Comic Book Artist Special Edition #2 by TwoMorrows Publishing

COMPILING BONUS MATERIAL FROM ALL 3 COLLECTIONS!

E D I T I O N

# 2

S P E C I A L

KIRBY • WEISS • WRIGHTSON • JONES • ENGLEHART & ROGERS • SIMONSON • GULACY

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

C O N T E N T S CBA #1-3 COVER GALLERY! Devoid of logos, here’s the exquisite Neal Adams and Gil Kane cover art in glorious full color! ..............................................2 ALAN WEISS INTERVIEW: “THAT KID FROM OUT WEST!” The artist discusses his days at DC and Marvel with tons of incredible artwork! ......................................................................6 “DEDICATED NURSE!” PAGES FROM AN UNPUBLISHED JACK KIRBY ‘SOUL LOVE’ STORY The greatest super-hero comics artist of all time give us the 411 on black romance in this unpubbed story ..........................24 “BEDAZZLED!” PAGES FROM A LOST JEFFREY JONES STORY Pages from an unfinished House of Secrets story, penciled and partially inked by the splendid Jeff Jones! ............................30 BERNIE WRIGHTSON MINI-PORTFOLIO Unpublished Wrightson drawings ............................................................................................................................................36 SPECIAL SECTION! THE STORY BEHIND THE ENGLEHART/ROGERS/AUSTIN/WORKMAN/SCHWARTZ BATMAN! STEVE ENGLEHART INTERVIEW: GETTING BACK TO BASICS The noted scribe discusses his legendary 1970s run and the essence of the Darknight Detective ............................................38 MORE STEVE ENGLEHART: THE ENGLEHART OUTTAKES Excised from his CBA #18 interview, here we feature the writer’s comments on his background and philosophy ..................46 WALTER SIMONSON INTERVIEW: PRELUDE—DR. PHOSPHOROUS A candid recollection of his short Batman stint with collaborators Englehart and Milgrom by the remarkable artist ..............52 ALLEN MILGROM INTERVIEW: BREAKDOWNS AND THE BATMAN The artist/editor on his two-issue inking assignment over Simonson and working with the Rogers/Austin team ....................55 MARSHALL ROGERS INTERVIEW: THE RISE OF MARSHALL ROGERS Remembering his breakthrough on the Batman, the artist also looks back on his career in comics..........................................58 TERRY AUSTIN INTERVIEW: THE ARTISTRY OF TERRY AUSTIN The sublime inker recalls his early days in comics and the bittersweet Batman assignment ....................................................68 JOHN WORKMAN INTERVIEW: SIGN OF THE BAT Memories of retro look on the fondly recalled Detective Comics story arc by the renowned artist/letterer/editor..................76 BONUS! A LOOK AT DC’S CANCELLED COMICS CAVALCADE Courtesy of Bill Alger and Michael Grabois, we take a gander at the legendary, ultra-rare compilation from the 1970s ........79 PAUL GULACY ART GALLERY Courtesy of the artist and Numero Uno Gulacy fan Dave Lemieux ....................................................................................................88 THE MIGHTY MARVEL VALUE STAMP STORY Forget those S&H green stamps and inverted Jennys! Rob Anderson uncovers the real ’70s happenin’ hobby ..................................92 KILLRAVEN OF THE APES! British Marvel’s weird morphing of “War of the Worlds” with Planet of the Apes is examined by Rob Kirby ..................................98 JAY LYNCH & COMIX BOOK The veteran underground cartoonist on why he chose not to work on the Marvel black-&-white comix mag ................................109 MR. MONSTER SCRAPBOOK GHOULISHLY GLORIOUS GALLERY Way cool look at awesome oddities ’n’ delights from Michael T. Gilbert’s vault of eerie esoterica..................................................110 SOLVING THE HOSTESS TWINKIE MYSTERY WITH BOB ROZAKIS Seanbaby conducts a riotous (albeit brief) interview with the writer on those strange snack cake ads ............................................116 COMIC BOOK ARTIST Special Edition Two ©2013 Jon B. Cooke & TwoMorrows Publishing Jon B. Cooke, Editor and Designer • John Morrow, Publisher

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, 919-449-0344 E-Mail: twomorrow@aol.com, Web: www.twomorrows.com Digital Edition published April 2013, compiling the new material from Comic Book Artist Collection, Volumes 1-3 COPYRIGHTS: Abel, Adam Strange, Anthro, Aquaman, Atomic Knights, Bat Lash, Batgirl, Batman, Big Barda, Black Canary, Blackhawk, Blue Beetle, Brother Power the Geek, Cain, Calculator, Captain Fear, Captain Marvel, Challengers of the Unknown, Clayface, Deadman, Deadshot, Deserter, Doom Patrol, Dr. Phosphorus, Enemy Ace, Flash, Funky Flashman, Granny Goodness, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Harley Quinn, Hawkman, Hugo Strange, Inferior Five, Jimmy Olsen, Joker, Jonah Hex, Justice League of America, Kamandi, Kid Flash, Mad Hatter, Manhunter, Metamorpho, Mr. Miracle, Odd Man, OMAC, Penguin, Phantom Stranger, Prez, Robin, Sandman, Sarge Steel, Sgt. Rock, Shade, Shazam, Silver St. Cloud, Stanley and His Monster, Steel, Streaky the Super-Cat, Superboy, Supergirl, Superman, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans, The Creeper, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Tomahawk, Tommy Tomorrow, Vixen, Warlord , Wonder Woman ™&©2013 DC Comics. • Absorbing Man, Ancient One, Angel, Ant-Man, Apeslayer, Avengers, Balder, Baron Mordo, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Black Widow, Brother Voodoo, Bucky, Bucky Barnes, Byrrah, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Carrion, Clea, Cyclops, Daredevil, Deathlok, Doctor Strange, Dominic Fortune, Dormammu, Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, Dragon Man, Electro, Enchantress, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Femizons, Galactus, General Ross, Ghost Rider, Gladiator, Glob, Golem, Goliath, Green Goblin, Grey Gargoyle, Grim Reaper, Gwen Stacey, Hammerhead, Havok, Hawkeye, Hela, Hercules, Howard the Duck, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Girl, Iron Fist, Iron Man, J. Jonah Jameson, Ka-Zar, Kang, Killraven, Kingpin, Kraven, Leader, Lilith, Living Mummy, Lizard, Loki, Magneto, Man-Thing, Man-Wolf, Mandarin, Mantis, Marvel Girl, Mary Jane Watson, Master of Kung Fu, Medusa, Mephisto, Modok, Mole Man, Molecule Man, Moon Knight, Morbius, Mr. Fantastic, Ms. Marvel, Mysterio, Nick Fury, Nightcrawler, Odin, Omega the Unknown, Owl, Plunderer, Power Man, Professor X, Prowler, Puppet Master, Quicksilver, Rawhide Kid, Red Ghost, Red Guardian, Red Raven, Red Skull, Rhino, Rick Jones, Sandman, Sauron, Sgt. Fury, Shang-Chi, Shanna the She-Devil, SHIELD, Sif, Silver Surfer, Simon Garth, Son of Satan, Spider-Man, Starhawk, Stranger, Sub-Mariner, Super-Skrull, Swordsman, Thing, Thor, Tomb of Dracula, Triton, Vision, Volstagg, Vulture, War of the Worlds, Warlock, Warriors of the Shadow Realm, Wasp, Watcher, Werewolf by Night, Wolverine, X-Men , Zemo, Zombie ™&©2013 Marvel Characters Inc. • American Flagg!, Time2 ©2013 Howard V. Chaykin Inc. • Bizarre Heroes, Border Worlds, Megaton Man, Ms. Megaton Man, Pteranoman ©2013 Don Simpson. • Cap'n Quick and the Foozle, Dalgoda, Demonslayer, Djinn, The Dog and Pup, Elvira, Evangeline, Harold Hedd, Kiss, Kung Fu, Nightingale, Quark, Steve Canyon, Thundercats, Vanity ©2013 the respective copyright holders. • Captain Action ™&©2013 the respective copyright holder. • Conan, Kull, Red Sonja ™&©2013 Conan Properties. • Detectives Inc. ©2013 Donald Francis McGregor. • Donald Duck ©2013 Walt Disney Inc. • Dynamo ©2013 John Carbonaro. • Eerie, Creepy ©2013 Warren Publishing Inc. • Elric ©2013 Michael Moorcock. • Forever Warriors ©2013 Richard Buckler Sr. • Fu Manchu ©2013 the Sax Rohmer Estate. • Goodman Beaver ©2013 Harvey Kurtzman Estate. • Groo ™&©2013 Sergio Aragonés. • Heathcliff ™&©2013 Creators Syndicate. • Hot Wheels ©2013 Mattel. • Indiana Jones, Star Wars ©2013 Lucasfilm. • Inkspots, Kelly, Mary Monster, Mr. Monster, The Reflection, The Wraith ©2013 Michael T. Gilbert. • John Carter ™&©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. • Johnny Hazard ™&©2013 King Features Syndicate. • Linus ™&©2013 United Features Syndicate. • Mandro the Barbarian ™&©2013 Roy Thomas & Barry Windsor-Smith. • Maus ©2013 Art Spiegelman. • Nero Wolfe ™&©2013 Columbia Features. • Nevada ©2013 Steve Gerber. • Nexus, Origami ©2013 Mike Baron & Steve Rude. • Pictopia ©2013 Alan Moore & Don Simpson. • Planet of the Apes ™&©2013 20th Century Fox Film Corp. • Rune ™&©2013 Barry Windsor-Smith. • Sable ©2013 Mike Grell. • Space Ghost ©2013 Hanna-Barbera Inc. • Tales of the Green Beret ©2013 Tribune Media Services. • Tarzan ©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. • The Fly ©2013 Archie Publications Inc. • The Prisoner ™&©2013 ITV. • The Rook ©2013 William DuBay. • The Shadow ™&©2013 Condé Nast. • The Spirit ©2013 Will Eisner Estate. • Too Much Coffee Man ©2013 Shannon Wheeler. • Understanding Comics, Zot! ©2013 Scott McCloud. • Vampirella ©2013 Harris Publications Inc.

CBA Collection Extra!

“That Kid from Out West!” Alan Weiss talks about his rootin’, tootin’ times in ’70s comics Right inset: From a tribute to Jack Abel, here’s a Weiss panel featuring young Alan and his brother Howard reading comics. The onepage strip will be featured in TwoMorrow’s autobiographical anthology, Streetwise. Courtesy of the artist. ©2000 Alan Weiss.

Below: Courtesy of the artist, here’s Alan Weiss ready to saddle-up in a recent photo.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson We’re including an interview with Alan Weiss because, for one thing, he’s one of those few artists from the ’70s who was perfectly at home drawing for the Big Two, DC Comics and Marvel—or at Warren, National Lampoon, Esquire, and Atlas/Seaboard, for that matter!—and for another, we think his artwork is simply superb. As enthusiastic today about comics as when he first entered the field in 1970 or so, Alan proves to be a highly entertaining interview, giving insight to some legendary stories of the past and enriching us with ones previously unheard. The artist was interviewed via phone on March 9, 2000, and he copyedited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: There’s very little on you written in the historical record. Alan Weiss: I’m that mysterious, “Who the hell is he?” guy. CBA: I think you first appeared rather early in Silver Age fandom, in the letter column of Fantastic Four #3. Alan: I was there. I didn’t know who the artist of FF was at the time, and I think that’s what the letter was about. Remember, they didn’t credit the jobs quite yet, and I was commenting on the very first issue. “I think your book will be very successful.” Stan wrote something like, “What do you think we are now, chopped liver?” [laughs] They’d just come out of being Atlas Comics. I thought it was pretty brash for them to be calling FF “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine.” [laughs] “Yeah, prove it, sucker—where’s your cape?” [laughter] CBA: You were born in Las Vegas? Alan: No, Chicago, but from age seven on, I lived in Las Vegas. CBA: Remember your first comics? Alan: Soon after I got to Vegas. There are some earlier, vague memories of looking at a Lone Ranger comic book, or perhaps Superman, because I used to watch him on TV, and I must have started drawing even that early.

CBA: Your brother Howard is older or younger? Alan: Younger. CBA: Did you both draw together? Alan: Yeah, we did. I have another brother, Curtis, who’s younger than Howard, but it was mostly Howard and I that drew together. My dad, while never a professional, was a hell of an artist and a fine painter, and he knew a lot. He directed us in terms of the fundamentals, the basics. One time, he drove us out to the local newspaper, and we got the end of a giant roll of newsprint, right off the machines, because when they got to the end, they couldn’t use them anymore, but it was enough paper for us for three years. I’d made the decision relatively early that I wanted to have my own style, and the way to do that was to learn real anatomy rather than just drawing versions of other people’s drawings, so that’s what we did. Fortunately, this was before I discovered girls, or else I never would’ve put in the work, I’ll tell you that right now. CBA: [laughs] So, did you seek out the Bridgeman and Burne Hogarth anatomy books? Alan: You bet. Bridgeman, Loomis, Hogarth, and just about everyone else. We learned the Latin names for the muscles really early on, long before I took any courses in anatomy, and certainly before I did any life drawing. CBA: Was your ultimate goal to do super-hero comics, per se? Alan: Yeah, sure! Well, certainly comics. Super-heroes were my favorite thing, but I liked all different kinds of genres. Give me sword-&-sorcery or the Hercules comics being done at the time. I was following the movies, and even then, I always liked cowboy movies and Western stuff. CBA: You were introduced to fandom through the letter pages? Alan: Yeah, I saw the letter from Roy Thomas in Justice League of America that mentioned Alter-Ego, and they printed the address, so I sent for it. That was the beginning in finding this whole other weird world by mail. I did a lot of fanzine work in those days, and that’s how I discovered the old characters, as I’d never seen any of the ’40s comics at all. It was a real delight that at the exact same time, some of the old heroes were coming back into the Marvel books. I was learning about their previous history in the ’40s, like my favorite, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America, of course. My uncle used to tell me about reading those books when he was a kid. CBA: What was it about Sub-Mariner? Alan: I missed the fourth issue of FF with Namor’s revival, and I was frantic to get hold of it. So, I wrote to Marvel—because I was just a little kid, and I didn’t know what they did and didn’t do—and asked, “Do you guys have any extra books, because I sure want one, and I’d be glad to pay for it.” Well, the very day I bought the fifth

issue, FF #4 arrived in the mail from Flo Steinberg, with a little note that said, “Here you go—we happened to have an extra, but don’t worry about it.” So, I got to read them back-to-back, “The SubMariner Returns” plus Subby’s team-up with Dr. Doom, and that was it for me. I was gone! Those two issues blew my mind, and I loved that artwork—and there’s something about Subby… I mean, he is such an absurd idea in so many ways, a guy dressed in a swimsuit. But he had a kind of alien nobility about him, an elfinlooking eeriness, with that weird head and the eyebrows, pointy ears, and really, the stupid idea of the wings on his feet… stupid, but cool, like comic books are supposed to be! [laughter] I have this concept that I haven’t been able to do in print yet about how he can fly with those little, tiny wings… it’s a real great pseudo-scientific explanation… but if you go by straight physics, I don’t think so. [laughter] CBA: Did you seek out the Golden Age issues? Alan: I did eventually send for a few of the earlier issues from the guys who were hawking old comics at the time. I ended up getting some of the ones from the ’50s. CBA: The Bill Everetts? Alan: Yeah, actually that was some of Everett’s best work. In fact, I think it was some of John Romita’s best work on Captain America, too, when John was doing nice, tall figures. Those books were really special. At the same time, I found a couple of Mac Raboy Captain Marvel, Jr.s—Raboy’s right out of Alex Raymond, and that was my favorite stuff. Fortunately, my father encouraged me. He was more into fine arts, but he wasn’t a snob, so he loved good animation and illustration, and he certainly loved Prince Valiant and The Spirit. He remembered The Spirit from the newspaper insert, the cinematic quality of it. It was great to have a father that well-rounded. CBA: Was your father from Chicago? Alan: He was originally from New York, and then lived in Chicago for many years before going out to Las Vegas. He worked at various jobs in the gaming industry; but my grandfather—his father—had been a gambler always, back to the old speakeasy days in New York and Chicago. “Silent Max” had the connections, so he was there when Vegas was first starting up. Casinos used to hire him to not only shill, but also to keep an eye on everybody else, because he could spot the cheaters. It was just kind of a cool thing. So, both my father and his brother followed him out to Vegas. I was real sick as a kid, with very bad asthma, so they thought it would be a good idea for us to be in a warm, dry climate.

CBA: Was growing up in Las Vegas like one would imagine—provocative? Alan: I don’t know if it’s like what you’d imagine! “Nobody lives there, do they?” [laughter] You know, we were kids, didn’t go near the gambling. We just got to sort of enjoy the fringe benefits of it, the pretty lights and the food. Mainly, as kids, we had desert two blocks away from anywhere you were at that time, so you could run around, chase lizards, and play cowboys. It was just really a great place! Of course, when we first landed, I was very disappointed. “Where are all the horses? What are these taxicabs doing here?” I was a little kid, I thought it was going to be like a Western movie. I had no idea we were actually going into the modern West. I thought we were just going to ride horses from then on, there wouldn’t be any cars… CBA: The Wayback Machine. [laughs] Alan: But it’s an amazing place. Everybody dwells on just the strip or the downtown area, but 40 miles in one direction you’ve got the world’s largest man-made lake, with that fantastic dam across the Colorado River, and a few miles in the other direction, you’re up in the mountains, where you can ski in the Winter. Every time I’d go back there, I’d have friends come through, and it was great to take them out of the city… like Steve Englehart. We’d go up to Pine Creek and spend a day going around checking out the petroglyphs, you know, and making up stories. Vegas is really beautiful, but it’s become so huge and congested compared to what it was—about 50 times larger than what it was back then, and a whole lot more pollution—but it’s still a great town. It really is the adult Disneyland, if you can take that as a compliment. [laughter] My brothers are still there. I went to school there, UNLV. “Tumbleweed Tech,” it was called back then. CBA: Did you make a conscious decision then that you were going to be a comic book artist at a certain stage? Alan: It’s the kind of decision you make in stages. You say, “I’d like to do this, but I don’t know if it’s really a practical thing,” so you think, “Maybe I’ll become a medical artist,” or “Maybe something in design.” None of them quite got to the level of reality, but I worked for both newspapers in town, working my way, proverbially, through college, so…. CBA: What were you doing? Alan: Artwork. Different kinds of things, some for the paper, some

Above: Detail of a Solomon Kane pin-up by Alan Weiss, the same work the artist and pal Jim Starlin “liberated” from a fan during a 1976 cross-country trip. The omitted section of the drawing features a gruesome sex crime murder scene. Courtesy of the artist. Art ©2000 Alan Weiss. Solomon Kane ©2000 Robert E. Howard Estate.

Left inset: Page from Alan’s 1968 fanzine comics story, “Boy, You Sure Don’t Look Like a Hero,” appearing in Star Studded Comics #13. The entire six-page tale can be found reprinted in compiler Bill Schelly’s Fandom’s Finest Comics Vol. 2. ©2000 Alan Weiss. 7

CBA Interview Extra

Bringing Back the Bat Steve Englehart returns the Darknight Detective to his roots Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff

Steve Englehart, noted Marvel writer of the early to mid-1970s (as well as numerous other companies and time-frames) only briefly resided as a DC Comics scribe when he first arrived in 1976. In fact, his work on Justice League of America, Mister Miracle and Detective Comics lasted a mere 12 months, as Steve intended this to be his last year in the industry as he hoped to move on to a new career as a science-fiction author of “real” books. But what a year that was! Though destined to periodically return to the field, his Batman stories, drawn by artists Walter Simonson and newcomer Marshall Rogers respectively, are considered to be classics. [CBA interviewed the writer in our 18th issue regarding his ’70s Marvel work.] This interview took place by phone on and the transcript was copyedited by Steve. Comic Book Artist: What did you think of the Batman overall? Steve Englehart: He was always my favorite character. I can remember as a little kid reading a Batman comic book, Detective Comics #230. (I saw it 20 years later on sale and instantly knew it was the one I had read.) I remember going to doubleheader baseball games with my father; we would stop and pick up a comic book somewhere, and Batman was always the character that I wanted. In many ways, he’s the archetypal comic book character because he, among all them, works best in black-&white. That, of course, is the basis for all comics, but

any other comic book character needs color to be defined. I was also always a sucker for a nice black line in the artwork, whether it was Paul Murry’s Mickey Mouse or Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. When I was a kid, Dick Sprang was drawing Batman and his stories were always spectacular. All in all, I liked the character and was more than happy to get a chance to write him. CBA: Before you wrote Batman, did you have any exposure to the quintessential Batman of the early Detective Comics, the pre-Robin stories? Steve: When I got this gig at DC, the first thing I did was to ask for photocopies of those stories from their library. DC has all the comics they’ve ever published in nice bound volumes in a room somewhere in the building. So they agreed and got somebody to get me all that stuff. In fact, Denny O’Neil got interested and got a second set made for him. They gave me the first two or three years of his appearances in Detective and Batman in gray xeroxes (which were not all that clear but good enough). I always knew that Batman had come from a pulp background, knew about his connection to the Shadow and the Spider—that general dark-hooded thing had been around before Batman first appeared. That I knew from Steranko’s wonderful History of Comics. So I just soaked in those photocopies, getting the whole pulp atmosphere of the character, which certainly had a big effect on what I did with him. CBA: Obviously, your intention was to get back to the essence of the character, the quintessential Batman? Steve: When I came over to DC Comics, [publisher] Jenette Kahn had just taken over and she wanted me to revamp the Justice League to get them up to speed with the Marvel characters. I really didn’t have an objection, but I did say, “Well, I really want to do the Batman.” I like a lot of those Justice League characters and had a good time with the Hawkpeople, Wonder Woman, and so forth, but Batman was the guy that I was most interested in. Most people’s concept of Batman in 1975 was based on the late ‘60s television show. If you went out on the street and asked people about the character, they’d say, “Oh yeah, that campy Adam West thing with all the pops and pows and bams.” Nobody outside of comics was taking him seriously as a general concept. CBA: In the interim, the character reached a highpoint under Neal Adams and Denny O’Neil. Steve: Absolutely. I had worked with Neal during some of that time, but that was a period where DC was steadily losing readership to Marvel. Neal had even gone over to draw X-Men and Avengers. Denny and Neal had done work which certainly caught the attention of comic book readers, but as a general concept, most people on the street didn’t know about that stuff. I don’t think DC or I expected to change that perception, but there was a feeling that because I was well known and coming off some regarded runs of Marvel titles at the time, my coming to DC would help put them—and Batman—back on the map. I knew I would enjoy writing the strip and realized that I had just come off some top stuff at the competition, so I had a pretty good regard for what I might be able to do. But, going into it, I didn’t think it would as become as big as it did become. I just knew that I was going to do something that was going to make me happy. CBA: Was Batman the top-selling character at the company at that time? Steve: I have no idea. During the TV show’s heyday, they sold a million copies

each. But by the mid-’70s, most of the top creative people had left DC and the company was in a pretty moribund state. I don’t mean to malign anybody good who was still there, but as a general concept, Marvel was the hip-happening place to be and that’s where most people, even Gil Kane, guys who had been doing this forever at DC— they were now all over at Marvel. I don’t know how Batman was selling but the entire line was definitely not selling as well as DC would have liked. CBA: While I don’t have any factual evidence to back this up, there was a general perception that while Batman was tops in the mid- to late ‘60s, by 1970 sales had slipped again. Then, at some point in the late ‘70s into the ‘80s, he ascended again and continues to be the top-selling character at the company. You came on at time which arguably was a pretty dry time for comics, creatively. It seemed to be that a lot of people had left the field to try their hands independently. At the time, some of the only rays of hope were from Michael Golden, a young Frank Miller and, of course, the Englehart/Rogers/Austin Batman story arc. Were you drifting away from comics? Did you feel like it was becoming a stagnant field? Steve: I just wanted out. I don’t think I thought comics were stagnating at that time. To me, everything was viable as ever, but I could have been wrong. I still think there were several more years of good energy to be had before things begin to drift away, but a lot of that is in the mind of the beholder. All I had planned to do was be a Marvel writer and all of a sudden I was on the phone telling Gerry Conway that I was not going to work there anymore. I certainly had no plan in

place about what I was going to do when I left Marvel because I just up and quit. When Jenette called and said, “We’d like for you to do some stuff for us,” it was like, “Okay, that works.” At that point, comics were a disappointment to me (but little did I know how much of a disappointment they were going to be before it was all over) [laughter]. I just told her I didn’t want to write comics long term or be involved in the business. There was too much petty bullsh*t. So I told DC that I would write for one year and then I’d be gone. CBA: Was that by verbal agreement or did you have a contract? Steve: Just verbal. I knew from the start that that one year was going to be all I’d ever do, so I better pour everything that I wanted to do with the character into those Batman stories, as well as everything I had wanted to do with the Justice League. It was a good thing in that regard. CBA: Your tenure on Detective Comics is very self-contained, almost like chapters of a graphic novel. Steve: Nobody thought about graphic novels in those days. I did not sit down and say here’s what I will do issue by issue and how it will all end up. I was still working in my usual fashion: I know where I want to start, know some things that I want to do and I’ll throw some balls in the air and see how it all comes down. The climax with Silver and Boss Thorne just evolved during the course of writing it. But I did know that I was going to have to wrap it up. I couldn’t go on ad infinitum by my decision. CBA: Did you want to be teamed with a specific artist for the entire run?

CBA Interview Bonus

The Englehart Outtakes Spending a bit more time with the writer on his background Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson As promised in Comic Book Artist #18, the special issue devoted to the Cosmic Comics of the 1970s, what follows are outtakes from writer Steve Englehart’s interview, detailing pertinent biographical information of the outspoken scribe’s life. We thank Steve for his patience and understanding. This interview was conducted by phone on Dec. 16, 2002, and was copyedited by Steve.

Below: Another laudable Englehart project from DC Comics in the later ’70s was his revival (with— surprise!—artist Marshall Rogers) of Mister Miracle. Here’s a shot of Steve during a visit to a comic shop during those years, where he met Scott Free, Big Barda, and some gloomy cat name Darkseid. Courtesy of the writer. Characters ©2002 DC Comics.

Comic Book Artist: Steve, where are you originally from? Steve Englehart: I spent most of my childhood in Louisville, Kentucky, but when I was 13, we moved up to Indianapolis, where the rest of my family still lives. CBA: How many siblings do you have? Steve: One brother, one sister. I’m the oldest. CBA: Were you drawn to comics at a young age? Steve: Yeah, I liked comics as far back as I can remember. The stuff that I enjoyed were the “dark” ones, Batman, Dick Tracy, and even the Mickey Mouse mysteries in the back of Walt Disney Comics and Stories. Paul Murry’s Mickey Mouse was the version I was into. (Murry came along after Floyd Gottfriedson, and he had a nice, black, juicy line. I was always a sucker for a juicy line.) CBA: Those were the back-ups with Goofy as the side-kick? Steve: Yes, they were three-part mysteries. They were pretty fun. CBA: Did you start drawing at a young age? Steve: I didn’t know until sometime towards the end of my college days that I wanted to draw comics, but I always drew and always wrote, and there do exist comics I did when I was seven, which I would write and draw. But there are also novels I’d type out, and

make sure all the pages came out right, so if I folded them together, they’d work. I was always doing projects like that. CBA: Did your homemade comics feature established characters, or were they your own knockoffs? Steve: Both. Like a lot of other kids, I was inspired by “Mickey Mouse,” and I did Paul Murry-like stories, but I was also creating my own characters. I was also inspired by the Dick Tracy reprints, where they’d take the original art and add to it on the side, I always thought that was kind of cool, you could see where it was done, so it was like solving an old mystery. There was about a year when I cut out all the Dick Tracy strips out of the newspaper and pasted them up and drew on the outsides of them to make them look like the comics. As we talk, I’m sitting here coloring “Russell’s Christmas Adventure,” a free project I’m releasing on the Web. So I color, draw, write; I do all that stuff. Even the process, I guess, of doing comics, publishing, whatever. All the different aspects of it have always fascinated me, too. I don’t letter, but I’m impressed by people who do! [laughter] CBA: Did you drop out of comics during adolescence? Steve: Yes, I got too old for them. When I was 13 or 14, I read an issue of Superboy where somebody wrote in and asked, “How come Superboy doesn’t fight the Communists?” and the editor’s answer was, “Well, he just doesn’t, because Superboy’s not involved in that kind of stuff.” I thought, “Eh, I don’t know… in the real world, people fight Communists!” (This was back when they did.) So, I said, “This is fantasy, not reality, and I’m interested in reality.” It’s interesting to me that I delve into fantasy with my work, but I always try to base it in some sort of reality, even if it’s Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer or Green Lantern, any characters like that. If it were real, it’d be like such-and-such. So, I’ve always had a real strong interest in what’s real, though I consider magic to be real, on one level or another, so I can incorporate that into my world view. At that time, Superboy was just pure fantasy, and I said, “I’m not interested in pure fantasy, I want something that’s got a little more meat to it.” So I gave up on comics when I was a teenager. CBA: Did you get into juvenile literature at all? Steve: Well, I read The Hardy Boys when I was younger. My dad had actually kept a lot of his Hardy Boys collection from when he was a kid, so I was able to read the 1920s versions, and I thought it was interesting to see a different reality, one from the ’20s. Frank and Joe would ride their little putt-putt motorcycles, and their fabulous little motorboats, and they called each other “chap.” [laughter] CBA: Did you read juvenile science-fiction, or did you develop more mature tastes early on? Steve: Actually, I was reading a lot. In high school, I was read-

ing a lot of Shell Scott, who was a very funny, very ’50s sort of private detective who always had a lot of sexy babes around. It’s action and mystery, but the guy’s also funny! Plus he got laid a lot! [laughter] But I was never big on science-fiction. It’s not that I dislike it, but I never really went into it. I’ve read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Ray Bradbury—the classics in that sense—but I really spent my time on mysteries. I read a lot of Ellery Queen, Perry Mason, Shell Scott. I think that’s what I went after in comics: Action-adventure and mystery. Mind puzzles were always interesting. CBA: Did you read Doc Savage when he was resurrected in the Bantam paperbacks? Steve: Yes, I read those, and a couple of The Shadow books, and while I like The Shadow as a concept,the books didn’t do a whole lot for me. I did read the first 80 or so Doc Savage novels. CBA: [laughs] “The first 80 or so”? Steve: Well, they were coming out monthly, but I read most of them when I first came into comics. It was just an adjunct to my comics work. CBA: Where did you go to college?. Steve: Wesleyan, in Connecticut. CBA: What brought you there? Steve: I wanted to go East. Again, I’d lived in the Midwest—well, Louisville is quasi-South, sort of on the border. I wanted to see the world beyond the Midwest. Wesleyan is not an Ivy League school, because it’s too small, but if it were bigger, it would be, and it was only a couple of hours outside New York City. I liked the location and the ambiance of going East to college. I was just 18, I wanted to see some other part of the world. CBA: When did you get into college? Steve: 1965. I graduated in ’69. CBA: When did you start thinking about a career as an artist? Steve: When I was in college. Again, Wesleyan’s in Middletown, which is only half an hour away from Derby, Connecticut. One rainy Friday afternoon, I either didn’t have class or bailed out on it, and I didn’t have a car in college, so I hitchhiked down to Derby, and I showed up at Charlton Press, where the editor—a guy named Dick Giordano—was very friendly to this kid showing up in the middle of a rainstorm. He invited me in (they weren’t doing a whole lot on a Friday afternoon) and showed me the printing presses, showed me Steve Ditko pencils, I met Rocko Masteroserio, and I got to know Dick. He lived not too far from Derby, in Bridgeport (which is not all that far from Middletown), so I’d go down and visit Dick once every four months for an afternoon. It’s not like I was hanging on him or anything, but he was a comic book guy, and this was Charlton comics when they were publishing Steve Ditko’s Blue Beetle, Jim Aparo’s “Nightshade,” and that mysterious writer Sergius O’Shaughnessy. This was in the middle of the big Charlton era, and it was right there, pretty much on my doorstep. I was also able to go down to New York City, and go to Marvel, where they said, “We’re a bullpen, and there’s only ten people working here! We have no time for you! Go away!” [laughter] Then I went to DC, and they said, “Really? You’re interested? Come on in and meet Julie Schwartz,” and Julie said, “I’ll spend an hour talking to you. Gee, it sounds like you’re interested. Would you like some copies of The Brave and the Bold”—whatever the Justice League issues were—”I’ve got some extras here, you want any of those?” I went, “Yeah, sure, I would!” Remember, this was back when it was possible to do stuff like that, and of course, all that just fed my appetite. I now knew people in the field, and I was close to comics. Once I got interested, once I got to hang out with Julie Schwartz, Dick Giordano and people like that, I thought, “Well, they’re not weird, demi-god, strange people! These are cool guys!” Once I got into it, I started thinking maybe I’d like to draw comics. Dick was kind enough to critique my stuff. I’d come down and say, “Here’s what I’ve been working on since we last met,” and he’d tell me what was wrong with it,

which was a lot. But he was always nice about it, never judgmental. CBA: Did you take art classes? Steve: No, that was later. Sometime in there, after I moved to New York, after the Army and all that, I took a life-drawing class at one of the major art schools in Manhattan. I did take art classes in college, but they were generalized classes, not comic book courses. CBA: What was the process of working with him? Was it an afterhours kind of thing? Steve: This was while I was still in the Army. I was stationed three hours south of the city down in Aberdeen, Maryland. When I had a three-day pass that allowed me to get up to New York, I’d up and go. You know who Wayne Howard was, right? CBA: Sure! Steve: He also went to Wesleyan, and he had some of his work published by Charlton. So I went back to Wesleyan and saw him. He was the first working professional of my generation that I had met. On that same trip, I dropped back down to New York, went to DC, and ran into Neal. He heard about my situation in the Army (this was before I decided to get out), and he said, “Well, look: How about you take the train up and come to DC every Friday, and I’ll be up here whatever the time is.” I was usually able to get off around 2:00 P.M. in Maryland, drive up to Wilmington, hop on a train, go to New York, show up at DC by 5:00, before everybody had left DC. So I’d work with Neal while he’d be drawing Green Lantern/Green Arrow. I remember we were discussing “Ulysses Star is Still Alive” [GL #79] at one point, telling me about Denny’s scripts, and telling me how he would draw this and that. He was teaching me, and in the early days, it was all, “Here’s what I do, here’s how it happens, now I’ll work on

CBA Interview Extra

The Rise of Marshall Rogers The renowned artist on his breakthrough work with the Batman Opposite page: Marshall Rogers’ painting of the Batman, the character he is perhaps most fondly associated with, from the cover of Phil Seuling’s 1979 Comic Art Convention souvenir book, the event where the artist was the featured guest of honor. Art ©2002 Marshall Rogers. Batman ©2002 DC Comics.

Right: Late ’70s photo of artist Marshall Rogers from the 1979 Comic Art Convention souvenir book, taken by Bob Keenan.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff The unanticipated arrival of Marshall Rogers on the increasingly dull and tepid mainstream comic book scene of the mid- to late 1970s caused a sensation with readers hungry for new and innovative work. Most creators of note from the previous glory years—Neal Adams, Steranko, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Michael W. Kaluta, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog, and many others—had moved on to other fields (including advertising and the then-hot portfolio market), with the anemic industry in dire need of infusion. Along with John Byrne, Michael Golden, a young Frank Miller, and very few others, the fresh blood Marshall gave us were moments of majesty in the comics ghetto of those years, helping to bridge the time when the field would again meet their promise. This interview took place by telephone in the Spring, and was copyedited by the artist. Comic Book Artist: Where are you from? Marshall Rogers: Ardsley, New York.

That’s in Westchester County, about 20 miles north of Manhattan. It’s just next to Dobbs Ferry. CBA: What did your father do? Marshall: He was an electrical engineer. CBA: Did you have anyone else who was artistic in your family? Marshall: Well, my dad. After he died at a fairly early age, I was going through some of his stuff and found single spot cartoons that he had done as contributions to The New Yorker. He never sold them, but had aspirations at one time. He was artistic in that all of his free time was spent in rebuilding our house; he was a carpenter and woodcraftsman. That’s how he expressed his artistic side. My mother was a seamstress, not a professional, but she was of tailor quality and did sewing for friends, and that was her artistic outlet. CBA: Was it pretty much a typical Westchester County suburban neighborhood? Marshall: Absolutely. It was a white-bread environment. CBA: Did you spend your entire youth in Westchester? Marshall: Yes. CBA: When did you develop an interest in art? Marshall: As a kid, I read comic books, and that made me want to draw. CBA: How many other siblings do you have? Marshall: One younger sister. CBA: Did you spend a lot of time alone? For instance, did you read comics on your own or did you share them with neighborhood kids? Marshall: Both. I would

have my downtime by myself and had a number of friends who were also into comic books so we would go around the neighborhood, traveling for miles, looking for trades. CBA: Were you initially into the Dell comics, the Walt Disneys? Marshall: Yes. The first comics I actually read were Mickey Mouse Adventures. I soon moved on to the very homogenized Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman of the ’50s. CBA: You obviously missed the ECs, right? Marshall: Yes, I did. I think there was basically a neighborhood censorship on those items. I don’t remember seeing them on newsstands. CBA: Where did you buy your comics? Marshall: There was a luncheonette, about a mile away from my house, in the downtown section of the small community. CBA: Did you have outlets like that where you could buy older comics? Marshall: No, not really. My grandparents lived out in Stonybrook, on Long Island and a very small community at the time and there was a small drugstore and they wouldn’t return their titles, so I would be able to find issues four or five months old and that’s really where I got my first Marvel titles. CBA: So you were able to buy small runs of certain titles? Marshall: Exactly. I actually found X-Men #2 there after buying X-Men #3 or 4 at my own town store. CBA: The artist of those issues, Jack Kirby, was the first artist that influenced you? Marshall: Absolutely. [For a thorough discussion of his memorable late ’70s run on Mister Miracle and Marshall’s opinions regarding Kirby’s work, please refer to Ye Ed’s interview with him in The Jack Kirby Collector #35.] But not just Jack. I was reading everybody. Gil Kane certainly caught my eye. Though Jack was the main influence. I would go down, once a week, buy a stack of comic books, bring them home and arrange them so that the Kirby issues were on the bottom. Then I’d quickly go through the others and then get down to the Jack’s work. CBA: That’s self-discipline! [laughter] How about Steve Ditko? Marshall: In the stack, he was always just above Jack’s work and I would start savoring at that point. CBA: You mentioned in your TJKC interview the impact of Ditko’s first 20 issues or so of Amazing Spider-Man. There was also a wonderful run by Stan Lee and Ditko on “Doctor Strange” in Strange Tales. Do you recall that at all? Strange embarked on an around-the-world sojourn, trying to keep away from Baron Mordru and his minions in astral form. Marshall: Absolutely, and when I did my run on Doctor Strange [#48-53], I went back to those issues of Strange Tales as my source material. CBA: What was it about Ditko’s work that compelled you? Marshall: It was so different, and he was also an artist who put a lot of himself in his work. And I also felt that way about Jack. I got more than a twodimensional feel out of Jack and Steve’s work. I think they were men putting their heart into the material they were doing. CBA: At what point did you say, “Hey, I want to be a comic book artist”? Marshall: As a youngster, I’m sure that I dabbled with the idea, but I never remember announcing it to anyone. I had gone to college more to placate my parents as a dutiful son. They wanted me to get a degree and a career to get on with my life. As a compromise I chose architecture because I thought there would be some artistic outlet afforded me. When I had finished in two years, I had realized that the world probably wouldn’t accept Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in today’s economy at that time. The architecture that I was learning was designing parking lots for malls, heating and cooling systems, and it wasn’t giving me any artistic satisfaction. I realized what I really wanted to do was tell stories and comic books would give me the venue to do that and it was at that point I decided that I wanted to be a comic book artist. CBA: This was in the early ’70s? Marshall: That’s right. CBA: Now, were you aware of that new generation that you’re a part of— Wrightson, Kaluta, Windsor-Smith, etc.—who were coming in at that time? Marshall: Chaykin and Simonson’s work in particular made me feel that I can also do this. I really admire both men’s abilities. They weren’t following the tradition that Neal Adams had established; they were breaking away from that mold. They were working in a more linear, more impressionistic style in their approach to comics and that was what I could also execute. In doing samples, I tried to emulate Neal’s work, but I’m not capable of doing that type of finesse of which Neal is so expert. And that’s not really where my interest lies as much. I had to learn anatomy to tell stories, rather than knowing how to draw to get me into comic books. Storytelling made me want to get into it rather than having the chance to draw. I had to learn how to draw to do what I wanted to do. 59

CBA Interview Extra

The Artistry of Terry Austin The sublime inker on his early years in comics & the Batman Inset right: Fading Polaroid shot of Terry Austin, posing in Continuity Studios in the mid1970s. Courtesy of Terry.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Terry Austin is perhaps the most fondly considered inker in the comic book industry, not only for his superb talents, but because he’s also a truly nice guy. A fan of the art form, first and always (and a very frequent and generous contributor to Comic Book Artist), the artist is best recalled for his award-winning work over John Byrne on The Uncanny X-Men in the late 1970s and early ’80s. He continues to wow readers in the field today. Terry was interviewed by telephone on April 4, 2002 and the artist copyedited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Terry? Terry Austin: Detroit, Michigan. One of our neighbors was a Mrs. Trendle. I found out years later she was the widow of George W. Trendle who created The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet for WXYZ Radio in Detroit. All I knew then was that she made great cookies! [laughter] CBA: Did you get into comics at a young age? Terry: Yes, I bought funny animal comic books as a little kid. At that point, anything you saw on TV you went to the store and there would be a comic book version. Huckleberry Hound and all the very early Hanna-Barbera stuff, anything that was a cartoon ended up on the spinner rack. CBA: Did you copy the comics? Terry: I remember copying what I saw on TV. I was an animation fan initially and then found comic books. I don’t remember much from my childhood, but do recall watching the first episode of The Flintstones and then laying on the floor in front of the set trying to draw Fred and Barney bowling. CBA: From the very first prime time episode? Terry: Right. I was also a big fan of Popeye, one of the first things that I grabbed onto as a kid. Howdy-Doody, and then Popeye. They were showing all the old Max

Fleischer black-&-white Popeye cartoons, and I would run home from school every day and watch that stuff. CBA: Did you get into the DC super-hero books down the line? Terry: The kids at school had Superman, and I thought, “That’s okay; I can get into this.” I got into the DC stuff fairly early on. I really loved Green Lantern, Flash, Atom, Justice League and all that good Silver Age stuff. CBA: Did you clue into the early Marvels? Terry: I remember my parents took me to visit some friends of theirs and I was bored, of course, like every kid who goes with his parents to see friends. So I wheedled some money out of my parents and walked to the nearest store that sold comics, not much of a hike. I’d already got all my regular books that week, but I wasn’t about to go back and give Dad the change since that would set a bad precedent, so I bought some odd-looking books, Fantastic Four #8 and the first Strange Tales Annual, which reprinted all these monster jobs, and I remember just looking at these comics thinking, “Oh, man, there’s something wrong here! Everything’s dark and scary.” [laughter] The DC books were so light and airy and everybody looked pretty. Even the men were awful pretty. But here were these grotesque drawings with too much black in them. I read them and put them away, then I read them again and again and again, and then I’d put them away for a while, and came back and read them again. [laughter] I had the same reaction the first time I saw Alex Toth’s work. It was a while before I bought any more Marvel stuff. A little later, I got hooked into Marvel and gave up DC. In those days you didn’t see every issue because Marvel’s distribution was spotty. Then I eventually looked back at DC when Gil Kane was inking himself and that looked great, and I started buying DC comics again, and had to have everything from both companies. CBA: Was there any appeal to Batman? Terry: Well, I remember buying some of the stuff when I was a kid in the late ’50s, maybe early ’60s, and there were these dopey aliens and stuff, with Batman and Robin always fighting the “Alien from Dimension X.” There was no continuity, certainly, in those days, and the stories just didn’t do much for me, so I didn’t come back to Batman until I saw the first Carmine Infantino cover on Detective Comics, the first “New Look.” I grabbed it and thought, “Oh, man! This looks great!” CBA: So you really clued into the art, specifically? Terry: At some point, yeah, once I got over the odd-looking style over at Marvel, I started picking artists. In those days, I really loved Mike Sekowsky’s art in Justice League. Early on I thought, “All the

characters look great, better than in their own books.” And I loved the artist on Flash, Carmine Infantino, though I didn’t know his name at the time. And I loved Green Lantern, which I later learned was by Gil Kane. CBA: Were you all this time doing your own cartoons? Terry: At some point, I got into doing parodies of the Justice League and stuff like that, though I certainly never showed them to anybody. [laughs] They were just for me. I’m fairly certain nobody else would’ve understood them. CBA: Did you have any experience with early fandom in the ’60s? Terry: No, I honestly didn’t. There was a huge fan base in Detroit, but I just never got near it. Maybe I wasn’t in the right neighborhood. CBA: Did you continue reading comics through high school? Terry: Yes. I still do. It’s just something I’ve never stopped. There was a race riot in Detroit around 1967 and I remember my parents saying we’d better leave, make ourselves scarce for a bit. I remember going down the street to where the drug store was, and everything was closed! There were tanks and army trucks going down the avenue. I remember being really upset because the first Daredevil Annual was due to be out and I couldn’t get a copy. [laughter] “What’s happening? The world’s going crazy! I can’t get my Daredevil Annual!” [laughter] I also recall the last thing I did when we left the house, which we weren’t sure would still be standing when we got back: I took all of my comics and put them under the table, just in case looters might look in the window and go, “Oh boy! Marvel Comics!” and decide to come in and help themselves! [laughter] CBA: When did you start thinking of a career in comics? Terry: I was in Wayne State University in downtown Detroit, where I took all the art classes I could. I had a instructor who had been into EC Comics when he was in college. He had me over to his house one day and actually gave me the remnants of his ECs. (He’d kept them in a locker in his chemistry class, and the chemical fumes had started to eat at the books, so unfortunately, the ones he liked best—Weird Science and the horror titles—he put on top of the stack, and were badly damaged. The ones at the bottom of the stack were great copies of the less interesting Psychoanalysis and that New Trend stuff.) I had another professor who was into underground comix. So I basically did comic book stories for those guys. But I got more into painting, which I did a lot of. The professors didn’t know what to make of it because basically I was painting what I thought of as paperback covers, doing science-fiction and fantasy stuff. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, the commercial fields were looked down on and the true artistes were all painting for galleries. If you painted for commercial purposes, you were viewed with suspicion. So I was very upfront, but it was very funny, because I would say, “Well, I’m trying to illustrate this scene from this story,” and they’d say, “Oh! So you’re trying to point out the inhumanity of the mechanized age and our culture.” [laughter] I’d go, “Well, not really.” And they’d go on this whole diatribe about the symbolic value of what I had done. “No, it’s just a painting of a robot and a guy he killed, y’know?” [laughter] CBA: There’s this “Detroit Mafia” of comics fandom, which included Rich Buckler, Greg Theakston, Jim Starlin, Allen Milgrom, any number of people from the area. Did you know any of them? Terry: I didn’t. I just didn’t run in the same circles. I was in a different part of the city. A couple of guys, Tom Orzechowski and Mike Kucharski, put on a convention and I got involved with them. I was working at a bookstore all through college and it was in Tom’s neighborhood, so I got to know him a little bit, and through him, Mike, and I ended up inking a lot of Mike’s stuff. I did meet Allen Milgrom at a convention in Detroit, about a year before I moved down to New York. I showed him some samples, talked to him for about five minutes. A year later I walked out of somebody’s office up at Marvel, having been soundly rejected again, and Allen looked up and said, “Terry!” I owe him a lot, because I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t remembered me from those five minutes a year earlier. He grabbed me and took me up to Continuity and introduced me to Neal Adams, and that was how I started working. CBA: And the rest is history. [laughter] What made you think of getting into comics? Terry: Where my folks lived in Detroit, across the street, there was

a family whose daughter, Beverly Penberthy, my parents had watched grow up. She became a model in Detroit, moved to New York, became an actress and ended up doing TV. For decades, she was a regular on a soap opera called Another World. Anyway, her parents moved from Detroit to upper Michigan and we’d go up and visit, and one time we came in and there was a huge box of Marvel Comics in their living room. I was, like, “Oh, my God! What’s this?” It turned out that their daughter’s son was visiting and was really into comics. So Beverly and her son, Mark, lived in Westchester County, New York. Of course, Mark and I immediately hit it off because we talked the same language, the language of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. So I’d go up and spend some time in the Summers when he was up there visiting. And before I graduated from college, I flew out to visit them in Westchester. I was coming to New York after I graduated, basically with the intention to paint paperback covers. Somebody had some contact with Rich Buckler and arranged for me to meet him up at Marvel and show some stuff. I did, but didn’t get any work, but I did see the inside of Marvel Comics for the first time. Later, when I graduated, I decided to move to New York as the Penberthys offered to rent me the third floor of their house. In fact, I had gotten to meet John Romita on that earlier trip and showed him my paintings, because Marvel was doing those black-&-white magazines at the time. My mom had said, “Look, you’re going to an office. Make sure that you wear your suit!” so I had these big paintings on stretched

Above: Terry Austin penciled and inked this pin-up of Batman and the Penguin around the same time he was working with Marshall Rogers on the celebrated Detective Comics run. Courtesy of the artist. Characters ©2002 DC Comics.

CBA Interview

Signs of the Bat Letterer John Workman on his contributions to the Batman Above: Interestingly, the distinctive use of drop caps—knocked-out letters within circles—in the captions of the early Golden Age Batman adventures, began in the very same story which first introduced Professor Hugo Strange, in Detective Comics #36, a villain which would appear when letterer John Workman revived the usage briefly during the legendary Steve Englehartscribed run. ©2002 DC Comics.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by LongBox.com Staff Comic Book Artist: Do you recall how you got involved in the project? Were you on staff at DC at the time? John Workman: I was on staff and lettering freelance at night. I would take work home at the end of the day and bring it back the next morning. Mostly, I lettered covers. I had interior-lettered just a handful of books at the time, and Julie Schwartz seemed to like my style. I could never understand why because I didn’t like my style. I was still learning. (I hope I’m still learning today, but at that time, I thought what I was doing was just miserable.) Marshall Rogers was going to be taking over the artwork on Detective Comics, and we

had met in the office and got along real well. So I was supposed to be lettering that. I do remember, in particular, harking back to the old Batman stuff of the early ’40s, Marshall wanted each narrative caption to start with a distinctive initial cap, so I played around with different things there, looking back on the early Batman comics I had. CBA: Did you actually go to the DC library? John: I have a decent collection of Batman from that time period, so I just looked at my own stuff. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t avail myself of the DC library. Years earlier, I would have been in hog heaven sitting there reading comic books at lunch time! I intended on doing that, but I just never did. CBA: Did you appreciate the lettering in the early Detectives? John: Oh, yes! A lot the very early stuff was lettered by Jerry Robinson and George Roussos, I believe. CBA: Were you distinctive also with the word balloons or was that homage too? John: That was me trying to come up with balloons that worked. I used a French curve on those and gave them a distinctive look. I never was completely happy, but I hated my earlier word balloons. I didn’t come up with a type of word balloon that I was happy with until I started to work with Walt Simonson on Thor. CBA: Which were just circles, weren’t they? John: Pretty much; they were ovals. I actually used templates for them and would stretch and play with them. Initially, I would do them in pencil and then ink them freehand. After a while, I just started using the template directly and inking from that. Although even with the templates, I do some things to give the “ballooning” a little human feel. The word balloons that I was making use of back during that time were just terrible. I remember a Batman story… with the Penguin… that I lettered and that Mike Grell had drawn. I really messed up his artwork with my lousy lettering… especially the balloons. CBA: In retrospect, was that a fair assessment? John: I think so, I looked at it not too long ago, and it’s still awful. I didn’t know what I was doing! It was terrible. CBA: On staff at DC, you must have had an occasion to encounter John Costanza and Gaspar Saladino. Did you seek advice from them? John: I really admired both of them, and I stole from those guys like you wouldn’t believe. I thought it was so neat that John Costanza would do that page 13 bit. He didn’t have a credit on the story, but you knew Costanza had done it, not only from the look of it, but also if it was a story that had 13 or more pages, he would do the 13th page number in negative form as a signature. For a long time, I would use weird pseudonyms, sometimes having to do with the name Workman, but not always. I remember lettering a Bugs Bunny story for Joey Cavalieri in the late ’80s. I used the credit name “J.P. Patches” (who was a kid’s TV show host in Seattle back in the ’50s and ’60s). One time, I was watching Cat Ballou on TV, and so I became “Kid Shaleen Workman” for whatever story I was lettering. People did comment on it, and they got a kick out of it. Sometimes when I dropped the Workman part completely, people didn’t know it was me. I’ve seen several indexes of letterers and old J.P. is in there. CBA: Did you get the assignment from Julie? John: He seemed to like my lettering, which I never did understand because all these far better people available; Gaspar is just brilliant as were John Costanza and Ben Oda. All of them were far better than me. I was lettering this Batman stuff and the thing I remember most was how worried people were—Sol Harrison and especially Joe Orlando—about the artwork because it was so different. Batman, at

that time, had become dull. A very good artist named John Calnan was doing the artwork on a lot of the Batman books, but he was primarily an advertising artist, doing this on the side. While he was, technically, a very good artist, he just didn’t have that spark. Here was Marshall, who you could pick apart on his technical failings… and perhaps he hadn’t yet matured as an artist… but he did have that spark, that enthusiasm which means a lot more in the long run. Marshall’s stuff was so wonderful that I hoped they would leave it alone when it came in and they got a look at it. I just really thought it was great. But I was worried because not too long before that, there was an issue of Starfire drawn by Mike Vosburg that, when I saw it, I thought, “Wow, this very distinctive, just wonderful stuff.” But it scared the DC honchos so much that they had the entire book reinked to make it look more like what they felt comics should look like. CBA: Inked on top of Vosburg’s own inks? John: By Vinnie Colletta, I think. Probably re-inked on vellum. Originally, it was Vosburg’s own inks. He’d done the entire art job and I think it was great, but they were so afraid of it that they didn’t want to release it as it was. I thought something like that might happen with Marshall. Terry Austin, of course, was inking Marshall’s work. CBA: Was that a particularly nervous time for DC? John: Sales were falling like a rock, of course, and they couldn’t comprehend why. They thought the problem was all editorial. They thought they only had to change an artist to really jazz the thing up, and then sales would go up. They didn’t comprehend what was going on and, as I was 25 years old, I didn’t feel it was my place to say, “Well, gee, fellahs, you’re losing your base. The mom and pop stores are closing right and left and that’s why your sales are going down. Certainly, you have to keep doing what you can editorially, but nothing done here in New York in the office is going to change this.” They got really worried about anything that was different. CBA: So you got the call from Julie? John: Yeah. It may have been Jack Adler, Paul Levitz, or E. Nelson Bridwell, I really can’t remember because so many people were involved in the whole thing. CBA: So you had specific instructions to emulate the late-’30s Batman look? John: As well as the distinctive drop caps, Marshall wanted the thick borders, a reflection of the artwork of the early ’40s. CBA: Initially, I promoted this section as the Englehart/Rogers Batman. Then Terry Austin called and said, “You know, it is the Englehart/Rogers/Austin Batman.” Then I’m talking to Rogers and he goes, “It’s really the Englehart/Rogers/Austin/Workman/Schwartz Batman.” [laughter] He said there was a great feeling of collaboration going on, and without any one of these components it wouldn’t have achieved what it did. Which is arguably one of the high points in Batman history because it truly harkens back to the original, the most significant highlight since Neal Adams’ run. John: I’ll go along with that. It was fun, and I really enjoyable reading the stuff. I remember my wife Cathy really liking it when I brought it home to work on, and it did reflect the best of Batman. He wasn’t a silly clown and wasn’t this grim guy. He was the real Batman. It was just wonderful stuff. I remember being so impressed because Batman wasn’t really in the second story I worked on. He was out of it during that whole thing and it was Robin and Alfred who really saved the day. CBA: You told me a funny story about E. Nelson Bridwell? John: This may have occurred on one of the later issues. I was involved directly in only the first two and after those, Milt Snapinn and Ben Oda did the lettering. CBA: And they both followed your approach to some degree? John: I’m sure they also talked to Marshall and he said, “Let’s go for those thick borders,” and all that. I thought Ben and Milt did a far better job than I, although I had grown to like the more distinctive word balloons that I was using. I thought they worked with Marshall’s art style. CBA: Ben’s rather typical word balloons didn’t have the same character as yours. John: I had a chance to go over those pages because I was doing the production on those later issues. I was going through and fixing spelling errors, minor art errors, putting the logo on the first page, if they needed to use the Batman logo.

CBA: Did you come up with that distinctive Batman logo usage? John: Yes, I did that one in the office. CBA: Who wrote the copy? John: Maybe Nelson… or Denny O’Neil. I think I may have had a hand in writing some of the copy on that, but I may be wrong. I thought it was good to bring people up to speed with the introductory blurb, reminding me of the Captain Marvel first page back in the ’40s, used to establish the character for new readers. They told you his origin and a little bit about his powers. It was a nice idea. Back to that anecdote… Nelson Bridwell was an assistant to Julie Schwartz and he showed me a Marshall Rogers Detective page with this beautifully drawn figure of Robin. Robin had been in a fight with bad guys and his cape had been torn. Nelson said, “I want you to white out the cape because it couldn’t possibly be hanging on his shoulder there.” I thought, “I hate to mess up this artwork; it’s so beautiful.” I didn’t go along with what Nelson wanted to do. Nelson and I were very friendly, I always got along with him, but we were at odds on this one. Finally, Julie came into the production department, Nelson called him over and explained what was going on, and Julie looked at the page and said, “Nelson, that cape’s hanging by a single thread. Don’t you see it? It’s right there.” Nelson said, “It is!” And he left it as Marshall had drawn it. I was so happy about that because, technically, Nelson was right. The cape would have been torn right off of Robin. But it looked so good hanging from his shoulder in that scene. CBA: Was that Julie just basically agreeing with you? John: Yes. CBA: By his own admission, Julie always says, “Well, I don’t know anything about art.” John: It wasn’t even so much an art thing as it was just… right. It

Below: John Workman. Photo courtesy of John.