Below: Character sketch from Steve Rude and Mike Baron’s unpublished project, Origami. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 Mike Baron and Steve Rude.
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but then they said, “We need 20 more pages.” So, when we put the book out, it was 32 pages of story, but what we showed them initially was just the first 12 pages. CBA: So, you guys hit it off, and you did the three issues of the b-&-w Nexus. Do you have any memories of the response to that? Mike: Everyone seemed to like it. [laughs] CBA: So there was a lot of enthusiasm for the project? Mike: Yes. I don’t remember anybody coming up and spitting in my face or anything. [Chris laughs] You know, fans are named fans because they’re fannish about new projects, and if you do halfwaydecent, fans will be enthusiastic, and we were halfway-decent, and they were enthusiastic. CBA: Were you guys making enough money out of Nexus to quit your day jobs? Mike: Not really, no. Not for about a year and a half, and after it attracted attention, and Mike Gold came by and said, “I want you to write Flash,” and we got this deal with First, once we went with First and they started coming out monthly, I could quit my day job. CBA: And you were still working on the insurance? Mike: No, actually, I was just freelancing at a newspaper, rolling old ladies for quarters. CBA: So, Nexus does well enough as a black-&-white title to merit a color title, and then you chimed in with The Badger. Was The Badger a character you had formulated before, in the dim past? Mike: The Badger is more uniquely mine. I had Badger in mind before I found Jeffrey. Of course, he put his indelible stamp on it, I’m speaking of Jeff Butler, the original Badger artist. But it was just a combination of things, I’d always been fascinated with multiple personalities—and around here, it’s badger this and badger that, and I wanted to do a regionally-based comic. CBA: I’ve never made that connection before. So the color Capital line starts, and does pretty well, presumably? Mike: I have no idea. [laughs] CBA: You were never told, you were kept in the dark, as far as figures and royalties... Mike: Well, Capital wanted to publish comics, but they were much better at distributing than publishing, or they never would’ve sold those titles. CBA: They had very high production values on these titles. Mike: Yes, they did. CBA: Was this all done in Madison, or did they farm some of this out to shops outside Madison? Mike: Coloring was all done here by Les Dorschied. CBA: To me, that is the essence of the titles, I was just so blown away by those books when they came out. I just read them and re-
read them. The coloring, and the production, there was so much going on. Unfortunately, the crash of ’83 sweeps away Capital with it, and two of your titles, as well as Whisper, are homeless. Then, First comes out of Chicago, and scoops them up. Do you want to talk a little about that? Mike: Well, we were lucky to land with First. They were always interested. Again, it was a regional appeal. CBA: Midwestern solidarity? Mike: Sort of. [laughter] They weren’t the only publisher that was interested. I liked them, I was very impressed with what they’d done initially with Warp and American Flagg!, I liked the product. CBA: American Flagg! was a big hit at the time. Mike: I liked that they were closer than any other publisher, so I could drive down there and bang on their door if they owed me money. So, we had a meeting with those guys, and we ended up with First. CBA: How many of the stories that were printed in the early run of the first title were actually done for Capital? Mike: Oh, one at most. CBA: It was a pretty smooth transition? Mike: Oh, yeah. When you think about First Comics and the fact that Dude managed to turn out, I don’t know, nine or ten issues a year there, I mean, he was never really quite monthly. But we whipped him into quite a gallop at one point! [laughter] CBA: I’ve heard whispers in the wind of Steve’s lack of prodigious output in recent years, but I’d never had an inkling of that in the early days, because it seemed Nexus was pretty regular. Mike: Well, it was regular, and I say that not because he’s slow— he’s not slow—but when you look at his art, it’s so beautifully designed, it takes a lot of time, and he’s not one of those guys that just slaps sh*t down on the page. CBA: Sometime in the run where you’re doing Nexus, and Badger was also picked up by First, Mike Gold called you, and you start writing The Flash. I presume this was about ’86? Mike: Yeah. CBA: Was The Flash a favorite character of yours? Mike: I liked The Flash, I initially had this big burst of energy, and I had all these great ideas, then I ran out of ideas. [laughs] I shouldn’t admit this, but that’s why I stopped doing the book. I didn’t know what to do next! Now, I look at guys like William Messner-Loebs who’ve kept it going for years and years and years… but it just wasn’t my groove at that point, you know? CBA: You had no real affinity for the character? Mike: I liked the character a lot, I had tremendous affinity for the personality, but it was the powers that I got lost on. I’m probably too literal to deal with a mind-bending power like faster than light travel or anything like that, because I’m always looking for scientific principles to back it up, and if I can’t find any, then I just throw my hands in the air and just say, “Oh! I don’t know what I’m going to do!” and just be silly, and he’ll visit the Bizarro World. [laughter] CBA: Was that a concern of yours with Nexus as well? Mike: No, not really. CBA: Nexus was more flights of fantasy. Mike: All-encompassing. I think one of the reasons is that.. not being constrained by any other version of the universe, or who should be in the book, if we just allow the Nexus Universe to kind of grow naturally, and what happened was we created so many diverse characters and situations that I’m never at a loss for story ideas. CBA: It’s your own little universe that you can explore at will. Now, at some point, you start doing The Punisher for Carl Potts, as well. How did that come about? Mike: Carl asked me to. CBA: You teamed up with Klaus Janson for that. Do you have any reflections on your time on that? Mike: The first year-and-a-half when Carl was editor were great, I did it as a straight crime book, I tried to keep all the supernatural and super-hero aspects out of it completely. Then, Don Daley became editor, and Don kept coming up with story ideas of his own. The Punisher kept getting drawn more and more into the Marvel Universe, Doctor Doom and all these other clowns… [laughter] and finally we ended up with this ridiculous plot where he became a black man like Black Like Me, and it was just… humiliating. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 8
May 2000