where he has an adventure with his brothers, or The Flash goes back and meets his mom and dad, the episodes were always very separate from the main stories they’d do. I can almost see the way their minds were working. Wait, wait, wait! Two times a year we’ll do a story that deals with the heroes’ personal lives, but there will never, ever be a mention of that during the regular stories. Everything was kept distinctly in its very precise place, whereas Stan integrated the action and the battles with the villains in a spontaneous fashion. To me, Stan was very obviously inspired by people like Milton Caniff and Chester Gould, who had been doing this kind of stuff for decades, but in comic strips!

CBA: Did you keep a diary?

Don: I don’t know that I kept a diary, no. I was writing in notebooks when I was six or seven year old. It was mostly variations on the Hardy Boys kind of stories, young kids in dangerous situations,

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that kind of thing. Later on, I created my own private eye characters, I really loved private eyes. “Jim Dancer” was one of the first. I was a fan of a lot of the Warner Brothers private eye shows, so I kind of played around with comic book versions of those. 77 Sunset Strip, Bourbon St. Beat and Hawaiian Eye became something like 77 Bourbon Eye, and I wrote ’em and drew ’em, and I promise you, Jon, you, nor anyone else, will ever, ever, see them!

CBA: Did you read Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett?

Don: I hadn’t read them at that point. With the private eye stuff, in terms of going into these procedures, the guy who affected me most was probably Ed McBain and Evan Hunter, who were the same person, although I’m pretty sure I did not know that in the beginning. Hunter wrote The Blackboard Jungle. More precisely, I enjoyed books like Buddwing (which is about a guy with amnesia who wakes up on a park bench in New York City one morning and follows him for 24-hours of his life, and his search to find out just who he is). It was a great book about life, about New York City, and like life, you only really understood what happened early in the book much later. There was a lousy movie out of it.

CBA: Were you doing a lot of creative writing when you were a teenager? For school assignments or your pleasure?

Don: No, I didn’t want to write for school! School?!?

Do it for school? No, I don’t think so. I was just writing the stories I wanted to do. There was too much sex, social commentary and violence for any of this to be acceptable for school.

CBA: When did you start considering actually writing for a living?

Don: I did a lot of jobs in between, but I was always writing.

CBA: When did you realize there were actually people who were being paid to write this stuff that you were reading? A lot of times—in comic books, especially—a lot of creators suddenly realized, “Oh, wait a minute, I could probably pay the rent with this.” Did that come to mind as a vocation, as a job, as a career?

Don: The easiest way to answer that is to go back to when I attended one of my first conventions where I first met Jim Steranko. I brought a bound volume of SHIELD comics, and I went up to Jim Steranko for him to sign.

Immediately, Jim recognized my name, and said, “You’re Don McGregor?” I thought, “Whoa!” because I was surprised he knew who I was. It wasn’t until later that I realized, he knew my name because I’d written to virtually every book he’d done.

He said, “Don, will you meet with me later? I’ll give you my room number but don’t give it out.” I couldn’t believe it—Steranko’s inviting me up to his room! What a night, what an incredibly great night! I met Alex Simmons for the first time in that hotel room, who became one of my best friends. Jim was doing magic tricks and some stuff that still, to this day, astounds me.

Alex is also a fan of comics, and at some point, I was actually working on prose stuff, and we were working on

Above: Billy Graham’s equally exquisite depiction of Killmonger in this detail from Jungle Action #17. Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Left: 1968 Christmas card from Steranko to frequent letterhack McGregor with personalized note from “Steranko and the Gang,” commenting on the future pro writer’s criticisms.

Did O’Ryann’s Odyssey ever appear? All characters ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. 61

Above: Billy Graham’s pencils from Jungle Action #15.

Courtesy of Don McGregor. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: The late Billy Graham with his frequent collaborator Don McGregor in a picture from olden times. Courtesy of Don. 62

doing the first Detectives, Inc. film script, for Alex and I to play opposite each other, and somewhere along the way it finally hit me, “Hey! Why not do a comic?” And I actually did Detectives, Inc. as early as 1969, with Alex drawing it. We were getting it ready for the next convention, which was probably 1970. In comics, it’s very difficult for writers to be recognized, as opposed to artists, because people can immediately look at the artwork, and they like it or they don’t like it, and they can make a comment on what they see, it’s right there—they don’t have to read a whole bunch of words and pages to try to figure out if they like it or don’t like it. I felt if I could produce something, show it to the powers-that-be, that they could immediately see, “Well, you have some kind of grasp or awareness of comics.” You’d get a much quicker response than if you submitted a script. I also wanted to do comics. Detectives, Inc. was something I wanted to do.

So, we produced this book, and ran into deadline problems—Alex didn’t finish drawing it until the week before. He came up to Rhode Island, we finished it together, went to a Warwick PIP place, where we collated and stapled Detectives Inc., just before the big July 4th convention Phil Seuling held in New York City. Put it together that night and the next day we traveled down to New York. But we didn’t want to sit around at tables selling the thing. (Fortunately, as I recall, there were actually people that you’d pay a nominal fee, and they’d sit at a table and they would sell people’s various wares! So we just left the magazines with them, and then we took the run, and could hand them out to people!)

I went to a panel discussion during that con, with writers and editors up on the stage, and as the participants were going up on the stage, I handed out each of them a Detectives, Inc. If you’ve ever seen panels at a con, you know a lot of times, one person is talking, and the other people just sit there, with not much to do; they’re hardly paying attention, so I’d see various people, as I was sitting in the audience, looking at Detectives Inc. You couldn’t miss it because we’d printed the cover on Pepto-Bismol pink paper, so I knew I was at least getting looked at, because you could see that pink glaring from the stage as the non-talkers flipped through the pages. Jim Warren at the time was—Jim was something else in those days!—Jim at that point was publishing his black-&-white magazines, like Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. When he was up at the table, he was talking about having his magazines available only through mail-order so he wouldn’t have to contend with interference about his mags’ contents. He said, “These are the best comics being done, bar none.

Anybody who’s doing comics, if they’re not doing it for Warren, they just didn’t compete.” I had no actual battle plan on this (and I wouldn’t recommend this as a way to get into comics), but I raised my hand, and Warren picked me out, and I said, “If that’s true, Mr. Warren, why are you publishing the kind of crap you’re publishing?

Well, Jim went ballistic [laughs], obviously not too pleased that I’d say such a thing, and to be honest with you, I didn’t even realize I was going to say it before I said it. Really!

CBA: They went through a terrible period.

Don: It was some terrible stuff. So when Jim Warren’s coming off the stage, he’s really pissed off at me, and I think Alex Simmons was with me at the time—I know Alex must’ve been there—and Warren comes up and says, “Who the hell are you, hotshot, to ask me a thing like that at this panel?!? Name one story I published that was crap!” And I named the story—and it happened to be a story that Billy Graham drew (the artwork wasn’t bad, it’s that the story was stupid! It was dumb!). So, Jim says, “Come with me, Don.” He takes me into this darkened conference room, with this big audience watching movies. He knew Billy was in there and Jim calls him out, Billy makes his way out of the seat. Warren says, “Billy Graham, this is Don McGregor. Don McGregor, this is Billy Graham. Don McGregor, tell Billy Graham his work is crap!” So I said, “Wait a minute, we’re talking about the story! I didn’t say Billy’s artwork was crap!” And we got into this furious discussion (which I’m sure people watching the movie appreciated) and finally Jim says, “I’ll tell you what, kid: You play your cards right, maybe I’ll take you out to dinner tonight.” So later on, Jim did indeed take me and Alex out to dinner that night with Billy, and Billy and I got to be very good friends, and we worked on a lot of things together at Warren and other places. I chose Billy to draw the second Sabre graphic novel, “An Exploitation of Everything Dear.” I’d love to do a 200-page, or whatever the total page count of that series is, graphic album of that Sabre story, so people could see how good much of Billy’s work was there, and how much new ground we broke during the unfolding of that story.

Anyhow, that was really the start of getting work in comics, and my first editor was Archie Goodwin—and one couldn’t have asked for a better editor! Archie was just tremendous. When he was editing, it never seemed to come from ego; changes were made only to make a book good, or a story better. If he had a suggestion, he was never trying to force it on you, or trying to say, “This is the way I’d write it, therefore you must write it this way.” He was always, “What’s going to strengthen your story, the story you want to do.”

The second story I ever did touched on the issue of abortion, and I knew I was running a risk just mentioning it, so I tried to get it in COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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there and then get out really fast, and it was a story that ended up with a lame joke as a twisted ending. Archie critiqued the story, and said, “Don, if you’re going to do this, then do it.”

And he was absolutely right, and, to this day, I’m so glad Archie didn’t let me embarrass myself with that story and have it come out that way. Archie always kept his word, and he was an editor I really loved working with.

CBA: So you went on to do stories for Warren?

Don: Yeah, I did a number of stories for them. There are checklists done by people who know that stuff a hell of a lot better than I do! Over a two-year span, I did a number of stories while still living in Rhode Island. I did one eight-page story, “When Wakes The Dreamer,” and decided I didn’t have enough room. Then I wrote two tenpage stories, and once again decided, not enough room, and started doing 12- to 14-page stories. Now, I didn’t get paid more money for them! I still got $25 a story! A story! I’m sure Jim was then convinced that this kid McGregor is really nuts!

CBA: So you were doing it through the mail?

Don: Yeah, mostly.

CBA: Were you going to college?

Don: No, I was working.

CBA: Did you go to college?

Don: Yeah. At Johnson & Wales, but only for a while. I did so many damn different jobs at that time, I was all over the place. Those experiences are good, and have served me well as a writer. I knew a lot of different ways of living; I’d lived them all before I actually started writing for a living, although I wasn’t always making a very good living! I even had a government job, which I quit to take work at Marvel Comics, and a lot of the people at that office thought I was crazy.

When I signed on at Marvel in those days as a proofreader, I got $125 a week.

CBA: Did you read a lot of books?

Don: Sure. In the beginning, I think Doug Moench and I proofread about every comic that was coming out of Marvel at the time!

CBA: Your writing revealed a very widespread interest in a lot of different things. It’s funny you mentioned Hopalong Cassidy, because I was reading the “Black Panther” issues again, and there’s references to Hoppy in Wakanda, Africa!

Don: Hopalong Cassidy gets mentioned in many other places; there’s a “Morbius” where they go into a theater in Maine, and the photographs up on the screen are Hopalong Cassidy. One of the afternoons I will always treasure is meeting with Grace Bradley Boyd, Hoppy’s widow, and what started out as an interview became one of those magical, transcendental times. I’d love to do a special commemorative magazine, with Grace’s incredible stories surrounded by images from Hopalong Cassidy films. We may do it for the year 2000. I’d love that!

CBA: So, how did you hear about the job at Marvel?

Don: They called me. They’d read the stories at Warren.

CBA: Do you remember who called?

Don: Yeah, at first they called me about scripting some Gene Colan Daredevil pages. Marvel, at that time, was in the process of really Fall 1999

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expanding their line, so they obviously needed more people to work in the office. Not too long after I got there—I don’t know if they were already in the process of doing it—they were going to have a black-&-white line that was forthcoming. So, they brought me in as a proofreader. Now, most on-staff people, somewhere along the line, were given the opportunity to write. I don’t know how crazy they were about my writing. I was told later—when I was out of there, but I can think of no reason for this person to lie—about some feelings about my work. I’ll get back to this, but it ties into the kind of books I was given a chance to write, a jungle strip and a S-F one. I was virtually reading almost every book that went out of Marvel Comics, including the reprint line. Jungle Action was originally a reprint title of early 1950s Atlas comics jungle stories, and they were just incredibly embarrassing; CBA: “Jann of the Jungle”!

Don: Actually, I seem to recall us making a lot of “Lorna of the Jungle” jokes in the actual comics. Anyhow, proofing those jungle reprint books would make me shake my head in dismay. I couldn’t believe, given where Marvel was at at the time, that they would publish this stuff, so somewhere along the way I spoke up. I said something like, “What’s with all these blonde jungle gods and

Above: P. Craig Russell’s cover art for Amazing Adventures #31. Note the face changes below made by the Bullpen.

Courtesy of the artist. Killraven ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Another rare piece of unpublished Russell art, this from a Killraven story. It was scrapped in favor of developing a different character. Courtesy of Don McGregor. ©1999 P. Craig Russell. Below: Craig’s pencils to the cover art of Amazing Adventures #35.

Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Killraven ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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goddesses saving the natives? I would think you folks would just be embarrassed to be printing this. At least feature a black hero!” And I wasn’t even thinking about the Black Panther! I never expected them to follow up on it, but they were looking for more titles to put out, and were taking some titles and making them two-thirds brand-new material and one-third reprint material to hedge their bets. It should be noted that in this time period jungle books weren’t noted to be big sellers. Joe Kubert was doing Tarzan at DC in that time, and that didn’t seem to be popular, so I don’t know anybody had high hopes that the “Panther” series would fly. (I think as far as “Killraven” went, probably in the beginning, they did have real high hopes for it, but when the creative teams went through three separate writers and artists on the first three books, I think that was more or less a series that had been written off for whatever expectations they had in the beginning. Science-fiction books also weren’t known to sell.) So Marvel gave me a jungle book and a science-fiction book, and if the books died, they could say, “Well, we gave you a chance and you blew it!” I think they liked me on the staff job okay—I don’t know that I was particularly good at it, but I was conscientious. I was certainly willing to put the time in, and I had no political aspira-

tions—I wasn’t trying to become editor-in-chief. If I was, I was going about it the wrong way! So, I was safe, in that respect. I think more than anything else, I was a safe person, because I had no political agenda. I’d just want to write my books and be left alone. For that reason, I think they tolerated the stories, but were somewhat surprised when the books got so much mail and passionate reader response!

CBA: Was there any understanding on Jungle Action that you had to set it in Africa? Was that your choice, or...?

Don: It was decided to take Jungle Action and put in the Black Panther, and they wanted it set in Wakanda. I think that was the only thing that was dictated to me. And when I did the first “Panther’s Rage” episode, I initially conceived it to be like a Republic serial, in that each one would have a cliffhanger ending, and so the person would be literally thrown off a waterfall over a cliff by Killmonger. And they said, “No, we don’t want you to do that; we don’t want cliffhangers every issue.” I had this idea of the Republic serials, because I loved them, but I thought, “Okay, what if this were real, how does someone cope with people trying kill them by throwing them off cliffs and the like, but now having them survive with those memories?” Anyhow, the stories were supposed to be set in Wakanda, and in those days, it was easy to come into a series and actually read everything that had been done with the character beforehand. I don’t recall all the individual stories, but I immediately realized that even though they’d only done a few stories, whenever they set them in Wakanda, they were already starting to betray Marvel’s own mythology of this country being a very secret place with all this incredible technology, but no outsiders were supposed to know where it was. I saw it as a very mystical kind of place, filled with a definable ambiance. Yet then, they’d have stories where someone crashed a plane and they’d stumble into Wakanda and know where the Vibranium mound was, and could come back, etc.

So I felt the stories had to be self-contained within the Wakanda sphere, and I really had to create that world. That led to some problems, because while they were the ones who initially wanted it set in Wakanda, they weren’t ready for a book that had an all-black cast. A number of times, I was asked, “When are you going to bring white people in? Where are the white people? There’s no white people in here!”

The thing that was historical about the Jungle Action “Panther’s Rage” series, is this was the first time that a major company—and probably any comic book title—featured an all-black cast in a regular series. This wasn’t just a black hero surrounded by a mostly-white supporting cast; everybody, from the heroes to the villains—the men, the women, the hawks, the doves, the technocrats, the bombers— everybody was black. But I think it reached a wide audience, you know, and we managed to reach an incredibly diverse readership who loved the humanity of the characters. Some years back, the Village Voice did an article about the history of blacks in comics, and while they were complimentary to “Panther’s Rage,” it was obvious the writer had not read the books, and there was a section that made a deal out of the Panther having to be a paragon, that he could have no flaws, because he was a black hero. I’d debate to this day that I wrote the Panther that way. He was a man who wanted to be a good leader, and was often afraid he’d fallen short, yet he was the same man who would not give up the woman he loved even when nearly everybody around him hated the relationship.

CBA: I can’t say I remember the novelty of an all-black cast, because I didn’t consider that.

Don: And you shouldn’t have!

CBA: Your stories were increasingly character-driven, and readers really responded to certain individual characters.

Don: Like T’Challa, Monica, W’Kabi, Taku. One of the things I realized that I had to consider in Jungle Action and Killraven was that because those books were bi-monthly, if I skipped a character for one issue, that meant there were four months between the time when the audience had last been involved with that character. If you left a character out of two issues, he/she was missing for half a year!

Big difference. You leave a character out for one issue of a monthly book, well, it’s only two months by the time you come back, but half a year is a long time to expect that the audience is still going to care emotionally about what happens next with those characters.

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Let’s take W’Kabi’s character in “Panther’s Rage,” for instance.

Often in comics, supporting cast characters have a function they fill in a series and normally, you knew what their role was. So, for the first year’s worth of books, you’d always see W’Kabi as the chief of security, the guy who’s really the hard-nosed military advisor to T’Challa. You always see him in that role, and he’s always strong, always unrelenting, and always in opposition to T’Challa. After a year’s worth of books, suddenly I show him in his home situation.

And the audience isn’t expecting it, and the response was great!

Readers began responding to him on a whole new level, you know, and there was more of an emotional connection. They really wanted to know what happens to W’Kabi next. And as a storyteller, I love when that happens.

CBA: Well, you also brought in an element with W’Kabi that was way ahead of its time: Domestic violence. You brought a lot of things way ahead of its time, and you were dealing with the small, humane aspects. You cared about the characters.

Don: I really did. I still do. I still love T’Challa! It does sadden me, because I love that character, chances are now probably very slim that I will get to write “Panther’s Vows,” the story where T’Challa and Monica Lynne get married. I’d been talking to Ralph Macchio about it, and now it’s held up in some kind of limbo, depending on who you listen to. It’s a story I may never now have the chance to tell, and for people who have loved what I’ve done with the Panther over the years, well, I suspect this would have been a story that would move them.

CBA: What was the concept behind “Panther’s Rage”? It was obviously a story arc you were planning, right?

Don: Right, from the very beginning. Like I said, it was going to be a continued graphic novel.

CBA: Did you pitch it that way?

Don: No, I didn’t pitch anything! I didn’t! I suspect it wouldn’t have gone through if I had!

CBA: Mr. Subversive!

Don: I didn’t pitch a damn thing! I did what they said, “Set it in Wakanda, Don.” I think some might have been a little appalled, perhaps, when they saw what the actual book was. The first book dealt so much with death and regret, with T’Challa coming back and discovering the situation now existing in his country. There’s a lot of humor in that book as well, and I wanted to do a humorous character, but there were objections: “Oh, no, you can’t do a black humorous character.” I said, “But the whole cast is black! What are you talking about?” It’s not like doing a movie where there’s one character just being made fun of. And anyhow, the best humorous characters have a heart and soul; you care about them, as well as laughing at what happens to them. So I took Kazibe and Tayete, who were already in the series, and they ended up being a kind of Abbott and Costello team. Life has humor in it, and I wasn’t going to make this book humorless! The series dealt with very serious issues and themes and (hopefully!) real concerns, and pains that these characters felt, but that definitely wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do.

CBA: I think the last confrontation with those two characters and (what they called) “Panther Devil”—what did T’Challa say?

Something like, “I’m just too tired to tell you not to call me Panther Devil.”

Don: Well, you’ve probably read the stuff a lot more recently than I have.

CBA: Last night!

Don: There you go!

CBA: I’ll confess that your books were some of my favorites during that time—’73 to ’75—and they were just about the only comic books that I shared with my high school buddies. I’d lend ‘em off and the comics would be gone for a couple of months, and then they’d come back—and you’d have another convert. I just enjoyed sharing your work with the uninitiated immensely. I also enjoyed the intelligence that was behind the stories. You were alluding to real life, not just a continuity of, say, Peter Parker’s trite problems with the Spideymobile.

Don: Dwayne McDuffie came up to me one year and said, “You know Don, I never saw the first issue of ‘Panther’s Rage,’ but I got the second book, and I read it until the cover was off, and I didn’t know why it was so important to me.” Well, when people come up Fall 1999

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and tell me things like that, then I think all the fights I went through to do those books and make them the books they are, were worth it.

The problem is that if you make an aesthetic, creative decision, and you’re the only one affected by it, that’s fine. But if your family is affected as well; you now, I can take the blows, but I hate it when my wife or kids also have to because of a decision I made about a book. It could mean whether I’m bringing in a check that month or not. That part of it is always with you, and in those days, I was not a fast writer! Those books took a lot of time to do, and so it occurred to me that if I was going to try to make any money in this business that I’d better hope there was some way to get copyrights to material, get reprint fees and royalties, so that’s one of the things I immediately asked for when I was doing Sabre. When Dean Mullaney called me up about starting Eclipse Comics by publishing Sabre, one of the first things I asked for was final say on what happens to my copy.

That was one of the most important things to me, because before that, people could do anything they wanted to my books, and my name went on it, and I had to live with it. For people who remember those books fondly; you’re not remembering all the people who edited, proofread and sometimes arbitrarily changed my stories, because they didn’t have any creative input on those books! Whatever those books were, they meant something to me and something to the artists who worked on them.

I ran into things I never even expected to encounter. We did back-up features in Jungle Action because the book was two-thirds new material and one-third reprint, and they were reprinting “Lord of the Jungle” things.

CBA: Jim Salicrup and others were working on these back-ups.

Don: Marvel wouldn’t pay for it, so I had to come up with concepts they could use, and people like Jim Salicrup helped me out, Alex Simmons—and I’m going to leave out a lot of people here—we did this all after-hours, on our own time, and thank God these people

Above: Rich Buckler’s pencils for the cover of Jungle Action #12. Note the inclusion of Klaus Janson’s name as inker as apparently the assignment was made before the pencils’ submission. Also, as you can see from the published version below, the character of Killmonger was made—after inks were completed—by the Bullpen. Courtesy of Don McGregor. Black Panther ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Another Rich Buckler pencil job, this one for the cover of Jungle Action #6, Don & Rich’s first issue depicting the Wakandan leader T’Challa.

Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Black Panther ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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were so supportive, because I certainly couldn’t have done it on my own. They were willing to put the time and effort into it—Danny Crespi was a beautiful man. For me, he and John Verpoorten often were Marvel Comics! But the downside of doing these pages was that I actually got some writers pissed off at me.

CBA: How so?

Don: From their point of view, I could understand what they were saying, although it didn’t change what I had to do. They said, “Don, you’re doing this stuff for Marvel for free, they’re going to expect us to be doing this kind of stuff.” The only thing I was concerned about was that Jungle Action book; that I could hold it in my hand and live with it, and 25 years later, if you’re asking me questions about it— even if I blew something—I could still say it was the best book I was capable of doing at the time, given the situation that existed. And if that “Lorna of the Jungle” stuff was in the back of Jungle Action, I just couldn’t have lived with it! I would’ve been in agony all the time, so I was always trying to find a way around it. Yet, some writers were really upset that I did it. But I said, “Whatever you guys do with your books is fine, it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m only concerned with trying to put out the best book I can put out. I’m not in competition with anybody, I just want to put out a book that I don’t feel embarrassed about.” I love comics, and I saw so much stuff festering in the comic book industry—the feeling that comic books were

a second-rate industry—and I didn’t feel that way. When it works, what an incredible business this is! You know, writing to me is just hard work, facing a blank sheet of paper and keeping it important day after day, month after month, year after year, keeping it important—but the time it really is exciting and fun to me is when the artwork comes in, an artist brings it to life, and suddenly it’s like I’m five years old again, and I’m that kid looking in that store window and seeing those comic books hanging up there! I’m saying comics can be anything; look at this, this is great! And I’ll go out and fight again.

CBA: You’ve still got that fight in you; you’re still a feisty guy.

Were you perceived as a difficult writer?

Don: I suppose that depends to whom you ask that question [laughs]. I think you have to take a look at the time those books were being done, and the reason they got to exist at all. Part of it was that there were so many different titles, one editor couldn’t hear every story pitch. (Later on, Marvel had a policy where writers had to send in a story synopsis, and they had a Junior Woodchuck squad go over every story before it ever got to an artist.) There wasn’t time to do that—the editor was just too busy coming up with covers or writing cover copy for the books, dealing with all the business people, or whatever. So the virtue of those books, is no one had anything to do with those books but me and the artists involved. Billy Graham had done only one book for Marvel. Craig Russell had only done one title for Marvel—when Marvel first put Craig on the “Killraven” book, it was because he had said in a fanzine interview critical comments about what Marvel had done to some of his artwork in a previous story. In those days, there weren’t a lot of comic fanzines, and to do that kind of thing carried a lot more weight than perhaps it would today, because you basically had only a few places to sell material to. So, Craig wasn’t on anybody’s high list at that particular time! Now, that changed, because once he was doing the “Killraven” book—and everyone could see Craig’s astounding, rapid growth as an artist, from book to book; then they wanted him off the book!

CBA: They wanted him on other stuff?

Don: Another writer wanted him, and they were saying, “You shouldn’t be wasting him on “Killraven”!” But thank God for Craig! He was very loyal and stayed with the book and it was a wonderful working experience. I had wonderful people like Billy Graham and Craig to work with on those books, and that part of it, along with the support from the readers, was the upside part of that time period as a storyteller.

CBA: How did you get pulled into “War of the Worlds”?

Because it was obviously going through so many creative teams?

Don: Exactly. They were kind of ready to write it off, and I guess they figured, as I said earlier, “Well, we can give it to Don, and when it dies, we can tell him we gave him a chance to write.” I don’t think they expected those titles to get as much response from the readers as they did. Initially, when I started to do that book, I felt when they gave it to me, this will kind of be my “comic book” comic book. I was putting so much into “Black Panther,” I didn’t figure I could possibly find time to put as much time into “Killraven,” and of course, it immediately grew, with those characters. It became more complex.

CBA: Do they really take on a life of their own, out of your control?

Don: Yeah, in many ways.

CBA: I remember some fantasy sequences with Old Skull and the Disney cute animal characters! It was juxtaposed with such violence.

Your work has a lot of anger and violence; a lot of rage.

Don: Because it exists in the world; there’s also a lot of humor and a lot of sex! These things exist! What gets to me is they’re continuing to say, “Well, we don’t want you writing about this stuff!” I say, “Why do you want to ignore all the stuff we should be exploring as human beings and as writers?”

CBA: You said that you started writing Killraven as a “comic book” story, and you really ended up writing a complex, fleshed-out story about characters.

Don: Well, “Killraven” just kept growing in depth, and the idea of what we could do, and then, when I started working with Craig, especially, then the possibilities just seemed endless, so it just kept COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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getting richer all the time. We broke a lot of new ground. They talk about the interracial kisses in that book, but that also had the first pregnant woman in Marvel Comics as well, and there was a lot of debate over that! Sue Storm was expecting, but I don’t know that you ever saw her actually pregnant. If you did, it certainly didn’t look like she was going to give birth any moment.

Wanting to do something in a book is not the same as getting the chance to do it. You have to become like Hawk of the Wilderness, and some of that environment can be hostile. You have to read the winds. It is probably, at times, good to keep your own council. My wanting to have M’Shulla and Carmilla Frost become lovers could not just have been done because I wanted to do it. I had to find a way to have a chance to get to do it! When I had a number of sequences that had M’Shulla and Carmilla talking, bringing them slowly closer and closer together, I had an artist go to the editor and say if Don is doing some kind of salt-&-pepper thing they would not do the book. So I was called again into the office, this time about my portrayal of an interracial couple. I knew it was too early to say, “Yeah, that’s where I want this to lead, all right, can we do it?” Because if you have to ask, and if it has not been done a hundred to a thousand times before, the answer you are most likely to get is, “No.” And once you have a “No,” and you proceed, now its open defiance. And the people working on staff have to answer to other people. It was better to stay safe. And most times, you are dealing with people who are also writing books. Well, if someone is going to break ground, they have the position to push it through for a book they’re doing, if they are so inclined.

What I needed were the fans, the book’s letter writers, to start asking me why I wasn’t letting M’Shulla and Carmilla get together. I’d bring them close, then not let it happen, until we had enough mail wanting to know why I hadn’t done it. I knew Stan Lee really did want Marvel Comics to be the first company to do things. So, once I had enough letters, I formally requested an audience with Stan on the issue. Now, I knew the way to talk with Stan was to tell him what DC was doing. They’d done a romance title (I don’t know which one), that had a story with a nun, and touched on an interracial romance. I got Stan’s permission, but it was decided the only way it could be done is if the panel where M’Shulla and Carmilla kissed was colored in knockout colors— meaning both figures all in purple or some such color—so no one could take the panel out and wave it about and say, “Look, what they’re putting in comics!”

The issue comes out, and the panel was not in knockout colors.

So there I was, called into the office again.

And I was asked, “What happened?” And I said, “It wasn’t? Let me see.” And I looked over to view the make-ready (which is a coverless copy of the book that comes in a little earlier than the actual books). “Why, you’re right? How the hell did that happen?” But you know what? The sky didn’t fall!

There was no outrage. The world of comics went on. And we had done something human and real and maybe there was one less thing that we wouldn’t have to fight to get the chance to do.

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CBA: You really went off on your own direction with Killraven.

You didn’t rely on the original Wells novel.

Don: I did in the story arc Death/Birth, where Martians are breeding humans for food. That was the only extensive plotline that actually came from H.G. Wells, and I used it as a springboard.

CBA: You write a lot of text in your stories. Did you take heat for the amount you were writing?

Don: Yeah. They were sometimes dense—probably more than I wanted them to be at times, but if I wanted the stories to deal with the complexities and subtleties I wanted, there were times I just couldn’t figure any other way to do it. I’m not sure I would’ve done those books the same way now. In those days, you had one chance when you placed where your copy was going to go on the art.

Nowadays, for instance, I hand-letter everything out on overlays now, then I can shoot it down to comic book size, I know exactly what it’s going to look like before it comes out in print. I couldn’t do that in those days. I just keep finding ways to make this more work, consume more time. To me, it makes a better product, to be able to see what it is. You see copy on full-size art, it can track the eye differently when it’s shot down to comic book size. One of the things I think that’s hurt comics in recent years is that it’s become a very insulated industry, and the people who work in it take it for granted that copy can be placed any old where on the art, and the reader will figure it

Above: Buckler’s breakdowns of the splash page for his neverfinished Black Panther story by Don and Rich featuring Wind Eagle (intended for Jungle Action #24). This is what CBA likes to do best; revealing hitherto unknown comics stories from the greatest age of comics!

Some of Rich’s layouts were used by Ed Hannigan in the printed version, but much of Rich’s loose pencils contain story elements that did not make it into this, the last McGregor T’Challa tale in Jungle Action. More breakdowns from this tale appear on the pages following—and we’ll print even more to accompany our interview with Rich Buckler scheduled for our next issue!

Courtesy of Don McGregor.

Black Panther, Wind Eagle ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Page two of Rich’s unused Black Panther story.

Oddly, these pencils are much tighter than the breakdowns in Don’s possession. Could fullsize finished pencil pages exist?

Give us a clue, faithful reader!

Greg Huneryager kindly sent us the above.

Black Panther, Wind Eagle ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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out! I’ve read some comics, and I don’t know where I’m supposed to read next! I don’t have a clue! And I’m not saying at times I wasn’t guilty of that, but I’m more aware of it now than ever, if we want outside people to be reading these comics, we can’t make it so difficult for them so they can’t get involved with the material.

CBA: Let’s say a problem with Marvel at the time was there were new editors coming in who were comic fans foremost—before they were writers—and they always thought in the comic book vernacular. If true, did that attitude stifle new approaches? You come in with a new style of writing, a new approach to characterization, and they were used to the Stan Lee method. Do you think that could’ve

been a problem, maybe the comics should’ve reached out beyond fandom to creatively replenish the company?

Don: Wow; such a hypothetical question! Part of the problem, I think, is if you brought in people that didn’t know anything about comics, what are they going to use for a criteria on what would make a good comic? Or what will make a story work within comics? For example, I adapted The Mask of Zorro from film to comics, but I have to make that work as a comic book page. That doesn’t necessarily mean the people who are doing film are going to understand what would make a scene work as a comic book page. If you’re translating exactly as it is in the film, that may not work. You’ve got to find a way to make that scene work within the context of comics. I don’t know, it’s a really broad question, and I guess if you pushed me, I’d say they need more editors like Archie Goodwin—people who, even if they were writers, they didn’t believe there should be just one style of approaching comics; that there’s room for different kinds of books, and that individual titles can talk to different audiences.

And that every book didn’t have to be so bland in its attempt to reach everybody and increasingly limiting anybody from caring about the comic. A book doesn’t exist that doesn’t offend somebody. Now there are titles out there whose primary purpose is just to offend, without reason.

I’m not sure this adds any more to the medium than the very bland, voiceless stuff does, if it’s done with the same limited purpose.. What we need are books with their own unique voices.

I’m always hearing Marvel wants to return to the Stan Lee formula, but Stan knew that when Marvel was only doing 12 books a month, you can’t have every book be the same damn thing in tone and style. Especially when the line was increasing. A Thor was definitely different from Spider-Man, which was different from Fantastic Four. Something is going to happen when you have 100+ titles or books a month; they’re all virtually doing the same thing. There’s a saturation point; I don’t know what it is, but somewhere somebody says, “Well, I really liked this, but I’ve had enough of it.” So, if there’s nothing else there for them, they’re going to give up comics, and I think you have to find a way to give books all different kinds of stories, different kinds of characters, and I certainly wouldn’t have ever thought, had any idea in my head, that the way I was doing these particular books we’re discussing was the only way it should be done. It was just the way I wanted to do the books. I approached every story differently. Ragamuffins is certainly not “Panther’s Rage” or “Morbius, the Living Vampire,” or Luke Cage, or “Killraven.” They were all different kinds of strips.

Detectives, Inc. is obviously as long a way from Ragamuffins as it is from Sabre. When I first had a chance to go off and create a new series, and just test the waters to see if there was a market out there for these books, some people said, “Well, you went and did a heroic fantasy character, and why did you do that?” Well, if I’d come up with Ragamuffins first, I could possibly not have had a chance to get COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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a second book out. But by doing Sabre first, and then coming out with Detectives, Inc., and then Ragamuffins, even though I had those strips planned all along, I didn’t think Ragamuffins was the first one for me to come out with, and go into those untested waters.

People who knew me for heroic fantasy, even though I started out doing horror stuff at Warren, were already trying to categorize me, saying, “Well, Don does this, and Don does that.” Of course, that kind of perception can often limit the kind of stories you get to do, because that kind of thinking locks you into a very little cage.

You talk about the violence in the stories, but by their nature, heroic material deals with violent situations, so all I tried to do is make it real, that it had consequences. I felt it was a lie to tell the audience nobody gets hurt during this stuff! This takes away from human beings, so we dealt with that. In “Killraven” when we did “A Death in the Family,” I didn’t want to kill any of those characters, but I felt it was a lie to the audience to say, “During a war, only the people that you don’t like die or get hurt.” So I had to make the point very strongly, so there had to be a story where one of those characters died. Yet, I really regretted losing Hawk, because I was learning more about the Navajo tribe, and I really wanted to do more with that. But somebody had to go, and it couldn’t be Camilla, and it couldn’t be M’Shulla, and it couldn’t be Old Skull at that point in time. So, I wrestled with that one for a long time.

When I wrote “A Death in the Family,” I was trying a totally different style, and I did the entire story in only captions. A lot of times when a book is just narrative, it becomes divorced from the artwork.

It’s like you’re telling the story, and the pictures show one thing, and the text is rather divorced from the actual picture. I wanted to integrate it. I wanted the captions to be very subjective, and very emotionally involving. Right from the beginning of that book, the original first line was (something I do remember), ”The nuclear family is exploding.” Apparently, one of the editors didn’t understand what a nuclear family was, so they added this incredibly ridiculous line that was something like, “From the first day bombs fell on Nagasaki…”; they had all just ridiculous stuff in there! (To this day, I still remember Fall 1999

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that when people bring Amazing Adventures #34 up to be signed.)

And then, Marvel decided, “Well, you can’t do a book that’s all captions! The audience won’t buy it!” But I said, “But unless readers scrutinize the book before they buy it, they won’t know this issue lacks dialogue balloons. They’ll pick it up, thinking it was just another issue of ‘Killraven.’” “A Death In The Family” was a great-looking issue, but a decision was made that it had to have dialogue balloons.

They started to paste balloons up for the first five pages! I guess it ended up being too much production work, because they decided to just leave the rest of the book alone. However, one of the dialogue balloons dropped; you can actually still see the placement in the panel above. I think it was supposed to be going to Carmilla Frost, or one of the other characters—I think it’s on the second page—this balloon they pasted up actually dropped into a lower panel and ended up with a pointer going to Killraven’s serpent-stallion. It’s speaking Carmilla’s dialogue!

So, there’s this beautifully-drawn book by Craig, and it’s very powerful in many of its scenes—it was heart-stoppingly beautiful work, and he just caught so much in that issue, that was my favorite issue to date of the series—and they just hurt that book for me.

It’s 20-some years later, whatever it is, people bring the comic up—that’s what I remember: The things that just screwed that book up, and made it less than it should be.

But a good story about that issue was, the reader knew somebody was going to die, but who was it going to be? When I was writing the initial pages, Alex Simmons came over to my place.

When I wrote the actual finished version of the first five pages where you think Old Skull is gonna die, I let Alex read them. I wanted to see his reaction, and I went back into my office to work at the typewriter. Ten minutes later, he comes running in and shouting, “You son of a bitch!” He grabs me, knocks me out of my chair, and says, “You

Above: Pages 11 and 12 of the breakdowns that were used as layouts by Ed Hannigan in the published version appearing in Jungle Action #24. Black Panther, Wind Eagle ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Does anybody know the whereabouts of the late Billy Graham’s family? We’d love to devote significant space to the underrated cartoonist. Here’s a detail from his Jungle Action #12. Courtesy of Tom Fields.

Black Panther ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Above: Craig’s cover to the Killraven graphic novel. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Below: Paul Gulacy’s pencils to his character design of Sabre, the breakthrough character (co-created by Paul and Don) who invigorated the burgeoning direct sales marketplace in the late ’70s. Art ©1999 Paul Gulacy. Sabre is a trademark of Don McGregor.

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killed Old Skull!” I was so happy! I thought, “I got him!” [laughs] That was the moment I felt, “Yeah, this is working, and this will emotionally move the audience. It should put them through an emotional roller coaster as they read this book.” This is a reaction the storyteller lives for!

In every one of those “Killraven” books, we were going for a different tone. “A Death In The Family” was a very brutally realistic story; the story before, “Only The Computer Shows Me Any Respect” dealt with a fantasy milieu, filled with whimsical material at times, at others with incredible sexual imagery that I have no idea to this day how we got away with, but if you look at Killraven entering the Mural Phonics system, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Right after “A Death…” we did the “24-Hour Man” story. I have no idea how in the hell that got through! And on the cover, the copy reads something like, “Killraven and the 24-Hour Man fight for the most fantastic prize of all!” I always called this a perverse love story, and certainly at its core, it’s about the fact that the 24-Hour Man has to mate within a day’s time or his race dies! I know how the initial concept started, though: Craig called me up, and I had never seen Citizen Kane, and he said, “You’ve never seen Citizen Kane?!

You’ve seen every movie in the world! Well, we’ve got to go see it!”

So we went down and saw it together at the Bleeker Street Cinema.

Afterwards, we were sitting in a Greek restaurant and I knew Craig liked this idea of using the same page of artwork twice and get paid for it twice, with just one page of illustrations, and I said, “How about if we start the story out with one page of artwork, and then it’s the same page at the end, but then it has a totally different meaning in context?” And we actually worked that out in that little Greek restaurant eating souvlaki sandwiches.

CBA: When you were doing Jungle Action, the book was delayed for four months. Was that because of the paper shortage at the time? I remember waiting for that book to come out and going, Huh? What’s going on? And it came out four months later.

Don: Geez, I don’t know the answer to that.

It’s possible, that’s probably one of the behindthe-scenes things that whatever I knew about it was probably just said to me. I remember there was a space between one of the issues—it’s the one that Gil Kane drew; that’s the book I think that almost broke me with the scene where this character gets killed; I can’t think of his name; he gets impaled with a spear.

CBA: The revolutionary character.

Don: Right. That page, I wrote and rewrote for days, every night after working on staff, and I hated everything I wrote for it. But it was one page; still anything I wrote for it just didn’t seem to catch the power I wanted. Eventually, I took part of one draft and part of another. I said to myself, “Don, you’ve got to get past this page, this is crazy! It’s going on a week you’ve worked on this one damn page, you’ve got to get past it.” But with that page, my feeling was that if I didn’t get past it I’d have a nervous breakdown. It was one of those times that made me question, whatever made me think I could be a writer? I just never thought I’d find a way to get something to work there.

CBA: I was just reading it: “I was born near these palace walls, Zatama?”

Don: Yeah. It’s been

twenty-something years since I’ve read this. A lot of times, the readers recall scenes a lot more specifically than I do. Often they come up and have very specific questions. Once, I recall somebody asking me very intensely, “Don, why did you make the character so evil in the first two ‘Morbius’ stories?” There was a Satanic group in the story, and I said, “Those are horror stories; there’s probably the reason why!”

What I remember from that particular Morbius story was the storyline dealt with a guy who lived in a Brooklyn brownstone, with a number of people, and one of the people was dealing drugs. At the end of the story, the police raid the brownstone, and in the ensuing melee, this innocent guy is killed. (Even though this was a black-&white, non-Code book, that really caused problems in the office.) The police aren’t really the bad guys, but Marvel was opposed to the idea of the cops killing or beating up this innocent guy—whatever it was—so I really had to negotiate on that story. But what’s really strange about this, in real life, when I was actually writing the finished pages on that sequence, I was living in the Bronx at the time, and I was alone in the apartment, it was about one o’clock in the morning. (In those days I’d work very late at night.) There was no air conditioning in that apartment, and I’m sitting in my underwear writing this scene at midnight, and suddenly the doorbell rings! I thought it was Alex, because he sometimes might come by—rarely, but he’d come—and say he needed a place to stay for the night and crash. So I wasn’t even going to bother getting dressed and I went to the door; if it was him, I was going to let him in, and I was going to go back; and I was into actually writing the scene with the cops doing this stuff! And I’m working on this, very intense on it, very focused, as focused as I can possibly be, because the sequence is very intense, and I go to the door, and I say, “Is that you, Alex?” And I hear, “It’s the police; open up!” The first thought in my mind was, “How the f*ck did they know?!?” [laughter] So I say, “Listen, I’m not dressed, I’ve got to get some clothes on.” They screamed, “If you leave the door, we’re going to kick it in!” I said, “Wait, wait, I don’t understand! What’s going on?” These guys were insistent! What happened was, there was a domestic violence situation up the hallway, and they’d come to the wrong apartment. But they were so insistent, every time I went to leave the door, they said they were going to kick it in, and man, I had to open the door; I couldn’t believe it, that was so bizarre!

CBA: The thought police, eh?

Don: Oh, man! Marvel Comics put them on me! They knew what Don was doing! “You’re being bad, Don, we’re going to get you!”

You never can tell what element in a story can turn out to be controversial and raise a ruckus. When I wrote “Red Dust Legacy” in “Killraven,” part of that story—and this is also based on some Wells material—is that germs killed the Martians. So when the baby Martians are born, they have the infants put in these incubators, and Killraven comes upon the nursery. The Martians have already vowed to kill all humans, so Killraven is ready to smash all these incubators, let the air and germs get to them. But Camilla is in opposition to this, and therein lies the conflict and the dramatic thrust of the story. The opposing points of view between these characters—man, there were people really upset about that story! But the person who was giving me the hardest time about it had just done a book with a naked woman hanging upside down with hot oil being poured over her, and she’s supposed to be enjoying it! This is the person telling me that I’m out of line doing this thing with the baby Martians!

CBA: Just don’t kill baby Martians, Don! I hate to be naive, I’m almost 40 years old, but I’m very surprised to hear that editors actually added word balloons and so messed with your story! Would you literally come in the office and say, “What the…”?

Don: And then they’d be surprised that I was upset! You know, that was what always kind of got to me: If somebody did that to one of their books, I’m sure they would be upset! But I actually had one writer come up to me one time and said, “How come you get the kind of letters you get? Why don’t I get those kind of letters?” What do you say to a thing like that? “Uh, uh.”? That was a question I certainly didn’t have an answer for!

I actually had one editor call me into his office once—and this is when I was writing very few stories—and tell me some magazine over in England had put me in some kind of top ten list of comic COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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book writers. He said, “You know, you’ve only written four stories this year, and I’ve written seventy-something this year,” (and by the way, whenever they’re going to do this kind of stuff, they always close the door so nobody else can hear what’s going on) and he goes, “I want to know why you’re on this list and I’m not!” And I said, “Well, I don’t have the faintest idea, but it oughta tell you something.” I just got up and walked on out. It’s the kind of stuff you’re stunned when you’re asked that kind of stuff, you just go, “What? What?” Amazing.

CBA: What made you leave Marvel?

Don: I did not leave “Black Panther” or “Killraven.” I loved those characters, so whatever feelings I had about what was going on with those books, did not diminish my passion for them! I would never have left either of those series so abruptly, I would not abandon what I loved. I knew as soon as I wasn’t on the staff job anymore that it would become more difficult to protect the books and to write stories that meant something to me, about characters I cared for deeply.

CBA: Oh, when did you leave the staff job?

Don: [Searching] I was working on staff every day, and I don’t remember exactly when I left. That’s a long time ago. I certainly left before the books were taken away, and I knew I could no longer protect the books. You could protect the books somewhat when you’re in there every day, and especially because there’s no incentive for talent to get these books in too early, because it gives people a lot more chances to monkey around with your material. If the finished book is coming in the day it’s got to go out to press, there’s a lot less time for the editor to say, “Well, I don’t think we should have this interracial kiss.” The priority becomes the book’s got to get out, unless it is something that so offends them they can’t let it go, but I couldn’t really anticipate what that would be. So, I was always contending with that. I had a marriage that was going on the rocks, and I thought, well, I couldn’t do both. I could do the editorial job, and sometimes I would stay there all night to get some of those b-&-w books out; I’d write at night. It was very hard to go to bed at one o’clock in the morning, try to get sleep, and then get up the next day to go in and proofread. I just felt like a circus act where you spin the plates on top of the poles; you spin one plate, and then another, and if you spin one reasonably well, then you are ignoring the other one. So my work schedule was kind of like running back and forth. It probably would’ve been better if I’d stayed, given the way things turned out on the personal front, but in the long run, it probably wouldn’t have been. There just would’ve been more contention, but certainly, economically it was very difficult. It wasn’t like people could make money from a book by earning royalties or reprint money, never mind on when the initial books came out; there wasn’t any money paid that way, in that time period. I think when I started they were paying maybe $12 a page, and by the time I finished it was up to $17-18, something like that.

The thing is, you try to do the best book you can do; I’ve never written a book just for the money. When I sit down, it’s just about writing the best story I can. On the other hand, people have misinterpreted this and misunderstood; that doesn’t mean I don’t think I should be paid the best price that I can get—I deserve it, I work really hard at it, I respect comics—I’m not naive about it, I want to be able to survive, I want my family to be able to survive! But when I sit down to tell that story, that’s only between me and that blank sheet of paper, and trying to give something to people who love comics.

Hopefully, something they can care about. Hey, another thing I wasn’t prepared for: I’ve heard of people getting into fistfights over whether what I did was good comics or not! Ask me if I ever expected anything like that—no! Not at all! That’s things you’re just not thinking about when you’re writing a story! People start throwing fists at each other! Unbelievable!

CBA: Immediately after the end of Jungle Action, Jack Kirby came out with Black Panther #1. Did Jack ask for that project?

Don: I know nothing about it. I didn’t read his stories; there was no sense to it. Why put yourself through that? This has got nothing to do with Jack, obviously it wasn’t going to be the character I’d been doing after putting so much energy of my life into the Panther. I think it was best to stay away from Jack’s version. You are not going to get the chance to tell the stories you’d been planning. This is not the same character you have spent day in and day out with for years.

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And even if you did read them, how could you approach it with any kind of objectivity? Ralph Macchio always tells the story that apparently I went into the bullpen when some of Kirby’s pages were in—and there must have been a lot of them—and there was something about leaping bullfrogs in the story. I said, “Bullfrogs? If I’d known they wanted bullfrogs, I could have given them bullfrogs!” [laughs] The other thing was one of the editors in that time period was telling people they were going to have to work overtime, and he said, “We’re gonna have to stay late because we’ve got to get these books out, but Marvel will never forget, Marvel has a long memory!” And I was just thinking back on all those evenings I spent all night, I’d sleep in the reception office after staying there until midnight working on a magazine, and I thought, “What was that all about?

Yeah, they’ve got a good long memory, all right.”

CBA: Did you have any idea how the sales were on the books?

Don: No. The higher print run books obviously went to more places—to the college market, for instance—so I don’t think the “Killraven” books or “Black Panther” even reached those places, which they probably would’ve been much more accepted at than others. They were not phenomenal sellers, I’m sure of that. But they certainly weren’t losing money; they didn’t keep the books around for over two years because of me! So, I guess they did okay; I don’t know exactly what the sales figures were.

CBA: I discovered I was missing an issue of Jungle Action, #24, so I looked in the Overstreet Guide, and it said that it was a reprint of #22. Did they reprint a four-month old issue?

Don: That I can’t answer, I don’t have any idea. Some folks often believe the “Panther” series I’d most like to see them collect in one book is “Panther’s Rage,” and surely I’d love that, especially if I could try to fix it up a bit, but the Panther series I’d most like to see in one volume is “Panther’s Quest.” Because it only exists as 25 chapters in 25 separate issues of Marvel Comics Presents. And I love that story. I believe it flows and isn’t segmented despite the eight-page chapters.

I’m still glad we dealt with Apartheid at a time when even the news media were doing very little on the subject. And I still think it’s a good human story, too.

CBA: Were you planning a Panther story dealing with apartheid back in the ’70s?

Don: Yes, but I didn’t know enough to start it then. I was going through a divorce at the time, and it was also America’s Bicentennial, and I was getting so much crap from just about everywhere about the book, so I said, “Okay, I’ll bring him to America.” So I started doing stories with the Ku Klux Klan and, well, it really hit the fan. I think if I’d been willing to just do two stories with the Klan it would’ve been one thing, but there’s actually a cover in there where the Panther is tied to the cross, and the cross is burning darkly in the night. I think it was the only time the Code ever stepped in on a book that I did, they said it was sacrilegious, and it promoted bondage and S&M! CBA: That’s you, Don. [laughs] Don: I said, well, it is sacrilegious, you know. The only difference in this story and real life is in this story the Panther survives, and all I tried to do is get the audience to care about it. I really wanted to make the point that he was

Above: Marshall Roger’s cover to the first Detectives, Inc. graphic novel. ©1999 Marshall Rogers & Don McGregor.

Below: Editorial comment by Don on the work-for-hire contracts introduced at Marvel in 1976. Needless to say, Don made do outside the Marvel Bullpen by the late ’70s. Photo courtesy of Don McGregor.

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Above: The Killraven graphic novel was never intended to be Craig and Don’s last word on the characters as evidenced by this “Martian architecture design” sketch, intended for use in the still-unrealized third Killraven series. The series was conceived by Marvel editors as a multi-parter with installments in the bi-weekly Marvel Comics Presents. Without the promise

by Marvel to collect the 8-page chapters, the artist “opted out” of the project before his work began. Courtesy of the artist. ©1999 P. Craig Russell.

Right: Yow! Here’s Lauren Christine McGregor, Don’s darling daughter, all decked out in her Lady Rawhide garb, during a con appearance, giving you fanboys the come-hither look!

Ye ed had a grand time hanging with the McGregor clan in San Diego this year. Lauren and her brother Rob are chips off of the old man’s block! Boy, do they got the feistiness in ’em, just like dear old dad! Speaking of Lady Rawhide, didja know Don has been scripting her and Zorro’s exploits for years now?

Why, with Tom Yeates, Don does the syndicated Zorro daily and Sunday strips appearing in the New York Daily News!

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no symbolic Christ figure—the comics had been doing so much of that stuff—and I just thought it takes away from the humanity of the characters. I think we should be concerned with what happens to human beings.

So what they did was they redrew it into a much weaker cover, with T’Challa breaking free. The whole opening of that book is he’s tied to this burning cross and you wonder how is he going to get out of it? He goes through horrible suffering to survive this terrible ordeal, and purposefully so, we’re going back to violence again. I’m sorry, I wish this was something a writer had made up, but unfortunately, human beings have done this to other human beings! All I want to do as a storyteller is deal with things that affect us as human beings, so I felt this series was something like, well, I used to joke, it was my birthday present to America. [laughs] And you know, in a way, it really was. Actually, the story was about a lot more than the Klan, because it really was dealing with all kinds of extremist groups and increasing separatism that has only become more prevalent in the ensuring years. As the series progressed, you would’ve seen that.

I think we see more of this now than we were seeing in 1976, the superficial thing, “My way is right, it’s the only way, and everybody else die!”

CBA: Timothy McVeigh.

Don: I think we’ve just seen the fruition of that. That story was attempting to deal with that kind of isolationism, that kind of extremism, that hurts people just trying to get on with their lives, and make America work.

CBA: You had a great artist; Billy Graham was working on “Black Panther.”

You started working with Rich Buckler, and you had a Gil Kane fillin—with very slick, attractive Klaus Janson inks—then you had Billy come in. I believe in some sense that Billy was an atypical Marvel cartoonist. He added an element—I like it a lot now, but I didn’t like it that much when I was a kid—and it may be the best art of the series. When he inked his own pencils, there was a cartoony feel, but it moved, it really was alive. Was Billy forced off the book?

Don: Billy would hand me the artwork, then I’d put the script to it. So I don’t remember exactly.

There was probably a deadline problem or something, when Billy got to ink whatever books you’re talking about. I know Rich came back and did the last one, and I don’t recall why Billy didn’t do that final story. You have to understand, Billy was involved in a lot of different things as well: He was a playwright, staged plays, wrote a column for the Amsterdam News—a lot of things, so comics wasn’t the only thing he did. Of course, Billy and I came back and worked together on the second Sabre series. That was my choice in the beginning, and Billy did take some heat then, but not all of it should’ve been directed at Billy. There were a couple of books that had just terrible coloring jobs, and if we’d been where we were with Sabre #7, I don’t think Billy would’ve ever gotten the criticism he did, and by Sabre #9, we had a terrific coloring job. Many folks just don’t realize that the first thing they see in a book is the coloring. I’ve seen bad coloring slaughter a book. I’ve seen inspired coloring save a book and make it look like a million bucks!

CBA: What kind of guy was Billy?

Don: Billy? Oh, God; Billy Graham was a great guy to hang out with! You know, when I first started writing the Klan stuff Billy called me and said, “Don, you’re out in Queens, I’m up here in Harlem, the Klan isn’t gonna come up here to get me!” I said to Billy, “Ah, come on, they’ve got a sense of humor, right? Right?” I went to a lot of places with Billy, and he and I had so many great adventures together. We could go two hours just on stories about Billy, and I could also give you two hours of stories about Gene Colan and various people I had such a pleasure working with. Billy had an incredible sense of humor; he was also a stand-up comedian, and he and Alex and I used to get together—I can remember one time, Alex was great at doing voice impressions, and I still have this on tape somewhere: Alex is doing John Wayne, and he’s doing a very patriotic speech, and Billy and I are humming God Bless America in the background, and I actually played it at a National Guard thing where I think I almost got lynched!

CBA: Did Billy do a lot of comic work after working with you?

Didn’t he also work with you on Luke Cage?

Don: No, Billy did some Cages, but he didn’t do them with me. It’s so long ago. Didn’t he draw some of Archie’s first four issues? He might have. I only did seven issues of that series.

CBA: You had some lively letters columns in your books.

Don: One of the good things about that time period, a lot of those people in the letters pages, I got to meet those people later on, and of course, they were kind of surprised that I knew them when I would meet them at a comic book convention or something like that, so we come full circle to my first meeting with Steranko. Anyhow a lot of those people obviously went on to do things in comics—Peter B. Gillis, Dean Mullaney, Melanie Crawford, Chadwick—there are a number of people whose names escape me, but a number of people.

CBA: Who was the intensely analytical writer?

Don: Ralph Macchio. He would write about almost every book that I did! There were a lot of people who had really, really read these books. The readers were fantastic! It was very obvious people were really paying attention to what was going on in the books, but at the time I didn’t know any of them other than by their letters. Later I was surprised when I met them, but you know, when you’re working on a regular book, the one thing the writers, the editors and the artists of a title see is the mail.

Remember, my letters to Steranko got him to recognize me, and that meeting led to my collaboration with Alex Simmons, which in turn resulted in the first Detectives, Inc. which got me recognition in the industry. Steranko knew me from my letters, and that was one of those great things about comics. And it was the same thing for Dean and some of these other people—I just knew them from their letters, but I certainly knew them. I did! These were people who were taking a look at what these books were about, and really studying them.

CBA: They cared about your work.

Don: And wrote great letters to my titles. Those letters made all the fights I was doing to produce those books worthwhile. They gave me a sense of positive reinforcement—there’s a real good reason to be doing this—and they inspired me to do the best work I could produce. But there was a little scariness about all this response, month after month, because it was building as the stories progressed, and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

while I loved the response, the fear was I was going to write a book that everyone hated! It was like climbing higher and higher, and there’s a peak somewhere, but maybe there’s a cliff edge, too, and you go right off the edge of it! But of course I was battling the fear that I’d pull off, say, the ending to “Panther’s Rage,” and make it work after two years of planning it.

CBA: Did you answer the letters?

Don: I did—I don’t know about the first letters page, but virtually all the letters pages in “Killraven,” or “Black Panther,” or Luke Cage were compiled by me.

CBA: What’s the story behind using the direct market for Sabre, your first graphic novel?

Don: When I was first working at Marvel Comics from ’72 to ’75, there wasn’t much thought about a specialty market in the industry.

The major comic book companies really thought hardcore fans were a very small percentage of their readership, and not many had really tested those waters as to whether the audience that primarily went into comic book shops could actually support a direct-only title. And to be honest with you, when I started doing Sabre with Paul Gulacy, I didn’t know whether—and neither did Dean Mullaney, the publisher [of Eclipse]. But I thought if you had two recognizable names and a good product, there quite possibly were people who were really involved with comics—and really loved comics—who wanted to see something beyond what the two major companies were offering.

CBA: How did Sabre do?

Don: It did great! When I first started looking for a publisher for Sabre, people were saying, “Well, Don, who’s going to buy a book about a black guy with a lot of guns?” That was their reaction. But I knew we had a real shot with the book, and Paul Gulacy had already drawn a couple of character sketches of Sabre, and I was taking it to various places, and I never knew that Dean Mullaney was even interested in publishing comics; he was actually one of the readers.

CBA: Yeah, right, he wrote a lot of letters to the editor.

Don: A lot of letters to Jungle Action, Amazing Adventures, Vampire Tales, and Luke Cage; the books I did at that time period.

CBA: Your old Warren editor, Archie Goodwin, edited your graphic novel Killraven.

Don: Archie was so slick! First of all, he just knew how to relate to people. I didn’t go to many of these things, but it was some kind of comic book function at the store, Forbidden Planet—I don’t recall how I got there, or why I was there—and Archie was there, came up to me and said, “Hey, Craig is interested in doing another Killraven, are you interested in doing it?” And I said, “Yeah, but it depends on who’s in charge of it. If it’s you, Archie, yes, I definitely am. If it’s other people, that would be able to override that, I don’t know.”

And he said, “No, no, I’d be the editor; you don’t have to deal with people like that.” Then he called Craig, and said, “You know, Don’s interested in doing a Killraven, how about you?” [laughter] So he got us both together, and we produced that album, and if all those books looked as good as that, you’d never hear Don McGregor bitch!

Here’s another story why it was great to work with Archie: I came into the Marvel offices when the Killraven book was lettered and just about finished, and I took xeroxes home and proofread them. There were a number of mistakes, and I brought them in to be corrected, but it was a day when Archie wasn’t there. I left them with one of his assistants to have the corrections made. For some reason, the corrections weren’t made. The book was actually in the blueline state [the final proof before printing].

But Archie made sure that I saw it, and I noticed that all of the things I had previously corrected hadn’t been done at all, and I called up Archie in a panic, saying, “Archie, the book looks great, but all these mistakes are there, which I already caught and Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

brought in!” And Archie checked the situation out, found it was true, went to the black plate [the actual film used to make the printing plate] and changed everything. How seldom do you ever hear of that happening in this business? He was just great, I will always love him dearly, just for keeping his word on a thing like that, and now I can look at that book and not see the mistakes. What a wonderful, wonderful man he was to work with.

CBA: That was one of the best of Marvel’s graphic novel series.

Don: Of course, working with Craig Russell; I’ve been very fortunate over the years to work with some really talented artists to bring these things to life, because as a writer, you can go and bleed on that piece of paper; if you care about it, you can give it everything you’ve got, but if the artist doesn’t bring their talent, their vision to it, to bring it to life, it’s just going to lay there, it’s just dead in the water.

I’ve been really fortunate over the years to have worked with a lot of really talented people who helped bring these stories to life, and knew I was serious about what I was doing, and cared about it deeply and passionately, and at times brought their own passion into it. People I not only worked with, but many of whom I had not just as an artistic partner, but as friends. We’ve talked about this time period, and people like Billy and Craig that were close to it, but man, do you know what it’s like to get to work with Gene Colan?! To have him visualize your characters? To bring some little subtle thing you wanted to life, in a way that just made me want to weep? And to have him as a friend, as well—to know him and Adrienne, and meet with them socially—or to have Gene tell me, he feels the stories we did were some of the best art he ever did. I feel honored just to be a little part of his career.

Or take another beautifully talented man like Dwayne Turner.

God, did I love working with Dwayne. And did we both love the Black Panther! I still love talking with Dwayne and meeting up with him and his wife, Robbin. What great people! And I haven’t mentioned Mike Mayhew or Esteban Maroto or Tom Yeates or Tod Smith or Jose Ortiz or Ron Wagner or Tom Palmer! And I know I’ve forgotten names I should mention. But want to know one of the upsides to being in this business of telling stories with words and pictures? It’s having the chance to meet and know talented, beautiful people like this! Whatever tensions and battles had to be fought to get something done, on the plus side, I could never have imagined the excitement of knowing people like this.

Below: The McGregor Clan!

Clockwise from left: Daughter Lauren, Don, wife Marsha, son Rob, and grandchildren Erik and Alex—Lauren’s their mom!

Courtesy of Don and Marsha.

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The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by CBC’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today. ALL BACK ISSUES NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL EDITIONS FOR $3.95 FROM www.twomorrows.com!

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#3: ADAMS AT MARVEL #4: WARREN PUBLISHING

#5: MORE DC 1967-74

#1: DC COMICS 1967-74

#2: MARVEL 1970-77

Era of “Artist as Editor” at National: New NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews, art, and articles with JOE KUBERT, JACK KIRBY, CARMINE INFANTINO, DICK GIORDANO, JOE ORLANDO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ALEX TOTH, JULIE SCHWARTZ, and many more!

Plus ADAMS thumbnails for a forgotten Batman story, unseen NICK CARDY pages from a controversial Teen Titans story, unpublished TOTH covers, and more!

STAN LEE AND ROY THOMAS discussion about Marvel in the 1970s, ROY THOMAS interview, BILL EVERETT’s daughter WENDY and MIKE FRIEDRICH on Everett, interviews with GIL KANE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE PLOOG, STERANKO’s Unknown Marvels, the real origin of the New X-Men, Everett tribute cover by GIL KANE, and more!

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#6: MORE MARVEL ’70s #7: ’70s MARVELMANIA

NEAL ADAMS interview about his work at Marvel Comics in the 1960s from AVENGERS to X-MEN, unpublished Adams covers, thumbnail layouts for classic stories, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his NEVER-COMPLETED X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEL! Plus TOM PALMER on the art of inking Neal Adams, ADAMS’ MARVEL WORK CHECKLIST, & ADAMS wraparound cover!

Definitive JIM WARREN interview about publishing EERIE, CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and other fan favorites, in-depth interview with BERNIE WRIGHTSON with unpublished Warren art, plus unseen art, features and interviews with FRANK FRAZETTA, RICHARD CORBEN, AL WILLIAMSON, JACK DAVIS, ARCHIE GOODWIN, HARVEY KURTZMAN, ALEX NINO, and more!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON cover!

More on DC COMICS 1967-74, with art by and interviews with NICK CARDY, JOE SIMON, NEAL ADAMS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MIKE KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, MARV WOLFMAN, IRWIN DONENFELD, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, GIL KANE, DENNY O’NEIL, HOWARD POST, ALEX TOTH on FRANK ROBBINS, DC Writer’s Purge of 1968 by MIKE BARR, JOHN BROOME’s final interview, and more! CARDY cover!

Unpublished and rarely-seen art by, features on, and interviews with 1970s Bullpenners PAUL GULACY, FRANK BRUNNER, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, MARIE and JOHN SEVERIN, JOHN ROMITA SR., DAVE COCKRUM, DON MCGREGOR, DOUG MOENCH, and others! Plus never-beforeseen pencil pages to an unpublished Master of Kung-Fu graphic novel by PAUL GULACY! Cover by FRANK BRUNNER!

Featuring ’70s Marvel greats PAUL GULACY, JOHN BYRNE, RICH BUCKLER, DOUG MOENCH, DAN ADKINS, JIM MOONEY, STEVE GERBER, FRANK SPRINGER, and DENIS KITCHEN! Plus: a rarely-seen Stan Lee P.R. chat promoting the ’60s Marvel cartoon shows, the real trials and tribulations of Comics Distribution, the true story behind the ’70s Kung Fu Craze, and a new cover by PAUL GULACY!

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#10: WALTER SIMONSON

#11: ALEX TOTH AND SHELLY MAYER

#8: ’80s INDEPENDENTS

#9: CHARLTON PART 1

#12: CHARLTON PART 2

Major independent creators and their fabulous books from the early days of the Direct Sales Market! Featured interviews include STEVE RUDE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, DAVE STEVENS, JAIME HERNANDEZ, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, DON SIMPSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, MIKE BARON, MIKE GRELL, and more! Plus plenty of rare and unpublished art, and a new STEVE RUDE cover!

Interviews with Charlton alumni JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, DENNIS O’NEIL, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM GLANZMAN, plus ALAN MOORE on the Charlton/ Watchmen Connection, DC’s planned ALLCHARLTON WEEKLY, and more! DICK GIORDANO cover!

Career-spanning SIMONSON INTERVIEW, covering his work from “Manhunter” to Thor to Orion, JOHN WORKMAN interview, TRINA ROBBINS interview, also Trina, MARIE SEVERIN and RAMONA FRADON talk shop about their days in the comics business, MARIE SEVERIN interview, plus other great women cartoonists. New SIMONSON cover!

Interviews with ALEX TOTH, Toth tributes

by KUBERT, SIMONSON, JIM LEE, BOLLAND, GIBBONS and others, TOTH on continuity art, TOTH checklist, plus SHELDON MAYER SECTION with a look at SCRIBBLY, interviews with Mayer’s kids (real-life inspiration for SUGAR & SPIKE), and more! Covers by TOTH and MAYER!

CHARLTON COMICS: 1972-1983!

Interviews with Charlton alumni GEORGE WILDMAN, NICOLA CUTI, JOE STATON, JOHN BYRNE, TOM SUTTON, MIKE ZECK, JACK KELLER, PETE MORISI, WARREN SATTLER, BOB LAYTON, ROGER STERN, and others, ALEX TOTH, a NEW E-MAN STRIP by CUTI AND STATON, and the art of DON NEWTON! STATON cover!

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#13: MARVEL HORROR

#14: TOWER COMICS & WALLY WOOD

#15: 1980s VANGUARD & DAVE STEVENS

#16: ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS

#17: ARTHUR ADAMS

1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider! Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENE COLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH, DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus a Portfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DON PERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, and more! New GENE COLAN cover!

Interviews with Tower and THUNDER AGENTS alumni WALLACE WOOD, LOU MOUGIN, SAMM SCHWARTZ, DAN ADKINS, LEN BROWN, BILL PEARSON, LARRY IVIE, GEORGE TUSKA, STEVE SKEATES, and RUSS JONES, TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST, history of TIPPY TEEN, 1980s THUNDER AGENTS REVIVAL, and more! WOOD cover!

Interviews with ’80s independent creators DAVE STEVENS, JAIME, MARIO, AND GILBERT HERNANDEZ, MATT WAGNER, DEAN MOTTER, PAUL RIVOCHE, and SANDY PLUNKETT, plus lots of rare and unseen art from The Rocketeer, Love & Rockets, Mr. X, Grendel, other ’80s strips, and more! New cover by STEVENS and the HERNANDEZ BROS.!

’70s ATLAS COMICS HISTORY! Interviews with JEFF ROVIN, ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY HAMA, HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RIC MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlas Checklist, HEATH, WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover!

Discussion with ARTHUR ADAMS about his career (with an extensive CHECKLIST, and gobs of rare art), plus GRAY MORROW tributes from friends and acquaintances and a MORROW interview, Red Circle Comics Checklist, interviews with & remembrances of GEORGE ROUSSOS & GEORGE EVANS, Gallery of Morrow, Evans, and Roussos art, EVERETT RAYMOND KINSTLER interview, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

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#18: 1970s MARVEL COSMIC COMICS

#19: HARVEY COMICS

#20: ROMITAs & KUBERTs #21: ADAM HUGHES, ALEX #22: GOLD KEY COMICS & examinations: RUSS MANNING ROSS, & JOHN BUSCEMA Interviews & Magnus Robot Fighter, WALLY WOOD &

Roundtable with JIM STARLIN, ALAN WEISS and AL MILGROM, interviews with STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE LEIALOHA, and FRANK BRUNNER, art from the lost WARLOCK #16, plus a FLO STEINBERG CELEBRATION, with a Flo interview, tributes by HERB TRIMPE, LINDA FITE, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, and others! STARLIN/ MILGROM/WEISS cover!

History of Harvey Comics, from Hot Stuf’, Casper, and Richie Rich, to Joe Simon’s “Harvey Thriller” line! Interviews with, art by, and tributes to JACK KIRBY, STERANKO, WILL EISNER, AL WILLIAMSON, GIL KANE, WALLY WOOD, REED CRANDALL, JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, ERNIE COLÓN, SID JACOBSON, FRED RHOADES, and more! New wraparound MITCH O’CONNELL cover!

Joint interview between Marvel veteran and superb Spider-Man artist JOHN ROMITA, SR. and fan favorite Thor/Hulk renderer JOHN ROMITA, JR.! On the flipside, JOE, ADAM & ANDY KUBERT share their histories and influences in a special roundtable conversation! Plus unpublished and rarely seen artwork, and a visit by the ladies VIRGINIA and MURIEL! Flip-covers by the KUBERTs and the ROMITAs!

ADAM HUGHES ART ISSUE, with a comprehensive interview, unpublished art, & CHECKLIST! Also, a “Day in the Life” of ALEX ROSS (with plenty of Ross art)! Plus a tribute to the life and career of one of Marvel’s greatest artists, JOHN BUSCEMA, with testimonials from his friends and peers, art section, and biographical essay.

HUGHES and TOM PALMER flip-covers!

Total War M.A.R.S. Patrol, Tarzan by JESSE MARSH, JESSE SANTOS and DON GLUT’S Dagar and Dr. Spektor, Turok, Son of Stone’s ALBERTO GIOLITTI and PAUL S. NEWMAN, plus Doctor Solar, Boris Karloff, The Twilight Zone, and more, including MARK EVANIER on cartoon comics, and a definitive company history! New BRUCE TIMM cover!

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#23: MIKE MIGNOLA

#24: NATIONAL LAMPOON COMICS

#25: ALAN MOORE AND KEVIN NOWLAN

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #1

COMIC BOOK ARTIST: SPECIAL EDITION #2

Exhaustive MIGNOLA interview, huge art gallery (with never-seen art), and comprehensive checklist! On the flip-side, a careerspanning JILL THOMPSON interview, plus tons of art, and studies of Jill by ALEX ROSS, STEVE RUDE, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and more! Also, interview with JOSÉ DELBO, and a talk with author HARLAN ELLISON on his various forays into comics!

New MIGNOLA HELLBOY cover!

GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

Focus on AMERICA’S BEST COMICS! ALAN MOORE interview on everything from SWAMP THING to WATCHMEN to ABC and beyond! Interviews with KEVIN O’NEILL, CHRIS SPROUSE, JIM BAIKIE, HILARY BARTA, SCOTT DUNBIER, TODD KLEIN, JOSE VILLARRUBIA, and more! Flip-side spotlight on the amazing KEVIN NOWLAN! Covers by J.H. WILLIAMS III & NOWLAN!

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Previously available only to CBA subscribers!

Spotlights great DC Comics of the ’70s: Interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN on JACK KIRBY’s Fourth World, ALEX TOTH on his mystery work, NEAL ADAMS on Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, RUSS HEATH on Sgt. Rock, BRUCE JONES discussing BERNIE WRIGHTSON (plus a WRIGHTSON portfolio), and a BRUCE TIMM interview, art gallery, and cover!

Compiles the new “extras” from CBA COLLECTION VOL. 1-3: unpublished JACK KIRBY story, unpublished BERNIE WRIGHTSON art, unused JEFF JONES story, ALAN WEISS interview, examination of STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ 1970s Batman work, a look at DC’s rare Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, PAUL GULACY art gallery, Marvel Value Stamp history, Mr. Monster’s scrapbook, and more!

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What If Dept.

The Prisoner That Never Was A Look at Marvel’s Aborted Prisoner Comic Series

by Tom Stewart Below: Page 5, the title page, of Gil Kane’s pencils to Marvel’s unused adaptation of The Prisoner.

Layouts by Joe Staton. Courtesy of David “Hambone” Hamilton.

Art ©1999 Gil Kane. The Prisoner ©1999 ITC Entertainment, Inc.

76

His face clouds. His speech becomes clipped, the words bit off and spat at the viewer: “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered! My life is my own!” With that, the man known only as Number Six, turns and stalks toward the door. He doesn’t know where he is, where he’s going or how he’ll get there; all he knows is he has to get out.

Thus begins one of the strangest—and most frustrating—series ever broadcast by commercial TV, Patrick McGoohan's’ The Prisoner.

Conceived in 1967 by McGoohan and script editor George Markstein for British television, as an allegory on modern society, politics and the Vietnam war, The Prisoner’s 17 episodes hit the US airwaves in 1968, as a Summer replacement for The Jackie Gleason Show. I suspect that CBS and the viewing audience thought they were about to see a continuation of McGoohan’s previous series, Secret Agent. They were wrong. (Some claim that it was a continuation of Secret Agent, something McGoohan has always denied—but that’s another article).

In the first episode, we see Number Six angrily resign from an obviously top secret job (a running theme is how pissed Number Six is throughout the series. He does everything angrily), go home and start packing for a trip to a warmer climate. Unknown to him, he is followed, kidnapped, and awakes again in his own apartment... or so it appears. (First lesson of The Prisoner: Nothing is as it seems.)

When the blinds are drawn, he finds not the streets of London, but the strange, jumbled Mediterranean architecture of “The Village,” his prison for the next 16 episodes.

Number Six finds he can only make local calls, local taxi rides, and get local newspapers. He is summoned to the “Green Dome” by the apparent head honcho, Number Two, who asks the biggest question of the show—the reason why Number Six is held in the Village—“Why did you resign?” Number Six makes a speech (orations are another hallmark of the series), and storms out. He tries to escape, but is caught by the security system—a huge white ball called a Rover. Number Six is foiled for now, but time is on his side, and there is always tomorrow….

The series is basically a psychological cat-and-mouse game between Number Six and the forces of the ever-changing Number Two (and that’s getting into the realm of over-simplification). Number Six is a life-force, a caged animal, pacing back and forth, waiting for the moment to strike out and win his freedom. Number Two is his keeper and chief tormentor—but who is the real prisoner?

The show played out its U.S. run on CBS in 1968, was repeated in the Summer of 1969, then was gone—but hardly forgotten. It has enjoyed a cult following that continues to this day (it’s said McGoohan is very tired of Prisoner questions). In the ’70s, during a spate of other TV and movie adaptations, Marvel Comics bought the rights to do a comic book adaptation of the series, prodded by writer Marv Wolfman, who said, “I was a major fan of the series. I thought it’d be a wonderful comic to do.”

Marvel obtained copies of the original TV scripts—some with McGoohan's’ own handwritten changes—and work was started with Wolfman in place as writer. It was then Marv had to bow out.

Marv explained, “I would have loved to have written it myself, but when I became editor-in-chief I never believed I should do things like that… assign it to myself.” The script assignment then went to Steve Englehart, another Prisoner fan (see Steve’s sidebar article for details of his involvement). Art chores went to Gil Kane. The artist turned in his 17 pages, and Englehart hurriedly scripted them… ...and they were filed away.

Unhappy with the first effort, publisher Stan Lee brought in his old collaborator Jack Kirby for another try. Kirby was a master storyteller, and, at the time, was adapting Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for Marvel. If the King could put that movie of ideas into comics form, why should The Prisoner be a problem? The feeling COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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seemed to be, “If Kirby can’t do it, It can’t be done.”

The big themes of The Prisoner were right up Kirby’s alley: Man vs. society, the individual vs. the mob, dehumanization by technology, the powers of a secret government—all subjects Jack had dealt with before. He and Stan Lee had even visited The Prisoner series before, in Fantastic Four #84-87, with Dr. Doom and Latveria standing in for Number Two and The Village. Jack sharpened his pencil and started work, drawing and writing The Prisoner #1.

Kirby—like Englehart and Kane before him—adapted the first episode, “Arrival,” and then sent the pages off to Mike Royer to be inked and lettered. Mike started off by lettering and inking the first several pages, until he got to page six. “Well,” Mike said, “they told me to stop”—and so, Jack’s pages joined Kane’s in that big drawer of unpublished stories. Marvel was never to publish The Prisoner comic book.

Why? You certainly can’t fault the art. “Gil was obviously a very good choice,” Marv said. “I sensed the look of Patrick McGoohan fit into his style, and he would understand the material the best”—and Jack Kirby showed an unknown talent for likenesses in his portrayal of McGoohan (especially in the uninked pages).

McGoohan certainly looks more like McGoohan here then in the Gold Key Secret Agent comics of the ’60s.

Then why? The biggest problem may be the nature of the series itself. “One of the problems with The Prisoner,” Marv continued, “is if you are doing it accurately, it’s not a ‘comic book visual series.’ Back in the ’50s and ’60s, Gold Key could do essentially very quiet stories, that weren’t visually dynamic. The way Marvel was by the mid-’70s, the quieter, and subtler look of The Prisoner did not translate into what people were interested in seeing. “ Another problem might have been the very talent assigned to it. ”Most of us were purists,”Marv said. “And couldn’t move it too far, which is probably the wrong attitude to take. We were such fans of the series that we could not imagine doing it and changing it. If you wanted to be accurate, you had to remain in a city-type environment.”

The two attempts were fairly slavish adaptations of “Arrival,” one of the most expository of all the Prisoner episodes. Even though both Kane and Kirby turn in fine art jobs, the visuals can’t hide the fact that not a lot happens in the story. In fact, both versions are able to adapt only the first part of the episode, keeping in all the trips around the Village and discussions with Number Two, but missing the final escape attempt and betrayal that end the episode.

Thus we end up with a comic that might appeal to fans, but hardly grip someone who had never watched the series.

The Prisoner is essentially a static series about ideas and concepts tied, by its very premise, to one place: The Village. You could take it outside that environment (as the series itself did as it ran out of ideas), but that’s not really The Prisoner. (Which may be why Dean Motter chose to set his adaptation after the end of the original series.)

Maybe just giving Kane and later Kirby the theme, and allowing them to expand on the concepts might have been a better way to go. It is likely that was where the comic series would have headed, though it’s hard to imagine a mind as cosmic as Jack Kirby’s being satisfied with as small a setting as The Village for very long.

Could the stories be published now? Sure (Lord knows enough photocopies make the rounds at shows!)—but it could only be as a curiosity. Marvel’s Prisoner adaptations are things better observed as “if onlys,” and I imagine ITC—the corporation the owns the rights—sees the property as an ongoing entity, rather that as something on which to ruminate “if onlys.”

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Above: Jack Kirby’s splash page to his 17-page Prisoner adaptation (with the final page at left).

All the pages can be found in various issues of The Jack Kirby Collector, CBA’s esteemed sister mag. It’s an unusually static story for Jack to produce but judging from an earlier Fantastic Four story arc (#84-87), he was obviously a fan of the original U.S. TV broadcast of the innovative series.

Art ©1999 The Kirby Estate.

The Prisoner ©1999 ITC Entertainment.

Thanks to Marv Wolfman, Mike Royer (for giving me comments on-the-fly in San Diego), and Matthew White & Jaffer Ali’s book, The Official Prisoner Companion, (1988, Warner Books) which comes highly recommended. Hi Mom! –Tom “The Comics Savant” Stewart 77

What If Dept.

None of Six: Inside The Prisoner Steve Englehart recalls the Story Behind The Prisoner #1

by Steve Englehart [In the early ’90s, Jim Salicrup, then-editor of the Topps comics line, felt secure that Marvel did not possess the copyright on the unpublished Prisoner comic book, and planned to publish the Kane and Kirby pages. At the time, Steve Englehart prepared the following essay on his involvement as the scripter of the Kane pages as a text piece to appear in the subsequently aborted Topps project. Thanks to Steve for his permission and to Jim.—JBC]

Above: Page 16 of Gil Kane’s pencils to Marvel’s unused adaptation of The Prisoner.

Layouts by Joe Staton. Courtesy of David “Hambone” Hamilton.

Art ©1999 Gil Kane. The Prisoner ©1999 ITC Entertainment, Inc.

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I was one of the people who glommed onto The Prisoner TV series during its first Summer run, in 1968. Naturally, I loved it, and watched it when CBS ran it again the next Summer. Then I watched it again when a local New York station ran it at 3 A.M. in the early ’70s. Then I watched it again when the Pacific Film Archives at UC Berkeley ran it in a movie house in the mid-’70s. Then I watched it again when a local PBS station, KQED in San Francisco, ran it in the late ’70s (and I appeared a few times as a Prisoner expert). Then I watched it three more times when a local PBS station, KTEH in San Jose, ran it in the mid-’80s—in the correct order. They had done their homework and, from clues within the episodes and Number Six’s psychological progression, figured out that the order the episodes had previously been shown made no logical sense.

But the reason I’m going on about this is that after that showing at UC Berkeley in the mid-’70s, I got my chance to write a Prisoner comic. It was 1976, and it came about like this: Marvel bought the rights to do the adaptation. As I recall, Marv Wolfman was the editor at the time; in any event, he was going to be the scripter. He had a certain very good artist in mind for the book, but the artist had never watched the series, so Marv had said artist over to his place, where he showed said artist a few episodes on film (this was before home video tape, so one dealt in 16mm). At the end of the evening, said artist said, “Hey, it’s about a guy all alone on an island. Where’s the drama in that?” So said artist passed on the strip, and they turned to somebody who wanted to do it—Gil Kane.

Now, I don’t remember exactly how it was that Marv gave up on writing the book and passed it to me. [See accompanying article.] All I know now is that I did get the nod—and copies of all 17 TV scripts—but Gil was very busy and couldn’t get to the art right away. In the end, he had Joe Staton do the layouts so he could get going.

Anyway, the art was eventually done—and right then, Marvel and I had our first falling out. They told me I would not be scripting The Prisoner, after all—they didn’t want a first issue going to someone who would have left the company. I told them I’d been waiting a long time to write The Prisoner and, by God! I was going to write that issue.

We compromised; I could write it, but I had to turn it in the next day. Well, it was an adaptation, so I figured I could do it, but just to add a little more spice to the mix, I should point out that I was away from home, in New York—so I went to Al Milgrom’s apartment, where I was staying, and borrowed his old typewriter, and sat at his kitchen table, and pounded out The Prisoner #1 till dawn.

That morning I turned in the script, had somebody make me a xerox of the writing and art, and left Mighty Marvel. Only later did I notice that the xerox had been made on an ailing machine, so my copies were none too clear. Oh well—there’d be an actual printed comic soon. Only, there wasn’t.

Marvel got cold feet because I was a radical who’d resigned over honor, and here was a script about a radical who’d resigned over honor. So they turned to Jack Kirby to do another version of the issue; but then they had more second thoughts, and finally… they didn’t publish anything at all.

Since then, nearly every company in (and out of) the business has had the rights to The Prisoner at one time or another. Whatever they did with them, they never showed any interest in publishing Gil’s, Joe’s and my version, or Jack’s version… until Salicrup dropped the bombshell while he and I were discussing my doing Jurassic Park. Topps had the rights now, and Topps wanted to publish the stories, which was— well, “unexpected” would be a mild word for that news. But here it all is, after only 17 years.

I’ve resisted the temptation to change anything I wrote in ’76 for this printing. The Prisoner is timeless, and whatever I wrote in the white-hot bravado of that one night in Al’s kitchen isn’t likely to be “improved” by a calmer, more mature editing process. You just dive on in, and if it’s your first time meeting Number Six, let’s hope you think it’s about more than “a guy on an island.” If you do, the TV series is still showing up on the Sci-Fi channel these days. And if, like me, it’s about your tenth time through… well, don’t bother to count. After all, this series is not about numbers—it’s about free men.

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The Prisoner That Was Artist/Designer Dean Motter on DC’s Prisoner Adaptation

by Dean Motter Well, The Prisoner comic book finally did see print. And even though it wasn’t by Kirby, Kane or Englehart, I’d like to think I did a respectable job. DC Comics published the four-book prestige format miniseries in 1988-89 (collected in ’90), 20 years after the TV series was first aired in the U.S. I should say we did a respectable job: My co-writer Mark Askwith, colorists David Hornung and Richmond Lewis, my “ghost” Rob Walton and especially my editor (and evil twin) Richard Bruning. I think, however, it was the fact that Ed Gilbert at ITC Entertainment and Bruce Clark from Six of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society endorsed the project, that ensured that it was recognized as the authorized sequel. The fact that the show was enjoying its vicennial anniversary, and that Warner Books was simultaneously publishing The Official Prisoner Companion certainly added momentum to the process.

As I was preparing to write and illustrate my version of The Prisoner, Archie Goodwin (my editor at Marvel’s Epic Illustrated at the time) showed me the xeroxes of the Kirby and Kane pages. If I wasn’t intimidated enough by the fact I had to please ITC, Patrick McGoohan and Leo McKern (not to mention DC Comics), I have to confess that my hands began to get a little sweaty when I saw the work of these two giants laid out before me.

(To torture myself even more I was re-reading Thomas Disch’s novelization at the time.)

How could I possibly pull off what they had not? Well, the answer was simple: Giordano and Bruning. Dick (then VP-Executive Editor at DC) would not allow me to be intimidated (formally, artistically or psychically) while Richard was quite knowledgeable about the original series and had enough faith in me that he was able to provide encouragement simply by insisting a proper job be done of it (in point of fact, this whole project was his brainchild).

He, too, was familiar with the scuttled Marvel attempts and was able to help us navigate around the pitfalls that they had encountered.

When I was first approached I remember thinking: “I can do the story of a man with no name trapped in an architectural nightmare where nothing is as it seems.” Hell, I had been riffing on that theme in my own Mister X for a couple of years! While the influences of Kafka and Orwell were usually capricious in Mister X, they seemed more ephemeral in The Prisoner TV show. Though Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Lewis Carroll, and Ian Fleming are often cited as the program’s zeitgeists, I think it has always been obvious that the ordeal of Number Six had really more in common with Animal Farm, 1984 and The Castle.

Indeed, each episode opened more like Metamorphisis than a 007 adventure. In any case, much more thought went into that discussion by McGoohan et al. long after the series ended.

However, Kirby’s version zeroed in on these qualities from page one, and that fact would not permit me to skate through the series as happily as I did though Mister X. Additionally, we were aiming for the Watchmen/Dark Knight readership and Alan and Frank had raised the bar considerably. Richard reminded me of that often, as did my co-writer, Mark.

McGoohan, Kafka, Orwell, Disch, Kirby, Kane, Englehart, Moore, Miller... jeepers, talk about your hard acts to follow!

I decided to set the story in The Village 20 years later: A ghost town whose sole inhabitant is the one man you thought would have been the first to leave. Re-telling the original story, except as a flashback, did not appeal to me—partly because I knew I couldn’t improve much upon its original presentation, partly because I would have been burned at the stake (or at least in effigy) if I strayed from the mythos (you think Star Trek fans are retentive!), and partly because after seeing Kirby, Kane and Englehart attempting to do precisely that, I felt my effort would be regarded as an unoriginal attempt at best. I also wanted my story to have some connection to a contemporary audience.

Besides, I wanted to know what had happened to Number Six after that last goofy episode.

Familiarizing myself with the Welsh village/resort of Portmeirion was in order, as was a marathon viewing of all 17 episodes (18 if you count the ‘lost’ episode). Not to mention wading through the mountain of reference material that Six of One supplied me with. All in all it was a fascinating enterprise.

In the end, I think I may have been too subtle in my attempts to emulate Watchmen (I embedded the pennyfarthing bicycle pattern [Oo], à la the Watchmen smiley face, throughout the story whenever some key event or plot point was about to turn. I still don’t know if anybody noticed) or too slavish to the original continuity, but when I got word that Patrick McGoohan “wasn’t displeased” with the series and that Leo McKern was delighted since he had “never been a comic book villain before,” I knew we had done something right.

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Above: The old Number Six welcomes the new Number Six. Page 47 from Dean Motter’s DC miniseries. Art ©1999 Dean Motter. The Prisoner ©1999 ITC Entertainment, Inc. Dean Motter is the writer/ illustrator of The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, and is the creator/writer of Mister X and Terminal City.

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Deep Background

Secret Origins of the Direct Market Part One: “Affidavit Returns”—The Scourge of Distribution

by Robert L. Beerbohm

Prologue Right: Carmine Infantino at the 1971 Disneyland Convention.

Vincent Davis photo from Graphic Story World #2, July 1971, Richard Kyle, editor.

Below: Neal Adams sketch depicting the attitudes of a certain Cimmerian and his water fowl friend about big shot magazine distributors. This mid-’70s drawing was done for… well, we’re not sure! Art ©1999 Neal Adams.

Conan ©1999 Conan Properties.

Howard the Duck ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Carmine Infantino, the distinguished artist turned editorial director of DC Comics (1968-72) and then publisher (1972-76), made some pretty definitive statements in the recent past regarding the rationale behind canceling certain comic book titles before the advent of the direct sales market. Interviewed in Comic Book Artist #1, asked why he cancelled certain books, Infantino explained, “Bad sales. What most people don’t realize is that we had to be concerned for distributors. [Independent News Distributors was] part of our company… They came to us and told us that these books, after a certain point, started to lose money and we should consider dropping them. That didn’t only go for Jack [Kirby]’s books but some other titles as well. It’s a business!” In a letter to the Comic Buyer’s Guide #1128, Infantino wrote: “No publisher in his right mind would ever drop a profitable publication… Those decisions are dictated by the distributor on [the basis of] actual sales figures.”

It may be Infantino has been unfairly maligned for years by factions within comics fandom who believe politics play a bigger role in these cancellations than simple business information. With this article (excerpted in part from my forthcoming book on the history of the comics business), I hope to shed light on these points and provide context for a policy that, in hindsight, was fundamentally

flawed.

Distributor sales figures supplied to Infantino by Independent News were often probably 80

inaccurate and, with increasing regularity, possibly fraudulent. The publisher was doing what he was hired to do, and deserves substantial credit for a new, innovative era of creativity at DC, even when some may disagree with some of his judgment.

It was the growing frustration by the New York City-based comics publishers who, upon discovering the extent of the fraud, led them to participate in the creation of the direct sales market a quarter century ago.

Please bear with me as it is not an easy tale to tell. I have included a personal and anecdotal perspective to add a human element to this tale. There were many levels at play, and I apologize in advance if some of these concepts are difficult to follow in this, an abbreviated portion of my forthcoming book.

There is no doubt in my mind that Infantino, whom I respect a great deal, believes the decisions regarding the fate of Kirby’s Fourth World and other critically-acclaimed series of the early ’70s were, in fact, based on sales figures; however, as we will see, those figures were highly suspect at best, and most likely entirely bogus. It is important to note again that Infantino was referring to sales figures supplied to him by Independent News—wholly-owned by DC Comics—which serviced an independent distributor (hereafter, “ID”) market consisting of over 900 independently-owned wholesalers covering often small geographic areas. Evidence suggests many IDs suffered from widespread fraud—a situation that directly led to the direct sales market as we know it today.

Current publisher of DC Comics, Paul Levitz, wrote to me, “It’s possible the extreme fan interest in some of the late ’60s/early ’70s titles actually worked against their success and even survival in two ways: 1) for new launches, the enthusiastic fan purchases may have boosted the apparent ID sell-through of first issues in a way that made publishers overprint subsequent issues, pushing down sellthrough and ultimately hurting the titles and, 2) because fan sales were often “cash table,” they were the most likely sales to be unreported through the distribution system—and therefore the more fan sales, the lower apparent net sales.

“It’s hard to envision a scenario in which Carmine—or any contemporaneous exec—could have spotted these problems and adjusted their thinking for it,” continued Levitz. “So if they’re valid scenarios in large enough numbers (and that’s where I question your logic—a typical launch issue had a 300,000 or more print order in that period, so you would need 30,000 copies or more of fan sales to have a meaningful effect—probably a fair number on a few launches, but not on many) it might explain some of the behaviors.”

Infantino told me, “I started Kirby’s books—New Gods, Forever People, Mr. Miracle—out at 350,000 copies on their first issues. The COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

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first issues [were reported by Independent News as] selling 50-51%.

The second [issue] did 44%, the third 42%, and so on—their sales reports were coming in and going down fast. [The Kirby titles] were really collapsing like hell and, by the fifth and sixth issues, the people upstairs began to get on my back going, ‘Hey, we’re losing money here.’

“There was a phenomenon going on I noticed back then,” Infantino continued. “We would… print 675,000 [copies of a Superman issue] and get a minimum of 58% sell-through; yet we would put Jack’s books out and get 4042% sales. In the past, I have been accused of having two sets of books on Kirby’s titles; that I kept one set for me and one set I handed to DC. This is absurd. Independent News [and] the DC accountant would come in, [and] we would then go over the numbers. I had nothing to do with getting the numbers, you understand? That’s how we had to operate; that’s the only way we could operate.”

A Couple of Fandom Myths In the Comics Buyer’s Guide, Peter David was pretty much on the mark when writing in his column, “It was the advent of Phil Seuling and the direct market that pretty much saved the [mainstream] comics industry.” However, David goes on, “Suddenly, comic books became high-profit items for the publishers because they could print exactly what was needed to sell [the print run].”

That latter assertion needs to be qualified. In truth, David’s “suddenly” took almost 10 years of hard labor beginning with less than 500 or so loosely organized, highly-dedicated comics fansturned-retailers. More than 20 years ago, the few of us who opened the first comic book stores expanded the distribution method for underground comix. Undergrounds were published by alternative and highly-independent creative people who took the fan movement of the 1960s to a new level of achievement.

In another recent issue of CBG, publisher William Tucci announced a “new” print-to-order policy for his books and posited this on comics history: “Speculating on comics makes for an unstable marketplace for retailers and publishers. The direct market was founded on the basis of retailers knowing what they need to order and publishers knowing what they need to print. The industry has gotten away from that in the last few years…. ” To those who came in late, these remarks by an alternative publisher of today may carry conviction, but they are ultimately based on inbred misunderstandings of the origin and development of the direct sales market. To the extent that we acknowledge the late Phil Seuling as one of the founders of the direct market, Tucci’s remarks are revisionist. Seuling was one of a number of early advocates of speculation. He taught others how to gamble on comics for the express purpose of supplying still other speculators and dealers with the necessary tools and means of making a comfortable living. Any conception that the direct sales comic book market was not about speculation is seriously flawed. This will become obvious as we trace the history of the market since the late ’60s.

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Drops in the market had occurred before, but in the 1960s-’70s there was a new element that had devastating effects on the creative output of the industry. That new element was a growing combination of greed and fraud.

Many unscrupulous local ID distributors, fueled by the demand by comic book dealers for certain issues, abused the old “consignment” system. The system was a century old and, by the late ’60s, fraud was rampant. It was known to some that the Mafia had infiltrated the magazine distribution business.

This combination of greed and dishonesty led many local distributors to report certain issues by the more popular artists destroyed that had instead been sold in large lots to local entrepreneurs via the ID’s back door. The accounting method was known as “affidavit returns” (where distributors sign an affidavit stating unsold copies were destroyed).

Bestsellers Go Belly-Up Neal Adams is one of the single most important pioneers in the last 30 years who fought the backward practices of the comics industry and ended up with more arrows in his back than darn near anybody else out there. He is to be revered for what his contributions to the comics field beginning in the late ’60s—and then for many years. Adams, artist/co-creator of the critically-acclaimed Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, discussed the sad tale of fraudulent accounting in his Comic Book Marketplace #40 interview. When interviewer Arlen Schumer asked, “Why was Green Lantern/Green Arrow cancelled?” Neal replied, “…Because it wasn’t selling. Before the age of the comic book store [i.e., the direct sales market], [certain] dealers became aware that they could go to their local distributor and buy quantities of particular comic books. As a comic book might become more popular, like ‘Deadman’ or GL/GA, they could go and buy as many as they wanted, and the local distributor would report them as being ‘destroyed.’ Suddenly GL/GA [was] not only not selling, but sales [were] even dropping a little! So anything you would think was making a splash, wasn’t making a splash.

GL/GA got all kinds of attention, articles in Newsweek, articles everywhere.

Everybody in the industry knew about this. Yet it didn’t sell.”

Infantino told me, “In the beginning, GL/GA was doing well. I was going around the country doing radio interviews, TV shows. GL/GA #76 did exceptionally well.

“It was only in the #80s when the reported sales began to fall,” continued Infantino. “I only went around [to regional distributors] with the very early issues. Then it began to die. We found out then that first issues

Above: Jack Kirby’s extraordinary Fourth World titles whose fate is still hotly debated in fan circles. ©1999 DC Comics. Above left: Jack Kirby at the same Disneyland Convention. Photo by Vincent Davis. Reprinted from Graphic Story World #2, July 1971, Richard Kyle, editor. Left: The controversial Green Lantern/Green Arrow run by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams— victim of affidavit return fraud? ©1999 DC Comics. Below: Neal Adams at a mid-’70s comic convention.

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Above: Wall Street Journal article from July 24, 1967 announcing the merger proposal between DC Comics and Kinney National Service. Below: The Wall Street Journal on March 27, 1968 confirms the deal.

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did well. We assumed at that point that fan interest was fueling first issue sales upwards.”

There was little question that the speculation of dealers was fueling a new phenomenon.

Infantino also told me recently, “Let me give you my history of it, and you can distill it any way you choose: They would give us a 30-day report of initial sales.

This was the first report. In those days… you couldn’t print less than 275,00 copies [of an issue]. Below that, there was no money to be made.; that was the minimum print run. Out of that, you needed to get at least a 49-50% sale to make [a profit]. One point was $275. If you printed 300,000 copies then $300 was your point. As you went up the scale, you made more and more money. If I printed 500,000, then $500 was my number.

Each point above break-even was a small amount of profit.

“Now, in 30 days, we would get our first report from the wholesaler. 60 days later, we would get a second report.

Now, most important on the first report [is], if your sales were over 50%, by and large, they would always remain over 50%. If your sales came in [on the initial report] below 50%, by and large they would sink much below 50%.

“In other words,” Infantino continued, “if it was a good sale, it always went higher than the number you got originally. And, if it was a bad sale, it always went much lower than the number you got initially. That was the number we’d get in the second round.

“In about 90 to 120 days later, we’d get the final number. That was called the “final final.” That was the number you got paid on; that would be the last total number. That’s the number we’d live by—that Independent News paid us by.

“Most comic books never really got more than a week’s exposure. In the year or two before I became publisher [in ’72], I made three trips across the country, checking in to see how the wholesale end of the operation ran—to see what was going on: [The] what, where and why. That was rather important to me because I wanted to understand what was going on.

First of all, I found out most wholesalers did not like comics—they were not making any money from [comics] and they really didn’t want them. It was almost a chore for them to take [comics]. That was one of the big problems.

“Another big problem was, when many of the wholesalers got their books in from Independent News, they would only put half the copies out. The other half, they generally [told us], they shredded almost immediately. Every wholesaler also gave us the allotments they wanted. We had no choice in the matter. We couldn’t deviate from those numbers. When a new title was getting ready to come out, we would send our roadmen out to solicit numbers. They would solicit numbers and from that we would garner a number to have printed up. This is how I started Kirby at 350,000 copies.

“One other problem for the publishing arm: I noticed one day, that Independent News was charging us 12% [distribution fee] when they were only charging the other publishers 10%. I said to them, ‘What do you call this—incest?’ They said, ’Don’t worry about it because it’s all one company.’ I said back, ‘Yeah, but my end of the company is suffering here because of that.’ They had Playboy over there making all the big money so they didn’t care what was happening with their comics.”

“When the Batman TV craze was happening, we were getting over 98% sell-through and printing well over a million an issue. That lasted about two years. About a year or two before that, Irwin Donenfeld called me and Julie Schwartz, and said, “I want you two to take over Batman because it is so bad now that if you don’t turn it around in six to nine months, the thing is dead; we’re finished with it.”

“In all honesty, the TV show clicked shortly after that and that actually turned [sales] around. If what you tell me is true for fraudulent sales, then why didn’t the affidavit fraud happen then?”

We’ll get to that shortly.

Now what happened next in DC’s history is interesting. During the Batman TV craze there was another big glut of comics printed from all the comics companies riding Batman’s coattails. Shortly before the hoopla wore off, Kinney Corporation talked the stockholders of National Periodicals (as DC was known in those days) into combining companies, and a huge stock swap was initiated. Kinney’s main holdings were in service industries: Parking lots, funeral parlors, office cleaning companies, and businesses of that nature. The merger was to have a profound influence on what was soon to transpire.

Infantino said, “What they saw in Independent News was this huge cash flow from periodical distribution.”

During this same time, Marvel broke away from Independent, found a new distributor, and promptly doubled their publishing output—all within one year. Comic book conventions began sprouting up in all the major U.S. markets. As someone who attended almost all of the cons from 1968 on, I began noticing more and more fans asking dealers for certain recent back issues that were mysteriously not appearing in fans’ locations. This, in turn, led to a growing number of comic book dealers seeking to stock up on those “hot books”—particular titles drawn by popular artists.

This began happening more and more as we moved into the early ’70s. Keep in mind, the periodical distribution system was a consignment affidavit honor system to return unsold product—and the market for comic book dealers was growing in geometrical proportions, while fandom was getting more and more organized. Thus, comic book stores begin to open with increasing regularity across the country.

Infantino said, “[Distribution] was really a horrible system, efficiency wise. Some of these guys were evidently crooks from the word ‘go.’”

Paul Levitz wrote to me, “Concerning affidavit returns and the flaws in the ID system by the ‘70s, a couple of points: No one truly knows the extent of the problem. Even if it was tiny in proportion to the overall volume of the system, and not a function of the distributors, but simply rogue employees here and there (which is the mildest possible case), it would have been large enough to generate many Mile High collections and create frustrations up-channel. This was a giant river of product and cash, and ‘small’ diversions which would have been mathematically acceptable as being cheaper than the cost of processing and auditing the returns would have seemed huge to us.

“Perhaps more important, the problems were structural, and so had little to do with any particular comic’s fate,” Levitz continued.

“Bad information often contributed—estimates (done honestly by mathematical methods) could be significantly wrong, and the time lag in receiving field information was so great that estimates were often acted upon.”

Neal Adams said, “The publishers were living in the Dark Ages by the late 1950s. They didn’t have anything to do with affidavit returns. There was a change in the marketplace and they went along with it. Certainly Carmine was not looking constantly at how sales worked, and he was also not tracking how distribution was changing.

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He didn’t really have any sense of it; this was not what he was hired to do. Nobody at DC then really had any sense of what was going on [by 1968].

“After all, these things were just… comic books,” Adams said.

“They were not Playboy magazine; they were not important items.

They were comic books. Nobody asked the comic book publishers what they wanted to do. The affidavit return concept happened essentially without [their involvement]. So, being low man on the totem pole by the mid-’50s through the early-’60s, since the Wertham debacle, [publishers] went out of business left and right, creating a ‘Dark Age’ in comic books (which began showing signs of life when DC brought out Justice League of America, along with other super-hero revivals).

“Then Marvel started to come back, thanks to Jack Kirby, and DC started to compete with Marvel in some small ways. Then people like myself—I guess I was the only one at the time—began entering the field. Then guys like Jim Steranko came in, then more and more people, and things began to move forward once again.

“But in the distribution end of comics, things were still in a terrible state… Remember, if you have a contract with a national distributor (unless you have some awfully good reason to go outside that distribution chain), you’re pretty much tied in to distribute your comic books that way. So, for a change to occur in a marketplace where nobody knew what that future might be (whether there would be stores, whether there would be guys standing on the corner selling comic books, at conventions only); for [Phil Seuling] to purchase comic books directly from DC as a secondary form of distribution was a totally radical idea at the time.”

“Anybody could take a comic book to some local market. If you go to enough places and sell enough of them, you make a little money. But to create a new type of distribution and convince a company that is was worthwhile to sell the few thousand they might otherwise not sell [was radical]. Remember, at the beginning, [the direct market] was very small. In the beginning, people sold the comics at conventions. What’s the impression we have here? Can you sell 1,000 copies? 2,000 copies? Is that enough to convince a publisher to endanger his exclusive distribution contract? Of course, DC Comics was pretty secure, but to endanger that contract in any way —to the tune of a lawsuit or any other possibility of repercussions— took a lot of balls.

“While this potential was there to open comic book shops, there were these people who, in effect, had traveling comic book shops, [selling at] the Seuling conventions, and had boxes upon boxes of certain issues of comic books. People began to recognize that this was different than people trading comics with their neighbors. This was an actual way to make money.

“Not that I would ever want to contradict Carmine, but national distributors don’t really care if you sell 6% of your print run as long as they get to keep the profits on whatever they say they sold. So whether you sell 50% or sell 6%, it means nothing to them. They haven’t paid for the books. They are not going to advise you if something isn’t selling well. And, oh gee, you ought to watch it because you aren’t going to make a profit unless he’s handling something that’s simply not worth handling. The national distributor doesn’t care, [because] they’re basically helpless in the hands of local distributors; they’re just middle men who pass sales information on.

“I distributed on the national market [with Continuity Comics] through Kable News and nobody at Kable ever came to me and said, ‘Neal, are you sure you want to keep doing this book? It’s not doing very well.’ That would never be a conversation unless, as I said, it simply wasn’t worth handling. If you’re in business and you do something stupid, you try to stop it as soon as possible, but distributors don’t care. There’s nothing for them to care about. They would rather have more things to distribute than the [competing] distributors. If you’re a distributor, you want to have more magazines on the stands than the other distributor. So, if you go around giving advice to companies to cancel titles that aren’t doing well, then you are going to have less product out there.”

Recently, Irwin Donenfeld—whose father, Harry Donenfeld, was one of the founding fathers of DC Comics—was asked about the concept and possibility of “affidavit returns” fraud. He told me, “It’s possible. You have to understand one thing: Up until I left in 1968, I Fall 1999

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owned the company—I was one of the owners— so I was involved in every phase of the business: Publishing, advertising, distributing, everything. I spent time with all the wholesalers, and I knew every one of them. My father knew all the fathers, I knew all the sons—I grew up with them. So everywhere around the country, I had an ‘in’ that, for instance, Dell or Marvel Comics didn’t have because I was so close to the wholesalers who decided what was going to happen. While I was there, I didn’t try to let anything happen that was bad.

“One of our biggest ongoing problems was wholesalers who took the coverstripped comic books and, after they had gotten credit from us, re-wholesaled the books to the second-hand market. I was the Above: Dunn’s Review, a national only one in the industry who had a handle on both publishing as well business magazine, featured this as distributing after my father died [in 1965]. I wasn’t just the pubprofile on Jacob Seymour lisher, but I was also circulation director and advertising director.

Liebowitz (“Jack,” to us), “During my tenure, I maintained a large roving field force who president and treasurer of DC were our reps in all the major markets. These reps made reports Comics (then called National Periodical Publications). The callevery week which went right to me. In the really large markets, we out gives a good idea of the fine had a man or two who worked inside each wholesaler building, all financial condition of the company the time. Based on this feedback, I determined what our print runs in the midst of “Batmania,” makshould be on every book. Now, if this field force had been shrunk ing it ripe for Steve Ross and his down as a cost saving factor (once [Kinney National Services C.E.O.] Kinney National Service to Steve Ross and Kinney [who merged with National Periodicals in consider a merger.

1967, eventually becoming the world’s largest communications conglomerate, Time Warner, Inc.] took over), then what you sugComics Industry Snapshot: 1970 gest could have happened.

“One of the things that I “National Periodical Publications, which puts out both did was compile a notebook with Superman and Batman comics, is the largest of the eight major a picture of every comic book firms in the industry; it was taken over in 1968 by a conglomwe published pasted in. Then, erate, Kinney National Service Inc. Magazine Management, a when we got the results from subsidiary of Cadence Industries, ranks second with its Marvel Independent News—it would take comics, and Western Publishing with Walt Disney Comics and 180 days for the final figures to Tarzan, is generally thought to be third. This year, comic book be established—I put [those publishers expect to sell about 300 million copies for roughly numbers] in the book below the $50 million, about the same as in 1960. cover so I could tell exactly how “Television, of course, is chiefly responsible for the stagany magazine worked out. This nation of the comic book publishing business: ‘Our kind of fanis how I discovered that kids tasy doesn’t really grab today's kids,’ says one old hand. ‘What loved dinosaurs and that gorilla do you expect when, on TV, they can see real earthlings danc[cover subjects] sold better than ing on the moon.’… other covers. Carmine drew “Another drag on sales and profits in the industry is the absolutely beautiful gorilla covComics Code… ‘The kids that read our books jump in and out ers—we had them all over. I of bed with one another all the time, but we can’t even menknew from this book. I maintion the word sex.’” tained what to put on the —Barron’s teenage [humor] covers—I had Dec. 14, 1970 hints for all our books based off 83

Above: The first ad declaring, “There’s gold in them funnybooks!” This one, from Argosy Books, appeared in Marvel comics cover-dated July 1966.

Right: Among the many heavilyspeculated comics of the ’70s include (clockwise from top left) Conan the Barbarian #1, Shazam! #1, Howard the Duck #1, and Swamp Thing #1. “Regional scarcity” was the bane of many collectors who sought out these puppies! Conan ©1999 Conan Properties. Captain Marvel, Superman, Swamp Thing ©1999 DC Comics. Howard the Duck ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Comics mogul Howard Rogofsky’s first of many ads to appear in Marvel comics. This appeared in the line’s May, 1967 releases.

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the sales recorded in this book.

“While I was at DC, I had control over everything. After I left, Carmine couldn’t do what I did. He wasn’t an owner privy to the levels of information I was able to access. He simply did not know the people I had grown up with in the wholesale market.

“For instance, through my father I knew the owners of Greyhound Bus Company and was able to place racks into every bus terminal in the USA. We had good upfront coverage. Carmine couldn’t do that; he just did not know these people. He was busy creating new books. That is what he was hired to do once I left in 1968.”

Speculation ain’t nuthin’ new Many of us budding comic book sellers began learning the basics of professional comics selling when an ad began running for the first comic book price guide (for just $1.98) in all Marvel comics cover-dated July 1966. It was originally issued by the Argosy Book Store of Hollywood, California, and was soon taken over by legendary Collector’s Bookstore’s two gung-ho partners, Leonard Brown and Malcolm Willits. They advertised in Marvel’s classifieds: “We will pay you up to $50 each for your comics listed in this price guide.

Over 5,000 back issues listed.”

Collector’s Bookstore had this Marvel classified ad venue exclusively until the next ad cycle began four months later.

November-dated Marvels featured an ad from A. L. Buza of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who offered his buy/sell list for $1.

With the Jan. 1967 issues, another professional comic book seller began running ads. Grand Book Center of Brooklyn, New York was offering a 59-page catalog for just 50¢. Simultaneously, Gordon B. Love’s SFCA of Miami, Florida began offering The Illustrated Comic Collector’s Handbook for a buck and he mailed his customers a flyer promoting his adzine, The Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector. By this time, RBCC was the center of organized comics fandom’s buying and selling activity.

Then Collector’s Bookstore upgraded their ad (now with a spiffy yellow background) and were offering to pay up to $200 for certain comic books. They also began selling a separate price guide for Big Little Books, a Batman checklist, and a catalog of old comic books for sale.

It wasn’t until the May 1967 Marvels that Flushing, New Yorkbased Howard Rogofsky entered the fray to access rabid comic book collectors. This was the first issue without an ad for this long overlooked first comic book price guide in 11 months. Soon the flood gates opened with many more dealers, such as Robert Bell, Passaic, David Alexander, Richard Alf, Claude Held, and many others, all clos-

ing in for a piece of the pie.

Soon there was an insatiable demand for runs of Marvel back issues plus certain books by artists we began to call “fan favorites.”

Prices were skyrocketing for certain back issue “keys,” though some were only a few years old. Comic book distribution became very spotty due to distributor apathy as the Batman TV show craze—and mass market sales—died off, and the latest glut on the stands withered on the vine. A new term came into common fan language: “regional scarcity.” Fickle distributors stopped caring for the venerable comic book yet again, and the consignment honor system used in magazine distribution began to really be abused. With increasing regularity, particular issues mysteriously would not be readily available in certain markets. (Even a young fellow like myself, still in high school out in the Midwest boonies, recognized early on that an enterprising fellow could buy new issues at 12¢ off the stands of anything “good,” and be able to sell it within a couple of months via mail order for double the investment.)

While Stan Lee’s self-promoting hyperbole was continuing to earn Marvel ever-new converts, I trace the demand for back issues and subsequent growth in the number of comics dealers in part to the simple fact that Marvel allotted sometimes two full-pages of classifieds while DC had only half- and full-page slots.

Even though DC hired Mike Gold as their first Direct Market Sales Manager in 1976, it would be too many years still before classified ads—ads your average comic book sellers could afford— began to pop up in DC titles— akin to those which swelled the growing ranks of organized comics fandom beginning in 1966 (with the RBCC as the epicenter of that fandom until the mid-’70s). It seemed like Marvel fanzines proliferated at an alarming rate as the ’60s closed. The term “Marvel Zombie” (coined by CBA’s own proofreader Richard Howell) suddenly became vogue.

Indulge me an anecdotal aside: Even as I was just entering junior high, I was engaged in speculation. Knowing virtually nothing of comics fandom, but feeding the demands of a growing and hungry population of neighborhood kids—as well as my own comic book collecting habit—I first bought multiple copies of Daredevil #1 and Hawkman #1 back in 1964 at 12¢ each and sold them for 25¢ apiece. I was investing on all kinds of comics through the ’60s; by 1968, I purchased 200 copies each of the first issues of Silver Surfer, Nick Fury, Sub-Mariner, and Iron Man. DC’s new ’68 titles, Beware the Creeper, The Hawk and the Dove, etc., were purchased in somewhat lesser quantities.

When Roy Thomas and Neal Adams took over the creative reins of Uncanny X-Men, I was there purchasing 200 copies beginning with #56. Soon I began buying even more copies per issue. The same numbers applied to Neal Adams’ earlier The Brave and the Bold run and his Batmans—and I was not alone. A growing number inside comics fandom figured early on that certain artists sold well in a growing after-market. Speculation in comics began long before many so-called experts seem to think. The trouble is, as Neil Young observed, “There are very few of us left… from the days that used to be.”

By 1972, when I became involved in my first comic book stores, we sold new comics such as Kirby’s Fourth World titles and Conan the Barbarian at cover price as long as we could, even though we and other dealers around the country were buying out local ID’s entire allotments of these hot items. Even so, there were occasions when the local distributor had shredded every new title before it was COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

ever put out on the tie line. They would tell us they ran out of time and space. When they realized that we would buy out certain titles, it was easy for them to continue claiming to the national distributor that the issues in question had been shredded. The backdoor money never got back to the publisher, and the sales figures that were reported surely were bogus.

In 1970, when Conan #1 by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith first hit the newsstands more than 25 years ago, I personally speculated on 600 copies at 20¢ a book from a newsstand in Fremont, Nebraska, all of a $120 investment. This was duplicated on various levels by many hundreds of comic book dealers all over the country.

My high school buddy Steve Johnson and I took the copies of Conan #1 to Seuling’s New York Comic Art Convention that very Summer and wholesaled many of them at $1 each—a mark-up of 500%! We retailed the rest for a couple of bucks each. Gas was only 25¢ per gallon in those days, so Conan more than paid for our entire trip to the Big Apple.

Many people “specked” on Conan. One person I know acquired over 25,000 copies when it came out. By early 1973, I was giving him $600 for a sealed case of 300 copies and retailing them for $5 a pop (or five for $20). He was pulling a 1000% mark-up by that point. By late 1973, his price went to $900 a sealed case and then to $1200 per case sometime in early 1974, when I stopped buying. This same source had a similar monopoly on issues #2 and #4, but somehow missed out on issue #3. This is the sole reason why Conan #3 is listed as scarce in Overstreet.

“Make Mine Marvel” was the rallying cry of the comics collector by the early ’70s.

Barry Smith and Bernie (Swamp Thing) Wrightson, two of the “hottest” artists for fans to collect at the time, joined Mike Kaluta and Jeff Jones to form “The Studio.” “Older fan favorites” Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, and Angelo Torres (the old EC gang) and the “good” Duck Tales of Carl Barks were in vogue. Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man, was far more popular in those days than L.B. Cole. By comparison with Marvels, most DC Comics had very little worth in the after-market.

By the early ’70s, distribution of paperbacks, comics, and other magazines were so rife with fraud that most paperback companies pulled out of the ID system. They went to direct distribution complete with field reps similar to the soft drink industry. Since that time, paperback reps work very closely with individual accounts in order to provide what sells best in each demographic region. If something doesn’t sell well, the rep authorizes those particular goods to have their covers stripped and returned to the publisher for full credit.

Of course, a responsible publisher such as Carmine Infantino could only go by the sales figures presented to him. Consequently, series that were extremely popular with readers and collectors, like the O’Neil and Adams GL/GA or Kirby’s Fourth World titles were cancelled for lack of sales. It is highly unlikely that the real profits from the sales of these hot titles ever reached Independent News, then DC’s self-owned national distribution arm. While entrepreneurs were cornering local markets on titles such as Jim Starlin’s Warlock, more and more dealers and local distributors were apparently making money that the New York publishers never shared in. It was an Fall 1999

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amazing phenomenon: Artificial “regional scarcity” was creating profits locally on a title—a title that was supposedly not selling.

This happened time and time again.

Mike Gold, DC’s Direct Market guy said, “I agree 100%. I think that happened with The Shadow #1, as well. Carmine was completely incapable of appreciating your Xfactor point—I’m sure it was unheard of at DC at the time. My suspicions here come from my conversations with DC’s Independent rep, who, even in 1976, was completely unaware of any direct sales activity. And I was under orders from Sol Harrison to keep it that way.”

Some dealers were extremely greedy, using their monopolistic policies to markup some comics as much as 1000%—gouging the public for comics that were really not rare at all. This craziness was, of course, not confined to the comics biz alone. In the early ’70s, the entire American economy was out of control. President Nixon, a Republican, was compelled to call for price controls in an effort to reduce inflation. Some indignant comics readers reported on the more extreme practices of a few comic book sellers to the Inflation Control Board.

Many people took note of this groundswell of interest in the investment potential in comics back in the ’70s as a booming market and started pre-ordering what they thought might become the next hot item. Comics speculation became a respectable investment angle.

More and more fledgling dealers entered the marketplace to feed the demand and make good money.

With the creation of the direct market built on the foundation of comics stores already in place, new vitality was pumped into the industry, but it was a vitality built on a very narrow foundation—the market for super-heroes. Speculation on certain “key” issues was always an integral part of it from the beginning—and speculation continued to fuel the developments in mainstream comics throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s.

More than 20 years ago, artist Steve Ditko sent Joe Brancatelli, editor of the legendary comics newszine Inside Comics, a letter “addressing himself to the selfserving nature of the comic book business.”

“People in a failing business,” Ditko wrote, “rarely see themselves as contributing to the failure. Self-blindness is a protective device. Some people believe that if they have a title or position (publisher, editor, artist, writer, etc.), this automatically makes them competent in whatever they do or will do.

Whatever criticism is leveled at the causes of the business failure, it is automatically unfair when it is directed at them. Yes, they believe others are making mistakes, causing problems, contributing to the decline, but they ‘know’ that whatever they do, it is not their fault when things go wrong.”

“The toughest part of the comics today,” Ditko continued, “is not identifying the problem, discovering the causes or figuring out solutions. The toughest part is reaching the people in

Above: Phil Seuling’s Comic Art conventions of the ’60s and ’70s introduced many novices to the growing world of comics fandom.

Prince Valiant ©1999 KFS. Left: Bill Spicer’s 1965 Guidebook to Comics Fandom served as a nexus for many fans to make contact with the plethora of fanzine publishers. ©1999 Bill Spicer. Below: An important addition to comics journalism in the ’70s was the beloved—if short-lived— Inside Comics, edited by one feisty Joe Brancatelli and, later, Ron Barlow. ©1974 Galaxy News Service.

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publisher/distributor lock on the industry.

How did the system work?

Above: Great Russ Heath art to the cover of Western Outlaws #3, an Atlas comic from 1954. We’ve called out the the distributor’s bug indicating the identity of the national distributor. This one indicates National Periodical’s Independent News. ©1954 Marvel Comics.

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the industry who do not want to be reached. But I think it’s important enough to try, if only for one’s own well being and knowing one is not passively, quietly surrendering to a state of affairs that doesn’t have to be.”

Ditko went on to intimate more than two decades ago, “Most of today’s comic book artisans have no pride in their work. Most, in fact, are no better than hacks. And the beloved H.L. Mencken and his comment about never underestimating the intelligence of the public notwithstanding, the comic book industry is certainly paying for their indiscretions with lower sales, smaller profits and a creative reputation that rightly borders on the non-existent.”

Those of us who participated in the development of the direct sales movement beginning more than 20 years ago need to share a bit about what was really going on. Apparently much of what happened has never been clearly understood by those at the opposite ends of the market continuum. Readers at the one end, and publishers in their towering offices at the other—they all knew something was happening, but no one knew exactly what.

Major new market forces were being created among new creators, dealers and distributors. The changes these middlemen wrought altered the whole field in significant ways. Growing out of the fertile soil of the comics fan movement of the ’60s, which spawned thousands of alternative comics, the direct sales movement was always about freedom—the freedom to expand creatively, commercially, and independently of the constraints of the established

Since the 1930s, the comic book distributor had always endeavored to take care of his customers. Paul Sampliner, these days a virtually unknown third partner in the history of DC, was President of DC’s self-owned distribution arm known as Independent News. In 1949, he had this to say (in the trade journal Newsdealer) to people who made their living retailing comic books: “There are many different kinds of comic magazines, and many different titles of each kind. All of these must be carried by the [retailer] to have a complete choice of comic magazines available to his customers. The wide-awake [retailer] knows that different types of comics are read by children of different age groups and diversity of interests. For example, girls read different kinds of comics than boys; younger children like the funny animal comics; older children enjoy the adventure, the teenage and western type of comic; and many adults are regularly reading the love and romance comics. A great number of titles of each group should not be regarded as a necessary evil because they are actually huge potential profit makers! Many readers buy all magazines in their particular field.”

He also explained what makes a good comics distributor and what the retailer needs to understand about the hidden costs and hassles that come with dealing in comics. This partial description offered was written long before the introduction of computer technology into the industry: “And also bear in mind the fact that your Independent Wholesaler keeps a most accurate record of your sales on past issues [i.e., cycle sheets maintained by the distributor]. He knows exactly what you have sold in each field, in each individual magazine. Bear in mind that he, too, makes money only from the magazines you sell. But, unlike the retailer, he actually sustains a very heavy expense handling those magazines which you do not sell. He is, therefore, even more anxious than you are not to oversupply you with too many copies and not to have you makes too many returns to him.

“In order to get your share of these tremendous sales possibilities, display of the various titles is most important. The intelligent [retailer] realized long ago the possibilities inherent in the comic field if he would only devote sufficient space to the comics so that they could be readily seen by prospective customers… Call on your Independent Distributor for assistance in installing new display racks for your comic magazines. He stands ready to assist you at all times in any move which will not only make his work and yours much easier but which will result in greatly increased profits for you both.”

Atlas Magazines published all kinds of things besides comics as many old-timers know. From crossword puzzle books to “men’s sweat” magazines, publisher Martin Goodman rode every fad he could squeeze by observing national trends and keeping his ear to the ground. In a Newsdealer article from 1953, Arthur Marchand, long-time Vice President to Martin Goodman, says to publishers: “Comics, as everyone knows, have become big business. Sales of comics magazines have catapulted to figures undreamed of, even in the lush war years of the ’40s.

“In such a tremendous enterprise, forming a considerable segment [by 1953, one in three magazines sold in this country was a comic book—RLB] of the daily retail sales of magazines through the majority of magazine dealers, comics publishers are confronted with a heavy responsibility in keeping abreast, and even ahead of the times, in sensing reading likes and dislikes of the vast public which buys millions of copies each month.

“In order to supply the demand, and to make available to comics readers magazines which will satisfy every conceivable taste, publishers continually survey sales and other information, figuratively taking the pulse of buying habits. Comics magazines are broken down into various fields, or categories. There are: Teen-Age, Action, Romance, Mystery, Animated, Syndicated, Western, Famous Character, War, and many others.

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Fall 1999

“Each comic title belongs to one of these several fields, and as sales raise or fall in a particular group, all of the comics in that group invariably rise or fall accordingly. This constant search for new fields, for new trends, is probably the most important service that publishers render to [comics] dealers… ” Marchand’s motto in this 43-year-old article was, “It is the cash-register ‘jingle’ that counts.” Considering comics were 10¢ each back then, these days he would most likely be writing about the rustle of paper money. It is interesting to note here and in the many other articles in Newsdealer from the ’40s and ’50s I have read, the “Super-hero” is never mentioned as a separate category.

As most of you know, in the mid-’50s there was a national exorcism which culminated in the creation of the self-censoring Comics Code. There were comic book “witch hunts,” replete with sacrificial comic book bonfires to scourge the land of this four-color “demon” which had captivated the minds and souls of so many gullible children. Such was the mindset of those who saw words combined with pictures as too powerful a force to deal with, hence, they sought to tear down that which they could not control.

The advent of a radio, then TV in virtually every American household, was seen by more than a few as a better possible alternative to otherwise occupy adolescent minds (that is akin to the thinking a century ago that heroin would rid the country of morphine addicts in the wake of the Civil War)—and resourceful publishers merely looked at all media, not necessarily as threats but as new horizons to license their properties. The owners of Superman, for example, merely used the airways to market their word and picture magazines.

Mike Gold commented on the changing nature of the magazine industry which lead to the development of the so-called modern direct market in comics: “The biggest threat to the comics industry was the final collapse [in 1957] of American News. Big magazines started collapsing, more-or-less starting with Colliers and, within 10 years, taking The Saturday Evening Post, Look and the big-circulation general interest titles down with it. That almost killed the IDs, who had major investments in warehouses and trucks.”

IDs recovered slowly as TV Guide expanded, but they did so only by selling magazines that were usually under-the-counter items before the 1957 collapse of the century-old monopolistic ANC. They shifted to distributing Playboy, Gent, Cavalier, and the rest. If ANC had survived, the IDs wouldn’t have had to take a risk on Playboy.

They made a lot more money selling nearly 100% of the 50¢ Playboys than they did selling 75% of the 10¢ comic books—which took a hell of a lot more effort to move. By the early ’60s, comics publishers stopped taking physical returns because the IDs couldn’t afford the ever-escalating handling fees. They stopped keeping cycle sheets and started selling comics as tonnage. This opened the doors for rampant fraud within a short period of time. When the Batman TV craze finally wore off and sales plummeted as we entered the early ’70s, the greed at work was plain for anyone to see and many realized something had to be done, and soon.

Neal Adams said, “[By the late ’60s], it didn’t matter to those dealers—[from comics fandom who were] going to the IDs and buying books—that the affidavit return system [was rife with fraud].

[The IDs] were selling [comics] for full [wholesale] price anyway so very often some of these buyers were getting them out the back door for a quarter of the price.

“Carmine would come to me and say, ‘I’m a little surprised your books aren’t doing well.’”

“I would say back to Carmine, ‘I can get as many of my comic books as you want, Carmine. I don’t think you understand what’s happening here.’”

This is what was so frustrating to Neal, what with the huge nationwide publicity GL/GA was garnering in the media such as Newsweek.

Neal went on, “I get interviewed all the time, ‘Why did the XMen get cancelled? What happened to GL/GA? ‘Why did ’Deadman’ get cancelled?’ [DC] told me it was poor sales.

“You know, as soon as Barry Smith did a book, or Steranko did a book, or one of my books, everybody would go into their local distributor and buy boxes of those books. Essentially, the real sales of those books shot up like crazy. The publishers had no idea how many Fall 1999

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were really sold.”

Some simple math puts it all into If you’re viewing a Digital perspective: Take 200 guys going in Edition of this publication, and buying 500 each. That’s 100,000 copies, easily lost in the “affidavit return” system shoved down the This is copyrighted material, NOT intended comic publishers’ throats. And by the for downloading anywhere except our early ’70s, there were even more buyers website.

If you downloaded it from another competing for certain creators’ works. website or torrent, go ahead and read it, Neal rightfully lamented about and if you decide to keep it, DO THE the time back then. “‘Poor sales’? I RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, just don’t think so. History has shown, or a printed copy (which entitles you to the and—remember, it’s only a personal free Digital Edition) at our website or your history on my part—there was this local comic book shop. Otherwise, DELETE quiet underground thing and it was all IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO created by the affidavit return system NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR which made it totally preposterous. [It POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our was] like telling people, ‘Why don’t publications enough to download them, you take the money that’s half way please pay for them so we can keep out of my pocket. And you’re a fool if producing ones like this. Our digital you don’t.’ editions should ONLY be downloaded at “How could the comic book www.twomorrows.com business have any idea what was doing well and what wasn’t? It wasn’t the national distributor like Independent News who was making all the money… It was many of the local distributors who were making all the money. The national distributors just shrug their shoulders because they don’t want to end

PLEASE READ THIS:

Available at www.twomorrows.com 87

up with a horse head in their beds. There’s some tough people out there who do distribution.

“When I was a kid and I wanted to buy comic books, I could go the newsstand and pay 10¢ apiece, or I could go to my local toy shop. My local toy shop would have a rack of comic books. A very small number of them would be fresh new comic books. Most of them would be comic books for 2¢, 3¢ or 5¢ apiece. A razor blade had been run across the title on the cover with an attempt made to slice the covers off. Sometimes, as a kid going through the stacks I would go through a dozen or so of the same title and you might hit one that hadn’t been sliced.

This was the method of ensuring returns: Initially, they would slice the title off the cover and return the titles back to the national distributor. Pretty soon the national distributor discovered the process really wasn’t being observed. So you could buy comic books that the slicing machine had missed; they would be sliced but the title wasn’t taken off because nobody was looking. They didn’t care. “[Between] the time I was a little kid and the time I came back from Germany in the early ’50s, the affidavit return process took over where all the distributor really had to do was promise to destroy the comic books that didn’t sell.

“Try to understand the logic of this: If you can go to Brooklyn and go into any second-hand toy store… and get books for 2¢, 3¢ or 5¢, and sometimes 10¢, if the owner was smart and you, as a publisher, knew that these were being reported as being destroyed, then why would you go even deeper and have affidavit returns? You already know you’re being ripped off. Then why would you even stick your fist deeper in the vat of acid, and say, ‘Now since you’re ripping me off, why don’t you rip me off completely?’

“You can sell whole copies, tell me you destroyed them and now we’ll go on this honor system—an honor system which has failed completely up to now.

Above: The first of the undergrounds? Harvey Kurtzman’s great attempts to rekindle the popularity of Mad met with limited success.

Trump ©1956 HMH Publications.

Humbug ©1958 Humbug Publishing. Help! ©1965 Help!

Magazine.

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It’s preposterous. It’s a bloody joke.

“One of the reasons why it could continue for so long is because the publishers had no idea what was going on. The reason why Carmine said things had bad sales is because—though he’d met some local distributors— he never went to the local distributor’s ‘cash and carry’ table and saw that stuff being sold out the back door.

“Maybe he went into the accounting department at

Independent News and they would go, ‘Here are the affidavits which have come back in from our distributors,’ flash them in his face and then stick them back in a logbook. Essentially he had nothing to do with distribution on a local level. It took Carmine (or any other publisher) a very long time to learn what returns took place over at least a six-month period.

“This is what happens with a national distributor: You started with 100% and in the first month, sales are 70%. If you don’t know what’s going on, you think you’ve sold 70%. Then the next month, more books are reported returned and then 10% is reduced off of that. Figures now indicate you’ve sold 60%. And then the next month goes by and the numbers now indicate you’ve sold 40%.

“Carmine, in the beginning [of his executive tenure], didn’t seem to understand that the sales figure you got in your first month were totally meaningless. Only after six months would you really know how your sales did on a particular book because the sales figures by the nature of the [affidavit] returns system declined and declined and declined and then would final out. That’s how sales are reported in that business. You simply don’t know for six months how you did. Carmine would cancel books after getting initial figures after just a couple months. They were meaningless because often local IDs would simply destroy portions of their shipments out of pique— deadlines—or whatever. Because they didn’t set their own order; the national distributor set the order—actually, through them, the publisher set the order! You had no idea what you did. It was a terrible business… comic books… especially over at DC. Nobody knew what the hell was going on after Irwin Donenfeld left in ’68, what was selling, why it was selling, how it was doing, what the sales really were, they had no idea—and books got cancelled, reputations got hurt, people got hurt; people who knew their books had to be selling.”

Rumblings of the Creator-Owned Independents When the first newsstand comic book, Comic Monthly, was introduced in 1922 by Embee Publishing, George McManus, cartoonist of Maggie & Jiggs fame, was a principal owner. That makes him probably the first self-publishing creator of comics. His partner was Rudolph Block Jr., whose father, Block Sr., had been the editor of the New York American Sunday supplement since before the turn of the century, part of the flagship of the Hearst empire, and who had been around for the development of virtually all of Hearst’s comic strips, starting with the first, The Katzenjammer Kids in 1897. Block Jr. and McManus managed to publish a dozen issues of Comic Monthly before calling it quits.

Right after World War Two, there was a rash of dozens of small independent publishers helped into business by paperbroker George Dougherty Jr. (whose father had been a pressman for Eastern Color when Famous Funnies was first produced). The comics crash of 1947 brought many of the indies down.

With the early ’50s boom, some successful comics creators took their profits from the million-copy sales they achieved for the big publishers and went into business for themselves. The most notable of these were Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Mainline Publications [see Robert Beerbohm’s Mainline examination in The Jack Kirby Collector #25] and Mike Esposito & Ross Andru’s Mikeross Publications, though both endeavors proved short-lived.

There was change brewing for the comics field by the late ’50s.

When Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Al Jaffee and crew self-published Humbug, one could argue here was the beginning of the underground comix movement that flowered a decade later. After the failure of Humbug and an aborted two-issue run of Trump for Hugh (Playboy) Hefner, Kurtzman found work with Jim Warren in the form of Help! magazine.

Jay Lynch, creator of “Nard ‘n’ Pat” and a founding father of underground comix, remembers the early formation of the underground comix movement: “In 1962 and ‘63, I was writing a lot of stuff for Cracked for $15 a page (which equals $150 in today’s money). The first thing I had in Help! gave me great excitement—as we worshiped Kurtzman, obviously, from the fanzines we did in 1960 through ’63. I started out writing for Sick—for a guy named Dee Carusoe (who went on to write the Monkees TV show). He was part COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

of a comedy team called Dee Carusoe and Bill Levine.

“We learned much from Kurtzman. By 1966, art spiegelman was working for Topps Chewing Gum. Artie brought to Topps the Kurtzman method of doing roughs—which really led to editorial unity of the bubble gum cards from then on. Art got Woody Gelman at Topps to hire me to do freelance stuff at this time. I still do work for Topps today. Topps kept a lot of underground cartoonists alive during the early days.

“Sometimes I wonder if there would have been underground comix without Topps and Woody Gelman. Even R. Crumb did a series back then.

He also did a lot of work for Woody’s other enterprises like the Nostalgia Press comics reprint series.

“Before Zap #1 came out, Cavalier [a men’s magazine] was running Terry Gilliam and Crumb and Paul Krassner. I was in touch with Crumb then. And Gilbert Shelton was in Texas doing stuff for the Austin Rag. Hank Hinton (another guy from Help!) was doing hot-rod cartoons by this time.

He never got into the underground thing. Dennis Elefson, another Help! cartoonist, was editing the hot rod comic mags. Gilbert and Tony Bell did two issues of Wonder Warthog for Pete Millar, another hot rod mag publisher. Rick Griffin was doing ‘Murphy’ for Surfer magazine at the time, and Robert Williams was doing the Big Daddy Roth stuff.”

Other Warren publications began appearing on the stands by 1964—this time primarily comics—such as Creepy, Eerie, and Blazing Combat. These black-&-white, magazine-size comics bypassed the creatively-stifling Comics Code, and they recaptured the flavor of earlier EC horror and war titles. Initially featuring work by the likes of Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Archie Goodwin, Larry Ivie, Russ Jones, Gray Morrow, Joe Orlando, Bill Pearson, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, Maurice Whitman, Wallace Wood, and many others, the Warren comics were getting noticed. Comics fandom responded enthusiastically with each succeeding issue.

Also, by 1964, professional-looking strips ’zines like Star Studded, Fantasy Illustrated, All Stars, and others began appearing from members of comics fandom. Star Studded eventually showcased the initial comic strips of creators like Buddy Saunders, Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, Alan Weiss, George Metzger, and others. All Stars fronted a stupendous Steve Ditko cover. Fantasy Illustrated showcased early Jeff Jones, Bill Dubay, Landon Chesney (inked by Bob Overstreet), Ronn Foss, etc.

In FI #4, Richard Kyle began his seminal “Graphic Story Review” column, trying to improve the graphic story medium in America. It appears that this is the first time the term “graphic story” appears in print. FI #6 brought a seminal response to Kyle’s essay from legendary EC artist Bernard Krigstein commenting that an “editor is the least important contributor to the final product.” This, in turn, led to much more discussion in following issues. But a point was being made that comics creators should be free to make up what they felt should go into a comics story. The underground comix movement fully embraced the concept of no editorial changes to be made in someone’s work. In 1967, with #8, Spicer changed the name of FI to Graphic Story Magazine.

By late ’66, witzend appeared published by artist Wally Wood featuring the work of many of his pro friends, along with budding younger cartoonists he had taken under wing.

Mike Gold wrote me, “It’s tough defining the beginning of soFall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

called independent comics. (I say ‘so-called’ because a few years ago Comics Buyer’s Guide did a list of independent publishers, and they included Disney.) [The advent of the “groundlevel” comics publisher] Star*Reach is one way to look at it (with witzend being the fanzine grandfather); Zap is another…

So are the clearly independent efforts of Simon & Kirby (Mainline), Esposito & Andru (MikeRoss Comics) and other guys in 1954 who attempted to start their own companies.

Maybe Charles Biro [with the ’40s Lev Gleason titles], too.

“If Zap is an independent comic, wasn’t Humbug? It was on the newsstand, so it isn’t a witzend-like fanzine. Sigh. It’s like defining various types of rock music. The more I think about it, the more I respect the Mad crew for doing Humbug.

These guys did just about the only truly successful comic book of the ’50s, then pooled their time and resources to do it again—for themselves—against all odds, and certainly against the distribution system.

“I think the problem with Humbug was that it was too inside— these guys put their own money and time into the project, so they did it for themselves without much (or maybe any) commercial concern. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t. Again, I respect them for it, and I think the energy and sensibilities that went into Humbug were reflected in the early underground comix days by the guys raised on Mad but acting out the Humbug dream [of self-ownership].”

What is an Underground?

When Robert Crumb stood on those chilly street corners in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district hawking Zap Comix in early 1968, there slowly grew an alternative to a 30-year-old comic book distribution system stymied by fraud and apathy.

Within a year, prodded by Vaughn Bodé, the New Yorkbased tabloid East Village Other (EVO)—which had already been running comic strips by Kim Dietch, Spain, Trina Robbins, and others—brought out their seminal Gothic Blimp Works monthly comix tabloid. Initially it was edited by Bodé for the first couple issues, and then Kim Deitch took the reins. It included many of the finest of the (then) newly dedicated cartoonists including Crumb, spiegelman, George Metzger, Roger Brand, Larry Todd, Lynch, Bodé, Joel Beck, Deitch, Spain, Thompson, S. Clay Wilson, and others.

Ensuing issues of GBW brought us an eclectic mix of both overground and underground creators as we entered

Left: Great Adkins and Wood collaboration on the cover of Bill Spicer’s Fantasy Illustrated #7.

Look for a lively Dan Adkins interview next issue! ©1967 William W. Spicer

Below: The one that started it all: Zap Comix #0 (originally intended as the debut issue but, coz the art was stolen, it was delayed until after the publication of Zap #1).

R. Crumb is set loose on unsuspecting comic readers and comix are born. ©1999 R. Crumb.

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Above: Superb (and gross!)

Vaughn Bodé cover to Wally Wood’s legendary prozine, witzend. ©1999 The Estate of Vaughn Bodé.

Right: Robert Kline’s cover to The Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector #73.

RBCC was the CBG of its day—a meeting place for comics fandom. ©1967 G.B. Love/Robert Kline.

Below: A rare glimpse at one of Bud Plant’s first mail order catalogs! And Bud’s still at it! Check out his ad this ish. ©1999 Bud Plant Comic Art.

the ’70s. A sampling of talented “mainstream” creators appearing in GBW include Mike Kaluta, Ralph Reese, Larry Hama, Dick Lupoff, Steve Stiles, Berni Wrightson, and many more.

(Note Richard Lupoff’s comics contribution to the fourth issue.

He is remembered in fandom for ushering in the essay series “All In Color For A Dime” in his legendary s-f fanzine Xero beginning in late 1960.)

By 1973 Phil Seuling convinced first DC, then Marvel and Warren, to join in this “underground” method of selling comic books directly to the marketplace, circumventing the increasingly unreliable IDs. At the end of the decade, through the tenacity of one Charles Rozanski, Marvel called a special meeting at the 1979 San Diego ComiCon of every serious comic book retailer in the country who could afford to attend. At this extraordinary conference, retailers— myself included—were all informed that Marvel was finally jumping head-first into building and supporting a direct market—a marketplace that could grow as large per capita as what was happening in Japan and Europe, where, for instance, we witnessed the rise of the graphic novel format in variations too numerous to expound upon here and now.

Following a time-honored tradition begun by Jerry Bails with The Comic Reader, there have been many fanzines published chronicling the unfolding of the comics market. There were also numerous self-published amateur strip ’zines being published. I began building my collection in 1966.

Here we are, in 1999, over 30 years since that auspicious day when Robert Crumb wandered into Moe Moskowitz’s store on Haight Street in San Francisco. Moe ordered his first thousand copies of Zap Comix #1 for Martin McClaine’s distribution route which included just three other products: Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Oracle and the Berkeley Barb.

Jay Lynch explains, “In the very beginning—when Crumb did Zap #1 and sent copies to me and Gilbert, and we immediately started putting together our books—I don’t think any of us had read a comic book since EC went under. (The one exception was the 1966 Harvey Spirit reprint book.) I think I skimmed the Marvel books once on the newsstand to see what all the mid-’60s media hype was about— but they were of no interest to me.”

Flying in a plane across country, Trina Robbins was probably the first person to introduce this new type of comic book to the New York comics community which gathered and passed through the apartments of Larry Ivie, Roy Thomas, Bill Pearson and Archie Goodwin. New York comics pros tried to figure out how to re-jumpstart the dying comics business following the latest overglut collapse precipitated by the demise of the Batman TV show.

Before the “Great Trek” to the Bay Area in 1968-69, this peer group all met each other many times around the St. Mark’s Square area where EVO was located. Some chose to subject themselves to the slavery of “work for hire” of the (then-major) predatory comic book publishers over on Madison and Lexington Avenues. A few stayed to fight alongside Neal Adams who lead the way for creator’s rights in

90

the New York-based comics industry.

But the vast majority headed West and built a new comics industry that thrived for quite a few years once The Print Mint issued a first printing of Zap Comix #2 with Crumb allowing in Griffin, Moscoso, Wilson, and later Spain, Shelton, and Williams. If readers ate up Zap #1 and #0, the comics world was blown apart by #2.

And, indeed, the comics world was never quite the same afterwards.

Somewhere along this path the original vision became clouded.

The way was lost. Short-term greed replaced long-term common sense. I basically agree with most of former Heavy Metal editor John Workman’s recent “The Comic Book Crisis and What Can Be Done About It” (reprinted in a recent Comics Journal), an excellent study of causes and effects that have plagued this industry for decades now. John and I entered the business professionally on many of the same levels around the same time. As one of those hardy early comic book “dealers [who] traveled [many] parts of the country in vans, buying and selling old comics in town after town… [who] opened one or more stores to give a central location to the sales part of [my] business” he mentions therein, I can personally attest to John’s astute grasp of many of the levels this field has operated within for the past few decades.

Since its inception the direct market was an “underground” market; that is to say, it provided a new means of getting comics to market outside the established distribution network. The term “underground,” as many use it, has more to do with this unorthodox method of distribution than it does the actual content of the comics (or comix) themselves. The publisher usually sold directly to the store that would retail them. There might be some distributors at work as well, but by and large, it was easy for a retail operation to gain direct

access to the young, ambitious publishers who functioned as their own distributor.

Cutting out layers of middlemen meant retailers could get 40% to 50% discounts. The publishers traded comics, posters and T-shirts between one another in order to help with the dissemination of their goods. Their comix and other merchandise found their way into a growing number of comic book stores that had begun to sprout up here and there across the country.

Alternative Comix Come To Comics Fandom Throughout most of the ’60s, and into the early ’70s, the main venue to advertise comics for sale through the mail was still G.B. Love’s Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector. When we opened our doors, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

Comics and Comix—the retail outfit of which I was a partner— proudly carried every issue.

Love (who did more to help nurture ’60s comics fandom than anyone else after Jerry Bails retired from his first phase of fan activity) told me during one interview that he has always believed in the “free market” aspect of the American economy. Hence, he allowed ads to appear which competed directly with his Ye Olde Fanzine Shoppe.

Love appears to be the first in fandom to centralize a process for the direct purchase of the better amateur ’zines comics fandom was producing, starting as early as RBCC #62 in early 1969. His inhouse ad announced: “Starting in the next issue of RBCC, the SFCA will open a new department… offering back issues of many fanzines… We will buy anywhere from 50 to 200 copies.” His purpose was twofold: 1) to make a profit, of course, and 2) to allow quality photo-offset fanzine publishers a way to free up muchneeded capital and publish a next issue that much quicker. Love also reprinted the photo-offset issues of Alter Ego after they went out of print and the growing fan public was clamoring for more.

Within a short period of time, he also began wholesaling a crosssection of the items he had in quantity to interested buyers.

Fairly early on, RBCC carried many advertisements for the underground comix—the natural extension of the earlier ama-strip fanzines. Undergrounds were also a “labor of love” that began emanating mainly from the San Francisco Bay area following the appearance of Zap #1 in February of 1968. Perhaps even more important, Love’s Fanzine Shoppe began stocking what were coming to be known as underground comix, following the first ad for them—hawking Crumb’s comix—by Gary Arlington’s San Francisco Comic Book Company in RBCC #65 in mid-’69. Arlington apparently was also one of the few in this country to actively speculate on EC comics while they were fresh on the stands. Back in the 1950s, he purchased upwards of 100 copies of some issues of those now-valuable comics.

Bud Plant, head of the still-thriving Bud Plant Comic Art mail order business, said to me, “My ads in RBCC were the beginning of my mail order business.” Bud began running ads for undergrounds in late ’69, and ads began appearing from Bob Sidebottom’s San Josebased Comicollector shop. Then Bruce Hershenson joined with his ads. My own ads selling underground comix began in RBCC #87 (late ’71).

One of the regular columnists in RBCC was a Brooklyn high school teacher named Phil Seuling. His “Seuling’s Corner” ran for many years, where he would air thoughts on all that was good and bad with the comics industry. Phil’s ideas about what was needed to be done to save the comics industry were widely read and discussed.

In 1969, Phil’s New York Comic Art Convention sported an “underground cartoonists” panel and was attended by Kim and Simon Deitch, Spain Rodriguez, Trina Robbins, Rick Griffin, and moderator Roger Brand. This first-of-its-kind panel discussion was reported in the fan press in Martin Greim’s Comic Crusader #7. The panel made the point that the new undergrounds were not being created solely for profit, as self-expression was still an important facet in generating comic book work for most of them.

Interestingly, one of the two main guests at Seuling’s convention was Harvey Kurtzman, considered by many to be the guru of the undergrounds. The other guest was Harold Foster of Prince Valiant fame. Fan conventions were gaining respectability.

Seuling was very much aware of underground comix and how they got to market. Jay Lynch told me, “I met Phil Seuling once at Jeff Jones’ house in New York City in ’69 or so. In the first printings of the early Bijous we gave free ads to those we thought worthy. I know we gave Bud Plant ad space. We gave all the early mailorder dealers free ads, whether they wanted them or not.”

With the third issue of Wally Wood’s witzend, Phil took over financing the publishing reins from Wally and Bill Pearson, whose funds Fall 1999

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

had run dry. Besides featuring stories by Wood himself, the pro ’zine was a showcase for many disenchanted veteran comics creators including Ditko, Frazetta, Crandall, and newcomers such as Brand, Dan Adkins, spiegelman, Bodé, and Jeff Jones. In witzend, there was a deliberate melding of the comics fanzine format with the more traditional aspects of professional comic book production. It soon became a benchmark by which many fan editors and publishers would measure themselves. Many of us who were comic book dealers were encouraged to purchase at least 10 copies of each issue at 40% off—and we sold them to our comic book collecting friends.

[Be sure to join us next issue for our next segment in the continuing saga of the secret origins of the direct sales market. Bob Beerbohm, who has been involved in comics as a fan, dealer, and historian since the dawn of time, has got plenty more hitherto unknown history for you to gape at! Our enormous thanks to Bob, who supplied most of the art accompanying this article, and to Bud Plant for pulling through with some much-needed graphics. Check out Bob’s ad on the next page and give ’im your support! See you next time, FOOMER!—JBC]

Above: Perhaps the underground’s only super-hero, Wonder Warthog, from Gilbert Shelton’s story in Hydrogen Bomb and Biochemical Warfare Funnies, 1970. ©1999 Gilbert Shelton.

Below: The great store logo of Comics & Comix, the oft-recalled chain of stores of triumvirate Bud Plant, John Barrett, and our essay’s author, Bob Beerbohm. Art by Bobby London. ©1973 Comics and Comix & Berkeley Comic Art Shop.

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CBA Review

The Imp & the Perverse Dan Raeburn’s The Imp and the Real Study of Comics Reviewed by Jon B. Cooke

The Imp #2 ©1999 Dan Raeburn

The Imp #1 ©1999 Dan Raeburn

“There is no passion in nature so demonically impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge.”

—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Imp of the Perverse”

The Imp. Edited and published by Daniel K. Raeburn. #1 and #2 out of print (inquire about second printings). #3 available for $4 (U.S. funds) postpaid from Dan Raeburn, 1454 W. Summerdale 2C, Chicago, IL 60640. Make checks payable to Dan Raeburn.

We are all plagued, one way or another, by our own imps of the perverse; those dark compulsions compelling us to act contrary to our more sensible natures. I guess it’s just one of those contradictory aspects that make us all too human. One of my imps possess me to have this ongoing fascination—and appreciation—for generally bizarre, often ludicrous material, that should (my more level-headed side tells me) merely be given a nod as I go on to engage more “worthy” pursuits. Yet somehow if I encounter (to name a few interests) Tijuana bibles, those Joe Bazooka comic strips, the crime fiction of Robert Leslie Bellum, many non-sports bubble gum cards put out

by Topps, the rivalry between Quisp and Quake… hell, even the wasted life of Andy Gibb—my sick, twisted side is convinced that the study of any one of these cultural discards just might reveal something about ourselves.

But really, my snooty persona snorts, why waste the time? But can things of such bad taste, actually teach us something good?

At least in his second number of his annual publication, The Imp, Editor/Publisher Dan Raeburn indulges his imp to (ahem) perverse levels, with his exhaustive study of the notorious comic booklets of Jack T. Chick. First, lemme say it’s not easy to describe just what The Imp is. Each issue is devoted to a single subject—the first (made in small booklet form) to “The Fallen World of Daniel Clowes”; the second to infamous religious zealot/cartoonist Chick (presented in a

The Imp #3 ©1999 Dan Raeburn

Chunky Rice continued from page 3

Good-bye, Chunky Rice. By Craig Thompson, edited by Chris Staros.

128 pp. $14.95 sc. Published by Top Shelf Productions, Marietta, GA. Available for $18 postpaid from Top Shelf, P.O. Box 1282, Marietta, GA 30061-1282. www.topshelfcomix.com 92

horizontal format that delightfully mimics the subject’s pamphlets); and the latest, a 20-page 11”x17” tabloid newspaper (replete with a Sunday color comics section!) completely devoted to “The Smartest Cartoonist on Earth,” Chris Ware. Each production is simply wonderful—smart, funny, informed, attractively designed, and possessed of a profound appreciation for comics, weird, brilliant or even—as in Chick’s case—those purely insidious (but, hey, Jack done it with conviction, dammit!). These magazines just have to be seen to be believed as this space is woefully short to give Dan his due.

I’m a guy who often enjoys reading about comics more than actually reading comics. This past year has introduced me to a number of ’zines—SubMedia, Comicology, Feature, Tripwire, O’Neil Observer—but nothing takes my breath away like Raeburn’s The Imp! Each issue is an eclectic melangé of criticism, interview, appreciation, homage, and childlike enthusiasm, never taking itself too seriously and always serving it up hot with a knowing wink. Very clever.

Thing is, I’m just jealous as hell of Daniel K. Raeburn. He’s got the cajones to indulge his imp while the closest I’ve come to examining anything truly wacky is glancing at the Warren b-&-ws. If I had Raeburn’s guts, I’d get on that Topps issue I’ve been contemplating, or that look at Ron Turner’s Last Gasp horror undergrounds. But forget about that peek at those truly sleazy Mexican weekly comics—Raeburn’s got that covered for the 2000 ish, the ballsy bastid.

This is war!

Find The Imp and indulge yourself. Beg Dan to reprint #1 and #2. #3’s going fast. Available by mail [see far left] or through FM, Fantagraphics, and Last Gasp.

Buy it!

Hart—there’s a similar desire to touch the heart with unaffected emotion—but his craft skills are of another order, so that Chunky comes as a brilliant surprise. Not everything in Chunky works—the cover, for instance, is too antic, and liable to be illegible to browsers—but what does work is of such a rare kind that it fairly takes the breath away.

Hints of Chunky first began to appear, as far as I know, at the Small Press Expo in 1998, when publisher Top Shelf gave out a minicomic preview of the book ©1999 Craig Thompson under the title Wang-pa (“son of a turtle”). At that time Thompson promised a 72-page book, to be

delivered “this Fall”; yet Chunky did not really make its debut until 1999’s Expo, a year later, at which time it had grown by some 50 pages. What happened in the interim one can only guess, but the evidence of the book’s story suggests that Thompson got caught up in a voyage of discovery not unlike Chunky’s own That’s what I like to think, anyway; the organic growth of the tale is a delight.

One telling detail from Wang-pa survives in altered form in the finished book: We are told that, in a far-off land, there are people who etch their names in turtle shells and set them adrift in a river as a way of expressing and exorcising regret, or guilt, or loss. Chunky Rice seems to embody the same kind of quixotic gesture, and reading it feels a bit like finding a love letter in a bottle.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 6

Fall 1999

C o l l e c t o r

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FIGHTING AMERICANS! MARK EVANIER on 1960s Marvel inkers, SHIELD, Losers, and Green Arrow overviews, INFANTINO interview on Simon & Kirby, KIRBY interview, Captain America PENCIL ART GALLERY, PHILIPPE DRUILLET interview, JOE SIMON and ALEX TOTH speak, unseen BIG GAME HUNTER and YOUNG ABE LINCOLN Kirby concepts! KIRBY and KIRBY/TOTH covers!

GREAT ESCAPES! MISTER MIRACLE pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER, MARSHALL ROGERS & MICHAEL CHABON interviews, comparing Kirby and Houdini’s backgrounds, analysis of “Himon,” 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (WILL EISNER, JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, & JOHNNY CARSON) & more! KIRBY/MARSHALL ROGERS and KIRBY/STEVE RUDE covers!

THOR ISSUE! Never-seen KIRBY interview, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. on their Thor work, MARK EVANIER, extensive THOR and TALES OF ASGARD coverage, a look at the “real” Norse gods, 40 pages of KIRBY THOR PENCILS, including a Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more! KIRBY covers inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” MIKE ROYER interview on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE GALLERY tracing the evolution of Jack’s style, new column on OBSCURE KIRBY WORK, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s TECHNIQUE AND INFLUENCES, comparing STAN LEE’s writing to JACK’s, and more! Two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

“HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE KIRBY WAY!” PART 2: JOE SINNOTT on how he inks Jack’s work, HUGE PENCIL GALLERY, list of the art in the KIRBY ARCHIVES, MARK EVANIER, special sections on Jack’s technique and influences, SPEND A DAY WITH KIRBY (with JACK DAVIS, GULACY, HERNANDEZ BROS., and RUDE) and more!

Two UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #39

KIRBY COLLECTOR #40

KIRBY COLLECTOR #41

KIRBY COLLECTOR #42

KIRBY COLLECTOR #43

FAN FAVORITES! Covering Kirby’s work on HULK, INHUMANS, and SILVER SURFER, TOP PROS pick favorite Kirby covers, Kirby ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT interview, MARK EVANIER, 2002 Kirby Tribute Panel (DICK AYERS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, HERB TRIMPE), pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by MIKE ALLRED and P. CRAIG RUSSELL!

WORLD THAT’S COMING! KAMANDI and OMAC spotlight, 2003 Kirby Tribute Panel (WENDY PINI, MICHAEL CHABON, STAN GOLDBERG, SAL BUSCEMA, LARRY LIEBER, and STAN LEE), P. CRAIG RUSSELL interview, MARK EVANIER, NEW COLUMN analyzing Jack’s visual shorthand, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by ERIK LARSEN and REEDMAN!

1970s MARVEL WORK! Coverage of ’70s work from Captain America to Eternals to Machine Man, DICK GIORDANO & MARK SHULTZ interviews, MARK EVANIER, 2004 Kirby Tribute Panel (STEVE RUDE, DAVE GIBBONS, WALTER SIMONSON, and PAUL RYAN), pencil art gallery, unused 1962 HULK #6 KIRBY PENCILS, and more! Kirby covers inked by GIORDANO and SCHULTZ!

1970s DC WORK! Coverage of Jimmy Olsen, FF movie set visit, overview of all Newsboy Legion stories, KEVIN NOWLAN and MURPHY ANDERSON on inking Jack, never-seen interview with Kirby, MARK EVANIER on Kirby’s covers, Bongo Comics’ Kirby ties, complete ’40s gangster story, pencil art gallery, and more! Kirby covers inked by NOWLAN and ANDERSON!

KIRBY AWARD WINNERS! STEVE SHERMAN and others sharing memories and neverseen art from JACK & ROZ, a never-published 1966 interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER on VINCE COLLETTA, pencils-toSinnott inks comparison of TALES OF SUSPENSE #93, and more! Covers by KIRBY (Jack’s original ’70s SILVER STAR CONCEPT ART) and KIRBY/SINNOTT!

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97

KIRBY COLLECTOR #44

KIRBY COLLECTOR #45

KIRBY COLLECTOR #46

KIRBY COLLECTOR #47

KIRBY COLLECTOR #48

KIRBY’S MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS! Coverage of DEMON, THOR, & GALACTUS, interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER, pencil art galleries of the Demon and other mythological characters, two never-reprinted BLACK MAGIC stories, interview with Kirby Award winner DAVID SCHWARTZ and F4 screenwriter MIKE FRANCE, and more!

Kirby cover inked by MATT WAGNER!

Jack’s vision of PAST AND FUTURE, with a never-seen KIRBY interview, a new interview with son NEAL KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’S column, two pencil galleries, two complete ’50s stories, Jack’s first script, Kirby Tribute Panel (with EVANIER, KATZ, SHAW!, and SHERMAN), plus an unpublished CAPTAIN 3-D cover, inked by BILL BLACK and converted into 3-D by RAY ZONE!

Focus on NEW GODS, FOREVER PEOPLE, and DARKSEID! Includes a rare interview with KIRBY, MARK EVANIER’s column, FOURTH WORLD pencil art galleries (including Kirby’s redesigns for SUPER POWERS), two 1950s stories, a new Kirby Darkseid front cover inked by MIKE ROYER, a Kirby Forever People back cover inked by JOHN BYRNE, and more!

KIRBY’S SUPER TEAMS, from kid gangs and the Challengers, to Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Super Powers, with unseen 1960s Marvel art, a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, author JONATHAN LETHEM on his Kirby influence, interview with JOHN ROMITA, JR. on his Eternals work, and more!

KIRBYTECH ISSUE, spotlighting Jack’s hightech concepts, from Iron Man’s armor and Machine Man, to the Negative Zone and beyond! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER’s column, two pencil art galleries, complete 1950s story, TOM SCIOLI interview, Kirby Tribute Panel (with ADAMS, PÉREZ, and ROMITA), and covers inked by TERRY AUSTIN and TOM SCIOLI!

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(84-page tabloid magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

WARRIORS, spotlighting Thor (with a look at hidden messages in BILL EVERETT’s Thor inks), Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, Losers, and others! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, interviews with JERRY ORDWAY and GRANT MORRISON, MARK EVANIER’s column, pencil art gallery, a complete 1950s story, wraparound Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more!

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue!

Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

Spotlights Kirby’s most obscure work: an UNUSED THOR STORY, BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, unaltered pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby cover inked by DON HECK!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #55

KIRBY COLLECTOR #56

KIRBY COLLECTOR #57

KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

KIRBY COLLECTOR #54

THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! New interview with STAN LEE, walking tour of New York where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a new page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?,” plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ!

STAN & JACK PART TWO! More on the co-creators of the Marvel Universe, final interview (and cover inks) by GEORGE TUSKA, differences between KIRBY and DITKO’S approaches, WILL MURRAY on the origin of the FF, the mystery of Marvel cover dates, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, plus Kirby back cover inked by JOE SINNOTT!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

“Kirby Goes To Hollywood!” SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MELL LAZARUS recall Kirby’s BOB NEWHART TV show cameo, comparing the recent STAR WARS films to New Gods, RUBY & SPEARS interviewed, Jack’s encounters with FRANK ZAPPA, PAUL McCARTNEY, and JOHN LENNON, MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a Golden Age Kirby story, and more! Kirby cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

“Unfinished Sagas”—series, stories, and arcs Kirby never finished. TRUE DIVORCE CASES, RAAM THE MAN MOUNTAIN, KOBRA, DINGBATS, a complete story from SOUL LOVE, complete Boy Explorers story, two Kirby Tribute Panels, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, pencil art galleries, and more, with Kirby’s “Galaxy Green” cover inked by ROYER, and the unseen cover for SOUL LOVE #1!

“Legendary Kirby”—how Jack put his spin on classic folklore! TONY ISABELLA on SATAN’S SIX (with Kirby’s unseen layouts), Biblical inspirations of DEVIL DINOSAUR, THOR through the eyes of mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, pencil art from ETERNALS, DEMON, NEW GODS, THOR, and Jack’s ATLAS cover!

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

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98

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES, edited by John Morrow Each book contains over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED!

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 3

VOLUME 5

VOLUME 6

VOLUME 7

KIRBY CHECKLIST

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #10-12, and a tour of Jack’s home!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13-15, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #20-22, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26, plus new art!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, plus new art!

Lists EVERY KIRBY COMIC, BOOK, UNPUBLISHED WORK and more!

(160-page trade paperback) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905016 Diamond Order Code: MAR042974

(176-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905023 Diamond Order Code: APR043058

(224-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905573 Diamond Order Code: FEB063353

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Diamond Order Code: JUN084280

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490120 Diamond Order Code: DEC084286

(128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 9781605490052 Diamond Order Code: MAR084008

NEW!

Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS

Celebrate the 50th ANNIVERSARY OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1 with this special squarebound edition (#58) of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, about two pop-culture visionaries who created the Fantastic Four, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since. Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others), regular Jack Kirby Collector contributor MARK ALEXANDER traces both Lee and Kirby’s history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby’s working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. With a wealth of historical information and amazing Kirby artwork, STAN LEE & JACK KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS beautifully examines the first decade of the FF, and the events that put into motion the 1960s era that came to be known as the Marvel Age of Comics!

(128-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490380 • Diamond Order Code: SEP111248

NEW!

SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION

First conceptualized in the 1970s as a movie screenplay, SILVER STAR was too far ahead of its time for Hollywood, so artist JACK KIRBY adapted it as a six-issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the 1980s, making it his final, great comics series.

Now the entire six-issue run is collected here, reproduced from his powerful, uninked PENCIL ART, showing Kirby’s work in its undiluted, raw form! Also included is Kirby’s ILLUSTRATED SILVER STAR MOVIE SCREENPLAY, never-seen SKETCHES, PIN-UPS, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SPECIAL EDITION

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905559 Diamond Order Code: JAN063367

CAPTAIN VICTORY: GRAPHITE EDITION

Compiles the “extra” new material from COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUMES 1-7, in one huge Digital Edition! Includes a fan’s private tour of the Kirbys’ remarkable home, profusely illustrated with photos, and more than 200 pieces of Kirby art not published outside of those volumes. If you already own the individual issues and skipped the collections, or missed them in print form, now you can get caught up!

For the first time, JACK KIRBY’s original CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHIC NOVEL is presented as it was created in 1975 (before being broken up and modified for the 1980s Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Kirby’s uninked pencil art! This first “new” Kirby comic in years features page after page of prime pencils, and includes Jack’s unused CAPTAIN VICTORY SCREENPLAY, unseen art, an historical overview to put it in perspective, and more!

(52-page comic book) $5.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

(120-page Digital Edition) $4.95

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #58 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY FIVE-OH! CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE “KING” OF COMICS

For its 50th issue, the publication that started TwoMorrows presents KIRBY FIVE-OH!, a BOOK covering the best of everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular KIRBY COLLECTOR columnists have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 1938-1987! The BEST COVERS from each decade! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre. This TABLOID-SIZED TRADE PAPERBACK features a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, helping make this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Takes the place of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50.

(168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: FEB084186

NOTE: THIS IS ISSUE #50 OF THE KIRBY COLLECTOR!

KIRBY UNLEASHED (REMASTERED)

Reprinting the fabled 1971 KIRBY UNLEASHED PORTFOLIO, completely remastered!

Spotlights some of KIRBY’s finest art from all eras of his career, including 1930s pencil work, unused strips, illustrated World War II letters, 1950s pages, unpublished 1960s Marvel pencil pages and sketches, and Fourth World pencil art (done expressly for this portfolio in 1970)! We’ve gone back to the original art to ensure the best reproduction possible, and MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN have updated the Kirby biography from the original printing, and added a new Foreword explaining how this portfolio came to be! PLUS: We’ve recolored the original color plates, and added EIGHT NEW BLACK-&-WHITE PAGES, plus EIGHT NEW COLOR PAGES, including Jack’s four GODS posters (released separately in 1972), and four extra Kirby color pieces, all at tabloid size!

(60-page tabloid with COLOR) SOLD OUT • (Digital Edition) $5.95

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom!

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • www.twomorrows.com

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #61

ALTER EGO #118

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2

BRICKJOURNAL #24

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

LEGO TRAINS! Builder CALE LEIPHART shows how to get started building trains and train layouts, with instructions on building microscale trains by editor JOE MENO, building layouts with the members of the Pennsylvania LEGO Users Group (PennLUG), fan-built LEGO monorails minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, microscale building by CHRISTOPHER DECK, “You Can Build It”, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

(164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2013

ALTER EGO #119

ALTER EGO #120

ALTER EGO #121

JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond!

Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

AVENGERS 50th ANNIVERSARY! WILL MURRAY on the group’s behind-thescenes origin, a look at its first decade with ROY THOMAS, STAN LEE, JACK KIRBY, THE BROTHERS BUSCEMA, TUSKA, ADAMS, COLAN, BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, Golden Age Blue Beetle artist E.C. STONER, unused Avengers cover by DON HECK!

MARC SWAYZE TRIBUTE ISSUE, spotlighting FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America)!

Salutes from Fawcett alumnus C.C. BECK and OTTO BINDER, interview with wife JUNE SWAYZE, a full Phantom Eagle story from Wow Comics, plus interview with 1950s Dell/Western artist MEL KEEFER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and a SWAYZE Marvel Family cover art from the 1940s!

X-MEN SALUTE! 1963-69 secrets, rare ‘60s BRAZILIAN X-MEN stories, lost ‘60s XMen “character sheet” by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS on the 1970s revival, art and artifacts by KIRBY, ROTH, ADAMS, HECK, FRIEDRICH, and BUSCEMA—plus the MARVELMANIA fan club story, interview with Golden Age writer ED SILVERMAN, FCA, Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, and JACK KIRBY’s unused X-Men #10 cover!

GOLDEN AGE JUSTICE SOCIETY ISSUE! Features on JOHN B. WENTWORTH (Johnny Thunder), LEN SANSONE (The Atom), and BERNARD SACHS (All-Star Comics inker), art by CARMINE INFANTINO, PAUL REINMAN, MART NODELL, STAN ASCHMEIER, BEN FLINTON, and H.G. PETER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY to a vintage All-Star image by IRWIN HASEN!

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Oct. 2013

DRAW! #25

BACK ISSUE #65

BACK ISSUE #66

BACK ISSUE #67

BACK ISSUE #68

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, and “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software! Mature readers only.

“Bronze Age B-Teams”! Defenders issue-byissue overview, Champions, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, PETER DAVID’s X-Factor, Teen Titans West, Legion of Substitute Heroes, an all-star chatfest of Doom Patrol interviews, plus art and commentary by ROSS ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, KEITH GIFFEN, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ERIK LARSEN, GEORGE PÉREZ, BOB ROZAKIS, cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

“Bronze Age Team-Ups”! Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, CLAREMONT and SIMONSON’s X-Men/New Teen Titans, DC Comics Presents, SuperTeam Family, HANEY and APARO’s Batman of Earth-B(&B), Superman/Captain Marvel smackdowns, plus art and commentary by BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, LEVITZ, WEIN, and a classic GIL KANE cover inked anew by TERRY AUSTIN.

“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang.

Mignola cover.

“1970s and ‘80s Legion of Super-Heroes!”

LEVITZ interview, the Legion’s Honored Dead, the Cosmic Boy miniseries, a Time Trapper history, the New Adventures of Superboy, Legion fantasy cover gallery by JOHN WATSON, plus BATES, COCKRUM, CONWAY, COLON, GIFFEN, GRELL, JANES, KUPPERBERG, LaROCQUE, LIGHTLE, SCHAFFENBERGER, SHERMAN, STATON, SWAN, WAID, & more! COCKRUM cover!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships July 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships August 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Sept. 2013

Ambitious new series documenting each decade of comic book history!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1960-64 & The 1980s

JOHN WELLS covers comics in the 1960-64 JFK and Beatles era: DC’s new GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE and multiple earths!

LEE and KIRBY at Marvel on FF, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, and X-MEN! BATMAN’s “new look”, Charlton’s BLUE BEETLE, CREEPY #1 & more!

MODERN MASTERS: CLIFF CHIANG

Spotlights the career of CLIFF CHIANG (artist of DC’s New 52 breakout hit WONDER WOMAN series) through a career-spanning interview, and loads of both iconic and rarely seen artwork from Cliff’s personal files. There’s also an in-depth look into the artist’s work process, and an extensive gallery of commissioned pieces, many in full-color. By CHRIS ARRANT and ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON.

1960-64: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-045-8 • Out now!

1980s: (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-046-5 • Out now!

(192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-051-9 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 • Ships July 2013

All characters TM & ©2013 their respective owners.

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Editions) $4.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-050-2 Ships May 2013

THE STAR*REACH COMPANION

Complete history of the influential 1970s independent comic, featuring work by and interviews with DAVE STEVENS, FRANK BRUNNER, HOWARD CHAYKIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALTER SIMONSON, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, KEN STEACY, JOHN WORKMAN, MIKE VOSBURG, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, DAVE SIM, MICHAEL GILBERT, and many others, plus full stories from STAR*REACH and its sister magazine IMAGINE. Cover by CHAYKIN! MATURE READERS ONLY.

KEITH DALLAS documents comics’ 1980s Reagan years: Rise and fall of JIM SHOOTER, FRANK MILLER as comic book superstar, DC’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, MOORE and GAIMAN’s British invasion, ECLIPSE, PACIFIC, FIRST, COMICO, DARK HORSE and more!

DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART

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COMICS PROS IN THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY

Documents his 60-year career on DELL and GOLD KEY’S licensed TV and Movie adaptions (LOST IN SPACE, KORAK, MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, MIGHTY SAMPSON), at DC COMICS (BATMAN, UNKNOWN SOLDIER, TOMAHAWK, JONAH HEX, TEEN TITANS, BLACKHAWK), his CROSSFIRE series for ECLIPSE, DARK HORSE’S INDIANA JONES series and more, with rare artwork, personal photos, and private commission drawings. Written by JOHN COATES.

Offers invaluable tips for anyone entering the Video Game field, or with a fascination for both comics and gaming. KEITH VERONESE interviews artists and writers who work in video games full-time: JIMMY PALMIOTTI, CHRIS BACHALO, MIKE DEODATO, RICK REMENDER, TRENT KANIUGA, and others. Whether you’re a noob or experienced gamer or comics fan, be sure to get PLUGGED IN!

(160-page trade paperback) $19.95 • (Digital Edition) $6.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-048-9 • Ships May 2013

(104-page trade paperback) $14.95 • (Digital Edition) $4.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-049-6 • Ships May 2013

(128-page trade paperback with COLOR) $16.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-047-2 • (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Now shipping!

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• Back Issue, Draw, Alter Ego & Comic Book Collector are now all full-color!

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2013 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

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BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$60

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$85

$107

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DRAW! (4 issues)

$30

$40

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$54

$78

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ALTER EGO (8 issues)

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$107

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

$36

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BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$57

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$128

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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

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THE BEST OF ALTER EGO, VOL. 2

This sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE presents more vintage features from the first super-hero fanzine, begun by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS. Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY reveal undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published from 1961-78, including features on Hawkman, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the JLA, All Winners Squad, the Heap, an unsold “Tor” newspaper strip by JOE KUBERT, and more!