Comic Book Creator #38 by TwoMorrows Publishing

$10.95 in the USA

ALSO

IN THIS ISH:

Errol McCarthy, Aly Fell, and Studio Zero

COMIC BOOK CREATOR IS NOW BI-MONTHLY! COMIC BOOK CREATOR #40

(DOUBLE-SIZE DAVE STEVENS ISSUE!) (counts as two issues of your subscription—save by subscribing!)

All characters and properties TM & © their respective owners.

Behind a previously unpublished cover, CBC #40 celebrates the life and art of the great DAVE STEVENS in a special double-sized issue completely devoted to the late artist! For this deluxe issue, friends, fans, and family share testimonials, photos, and fascinating artifacts, plus a gallery of amazing artwork by the Rocketeer creator, some never before seen. There’s also three interviews with Dave conducted by CBC editor JON B. COOKE, two Q+A’s with Dave by guest associate editor STEVEN C. RINGGENBERG, and JEFF GELB’s conversation with the artist recorded during the making of The Rocketeer motion picture. Dave’s sister JENNIFER BAWCUM shares about her brother in an exclusive chat, and we also interview some of Dave’s closest friends, including MICHAEL W. KALUTA, about their memories of the man. Plus: a conversation with KELVIN MAO, the director of the 2022 film documentary, Dave Stevens: Drawn To Perfection, about making the movie and its recent success on streaming services, which has resulted in an entirely new generation of Dave Stevens fans. And, of course, no such tribute would be complete without a heartfelt salute to America’s sweetheart BETTIE PAGE!

(160-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $24.95 (Digital Edition) $9.99 • Ships October 2025

NOW BI-MONTHLY! 6-issue subscriptions: $76 US $ 95.70 International • $29 Digital Only

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #41 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #42 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #43 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #44 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #45

LEN WEIN’s life as writer/editor from creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine, to MOORE and GIBBONS’ Watchmen, and more! Plus the sad demise of WILL EISNER’s P*S Army Preventive Maintenance magazine, interview with romance and pin-up artist JAY SCOTT PIKE, more of STEVE WILLIS, and SHAUN CLANCY reveals the saga of ADRIAN LOPEZ’s Harpoon/Apple Pie humor mags! FRANK CHO cover!

PAT BRODERICK discusses his career, from the Crusty Bunkers to unforgettable work on Firestorm, Micronauts, Captain Marvel, and more! Plus JACK KIRBY’s humiliating return to Marvel in the ’70s, the 1940s KKK-crushing district attorney FIGHTING LAWYER, profile of PAUL BUHLE, SHARY FLENNIKEN interview, 1972 heroes by WRIGHTSON, REESE, WINDSOR-SMITH, and others for Esquire magazine, and more!

Informative conversation with “Big” JOHN BUSCEMA and a biographical essay about the Marvel legend by JON B. COOKE, including an awesome art gallery. Plus we share about the life and tragic fate of BILL MANTLO (co-creator of Rocket Raccoon and Cloak and Dagger), inside comics printer Eastern Color Printing by SHAUN CLANCY, more with SHARY FLENNIKEN, chat with RIC ESTRADA, and more!

CARMINE INFANTINO radio interview by KEN GALE and ED MENJE, JON B. COOKE on Carmine’s stint as DC editorial director/ publisher, ROBERT KANIGHER’s 1989 conversation with STEVE WHITAKER and TIM BATEMAN, World War 3 Illustrated with PETER KUPER and SETH TOBOCMAN, DAVE COCKRUM’s Aurora model kit pamphlets, GLEN CADIGAN’s interview with horror comics writer JOE HILL, and more!

GENE COLAN showcase with TOM FIELD, Gene’s 75th birthday celebration from Comic-Con 2001, MARK WHEATLEY spotlights former boss MYRON FASS’ Heavy Metal rip-off GASM, JON B. COOKE’s visit to defunct comics publisher CROSSGEN, CAROL LAY interview, more with JOE HILL, SHAUN CLANCY’s look at HILLMAN PERIODICALS (publisher of Crime Does Not Pay and Airboy), HEMBECK, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2025

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Feb. 2026

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2026

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2026

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Aug. 2026

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com Don’t miss exclusive sales, limited editions, and new releases! Sign up for our mailing list:

https://groups.io/g/twomorrows

Ju n e 2 0 2 5 • T h e R i c k Ve i t c h I s s u e • N u m b e r 3 8

About Our Cover Cover art and colors by RICK VEITCH

Ye Ed’s Rant: Your humble editor on his obsessive/compulsive disorder, re: comics!........ 2 COMICS CHATTER The Saga of Studio Zero: Ye Ed reveals the California Collective of Starlin, Brunner, Weiss, Orzechowski, & Englehart, and the time they almost got into Rolling Stone! ..... 3 Once Upon Long Ago: Steve Thompson on his work with a Guy Named Yoe..................... 9 Aly Fell: Ian Millsted talks to the great British artist about The Kissing Gate and more..... 10 Errol McCarthy’s Real World Comix: Part one of our celebration of the under-rated comics artist on his CARtoons work and underground comix, plus a re-presenting of the cartoonist’s classic comic book homage to Quality Comics’ Blackhawk! ................. 12

Cover art © Rick Veitch.

Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick poses a batch of queries to comics writer Kyle Starks....... 26 Incoming: Roy Thomas on his friendship with Denny O’Neil and Ye Ed on WW3!............ 28 Michael Dowers & Starhead: Pat Moriarity’s rare interview with the late publisher...... 32 Above: Roarin’ Rick Veitch had a notion in his noggin to create a pastiche of the Vincent Price movie poster for The Masque of the Red Death [’64], which had the actor’s face made up of images of torture and other hellish torments (and shapely damsels, of course) conjured up in Poe-esque fashion. Natch, Rick’s version comprises characters he’s worked on!

Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions! C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at

www.twomorrows.com or through our Digital Storefront at

www.comicshistory.org & DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!

COMIC BOOK CREATOR is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Comics in the Library: Richard Arndt on four great books worthy of note....................... 40 Hembeck’s Dateline: The Great Fred talks all about Mutt & Jeff in Dell Comics.............. 44 THE MAIN EVENT Rick Veitch: V is for Veitch! Straight from the backwoods of Vermont, Roarin’ Rick shares a career-spanning discussion with Ye Ed about his start in the undergrounds, blossoming at the Joe Kubert School, and being unleashed on the commercial comics world in Epic Illustrated, Heavy Metal, graphic novels, and mini-series, including The One. After his Swamp Thing work, Rick reveals how he embarked on a journey into the independent realm, launching his King Hell Heroica — Brat Pack, Maximortal, etc. — and his continuing dedications to “dream work” with Rare Bit Fiends, plus we chat about his collaboration with Alan Moore on Miracleman, 1963, and Supreme… and lots more! ..................... 46 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse goes “Beyond the Comics Pages” at NYCC..... 78 Coming Attractions: Kubert School “First Classer” Thomas Yeates saddles up for CBC.... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Gil Kane’s commuter sketches........................ 80 Right: Rick Veitch appropriated the Tide laundry detergent branding for his “last word on super-heroics,” The One.

Comic Book Creator™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 601, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $76 US, $95.70 International, $29 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2025 Jon B. Cooke/ TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of KC CARLSON, PIERRE CHRISTIN, JULES FEIFFER, BOB FOSTER, GREG HILDEBRANDT, ™

JON B. COOKE

Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW

Publisher & Consulting Editor

GREG BIGA

Associate Editor

RICK VEITCH

Cover Artist & Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT MARC SVENSSON STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist Emeritus

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

KEN MEYER, JR.

CBC Color Portrait Artist

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON

CBC Contributing Photographer

RICHARD ARNDT FRED HEMBECK DARRICK PATRICK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists

Contact CBC: jonbcooke@aol.com Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892 2

We’re now bi-monthly… and here’s to expanding our readership!

There’s a little bit of activity going the “Daring and Different” years of on at TwoMorrows as of late. 1967–76, consisting of extrapolations Some new editors have joined of CBA Vol. 1 #1, #5, and CBA Special up over at sister mags RetroFan Edition #1. and Back Issue (Hi, Ed! Hi, Roger!), But allow me to let you in on a and I’ve embraced some technolittle secret: I’ve been building books, logical advances that enhance my article by article, in the “Comics Chatapproach to producing this mag, ter” section of CBC, such as last issue’s plus a plethora of archival material Jack Miller profile and the Studio has dropped into my lap. So I’m Zero piece that starts opposite. And I’ll smart enough to be gittin’ while continue to do that as the mag hums the gittin’s good and have decided along… but note my books are no to up the frequency of Comic Book copy-and-paste efforts, as one would Creator to six times a year, and I be hard-pressed to say The Charlton sincerely hope you’ll stick with us. Companion resembles a reprinting More importantly, studying of CBA #9 and #13 in any way. sales numbers, I’ve learned Among the single creators we’ll enough to recognize what sells be focusing on, the list is a murderer’s best and, thus, I’m determined row of talent: Thomas Yeates; our to give my readers what they double-size Dave Stevens tribute ish want. Since launching in 2013, spotlighting the Rocketeer creator’s the magazine has maintained a connection to San Diego Comic-Con steady readership, but I’m hoping (where that ish will be released this to expand our numbers a bit and, year); Len Wein; Pat Broderick; maybe in the process, recapture a John Buscema; Carmine Infantino; sliver of the glory generated by my Gene Colan; and other pros. And, first effort, Comic Book Artist. importantly, we’ll have very specific Y’see, CBA was a hit out of the examinations showcasing two titans box when it arrived in 1998, lasting of the comics world. 25 issues at TwoMorrows, and it While not pegged into the was successful as a Top Shelf mag line-up just yet, I’m working with Kris in the mid-’00s, when I shut it down Adams and family to formulate “Neal (due to domestic and personal issues). Adams: Fearless,” a comprehensive Rick Veitch by Ronn Sutton tribute with Continuity’s participation I realize much has changed in comics world since the Great Recession and I’m grateful and amazed that for the late, great artist whose courage and fortitude completeTwoMorrows is still publishing mags and books in print, you ly transformed an otherwise moribund industry, invigorated bet! But I trust you can understand if I might go a little more fandom, and changed the course of comics history forever. mainstream in the future, increase the cover-feature focus Another yet to be scheduled narrowly-focused ish will be on legendary stalwarts, and even occasionally return to the “Archie Goodwin: The Epic Legend,” where we’ll celebrate the “carpet-bombing” method of the old CBA every so often. greatest comic book editor of all time, and that powerhouse’s Now, to be frank, that exhaustive approach of covering stretch running the Epic line and Epic Illustrated magazine at many different facets of a given subject has, in recent years, Marvel Comics, in the 1980s, but the issue will also be filled most often been regulated to book projects. My two Eisner with tributes by the good number of comics pros who miss the Award-nominated histories, The Charlton Companion and man so very much. It’ll be… ummm… epic! Warren Companion, both evolved from CBA cover features, (Huge thanks and shout-out to Shaun Clancy, Steve Ringand my Book of Weirdo; forthcoming Forging Metal history genberg, and Marc Svensson, a trio to whom I’m indebted!) of Heavy Metal, Métal Hurlant, and their many copy-cat mags So there you have it! I’m also finishing up Mind Candy, of the ’70s/80s; and future Treasure Chest retrospective, my history of Last Gasp, the underground comix publisher, these all started with the intention of first appearing in CBA and getting the ball rolling on yet another endeavor: a granubefore its demise. And, like the Companions, there’s a hope lar, book-length look at World War 3 Illustrated, the underto “drill down” further on CBA histories, including — should I appreciated annual comics anthology still publishing live long enough! — a narrative account of DC Comics during in this, their 46th year, with their 54th issue!

cbc contributors

Rick Bradford Bruce Chrislip Steve Englehart Jackie Estrada

Aly Fell Mike Friedrich Clay Geerdes Karen L. Green

Errol McCarthy Ken Meyer, Jr. David Miller Ian Millsted

Pat Moriarity Tom Orzechowski Christine Payne-Towler

— Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Cory Sedlmeier Short Run Seattle Kyle Starks Jim Starlin

Marc Svensson Rick Veitch Alan Weiss D. Blake Werts

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

CBC Convention Photographer

What They Want

up front

& JIM SILKE

Countdown to Studio Zero When Starlin, Brunner, Weiss, Englehart, and Orzechowski almost made it into Rolling Stone

Photo © the estate of Clay Geerdes, courtesy of David Miller. Warlock TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Photocopy courtesy of Alan Weiss.

by JON B. COOKE In late 2001, over dinner, in between regaling yours truly about the story behind an unpublished Warlock tale he penciled, Alan Weiss told me about an intriguing moment in the lives of some of the most popular comics creators working at Marvel in the mid-’70s. After explaining that Jim Starlin (who was with us there at the Manhattan restaurant, along with Allen Milgrom) and he wanted to work together upon a move to California, they then collaborated on an inventory issue starring Adam Warlock. “So that was it; it was very simple,” Weiss said. “Starlin, [Frank] Brunner, and I shared a basement studio at the time called Studio Zero, in Oakland, so that was penciled during that brief period when we were all working together. It was quite a nice thing. There was a very amiable easy-going atmosphere. It was just fun! That was the idea! Jim had an idea, in the context of the black-&-whites…” Weiss then turned to Starlin in that Italian eatery — Casa di Meglio, on West 48th Street — and asked, “Do you remember Dark Fantasy? You were going to edit a black-&-white book for Marvel that was more adult-oriented, with creator-owned characters, out of California…? You asked me to create a character for it, because I was going to do ‘Hotspur and the Darklings’ for you. I remember it clearly. It never happened. This was almost the same period, actually a little later than that period when we — the California contingent — went up to do the insert for Rolling Stone.” Weiss continued, “Jim, [Steve] Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Brunner, and myself, and we went up there, and thought Rolling Stone really wanted to get these new comics from the new guys and, of course, they just wanted glitter rock super-heroes.” In that Big Apple eatery, I was likely too mesmerized by the fact an issue intended to be Warlock #16 had been drawn by one of my favorite artists (never mind a proposed mag called Dark Fantasy helmed by Jim effin’ Starlin!) to suitably focus on the existence of Studio Zero and the Rolling Stone super-hero saga. But, in a more recent chat with Weiss, where we talked about his ol’ pal, “Screens,” writer Mary Skrenes, he reminded me about the Oakland studio. WISH THEY ALL COULD BE CALIFORNIA BOYS First of the Marvel Bullpenners to move to the West Coast was Steve Englehart, who was then at the height of his fame scribing The Avengers, Captain America, and (with artist Brunner) Doctor Strange. The writer shared, “I wanted to go and the rest of ’em thought it sounded cool, so I moved out, got a house, Frank and Jan Brunner came out to share it, and then all the rest of those guys came out and just sort of crashed there for a while.” His pad was in San Anselmo. “I had a girlfriend at the time who had a sister in San Francisco,” he said, “and so we came out, it was COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

my birthday, and I said, ‘Oh, I’ll take you to San Francisco, because I’m making money now doing comics.’ And we went out and I really liked San Francisco. I just thought, ‘This is a cool place.’ And Kirby had already moved to California, so I knew it was possible to do, so I did. And I mean, I was telling people and the Brunners said they wanted to come out, too, and then the other guys came after that. Personally, if I had to choose between living in California and New York, I would have no question about California.” “In New York,” Frank Brunner recalled, “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!” Brunner emphasized the creators were actually not moving on from the House of Ideas. “Oh, no, we weren’t leaving Marvel,” he professed. “I remember, while I was driving to California, I was trying to get some [Doctor Strange #1, June ’74] layouts done!” Weiss, who had initially come East from Las Vegas in 1970, but had become disillusioned with the mainstream comics realm, had already returned to Sin City to reevaluate things. “Well, I’d headed back out West to back off

Above: Courtesy of the estate of photographer/comix historian/ mentor Clay Geerdes, a photo of the “Marvel West” gang circa 1974. From left is Alan Weiss, Jim Starlin, Frank and Jan Brunner, Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich (kneeling), and Tom Orzechowski. Below: During the days of Studio Zero, Alan Weiss penciled an inventory issue of Warlock that ultimately was never finished.

from the comics for a while, to refresh and re-prioritize, so to speak. You know, there are some elements of the business end of the comics business that can tend to really grind down your original love and youthful enthusiasm for the medium. So, while I was out there, I spent a little less time doing comics and a lot more time exploring, researching, and experiencing…you know, real ‘meaning of life’ stuff.” As for the artists’ San Francisco nightlife, “Marvel

real world comix

McCarthy’s in Like Errol

The first portion of our profile of the eclectic CARtoons, Mattel, and underground comix artist This page: Clockwise from bottom is Mitzi and Errol McCarthy; He-Man art detail by E.M.; and his self-promotional art.

[Editor’s Note: Ever since encountering his lovingly rendered Blackhawks homage in Slow Death #7 [Winter ’76–77] — reprinted, with his generous permission, in full this issue — I’ve been dying to find out who was the artist of that fantastic, brilliantly drawn, and wordless story. In discovering it was a Los Angelesborn cartoonist named Errol McCarthy, way better recognized in the realm of He-Man, Master of the Universe fandom and by aficionados of CARtoons magazine, I just had to get to know him better, and to share as much as I could of his lushly inked work with readers! I’m happy to boast that the only comics short story I’ve ever scripted was visualized by Errol, in Slow Death Zero, so I’m pleased as punch to focus on the man, a friendly as hell, terrific guy, in this here mag. The following is derived from a phone interview conducted by me, autobiographical sketches, a newspaper article, and other Q+A’s. — Y.E.] Yeah, sure, the guy spent his formative years in the prairie hinterlands of Billings, Montana, from ages 11 to 22, but Errol Dean McCarthy, born in the City of Angels, on April 8, 1937, has always had Southern California coursing through the veins of his creativity (probably of a 20w viscosity!). In high school, we’d have probably called him a Motorhead but, in truth, the gent proves to be way, way more! Errol’s earliest years were not easy. He never knew his father and, as he told me, “My mother liked to be married a lot, so that we moved around a lot… It was kind of unstable, but I had loving grandparents and loving foster parents. So, overall, it was very

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photo courtesy of Errol McCarthy He-Man TM & © Mattel. Truly Amazing Art © Errol D. McCarthy.

good. I also have a very fine sister, who lives now up in the state of Washington.” Billings, he explained, “It was a very nice place. It’s the largest city in Montana. I think it’s got a population of 90,000 now, and it was 40–45,000 then. And it’s beautifully located… but the winters are like… forget it! Any place that gets to 40 below in the winter — no, thanks!” But, even before arriving in Big Sky Country, Errol was drawing. “When I was about nine or 10, it was just fun inventing my own stories and drawing them instead of doing schoolwork. And I still have most of the drawings, in fact. It was great.” And, in the secure care of his “very old-fashioned, very wonderful” grandparents, Errol discovered a lifelong appreciation as a youngster. “I’d always got into comics. I mean, E.C. Comics and all that stuff… I always loved comic books… And it was the art. I mean, E.C. had the best artists and the best writers, I think, to this day. Wally Wood, Jack Davis, John Severin.” And the stories themselves? “Some of them are still shocking. I mean, what would you think if your kid came home with an E.C. comic book…?” Did his grandparents catch sight of his favored comic books? “They were not interested in that stuff. In fact, the only negative experience I had was a friend of mine borrowed some of my E.C.s, and they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and his mother took the comics out and burned them. And, looking back, I guess I don’t blame her. I was a little pissed off, but they were just comic books. They were a dime and I could get another one. So they didn’t really have any value, at that time. But they are still impressive, to this day, to look at that work. Especially Wally Wood… my God, he put a lot into that. And they all did. They really did.” The fledgling artist enjoyed high school and, like so many males of his generation, he developed a love for things mechani-

The Garden Shed of Fear © Errol D. McCarthy. Hogg Ryder and Tanya TM & © the respective copyright holder.

cal. “As a teen, I developed an interest in anything with an engine. This included airplanes, sports cars, and motorcycles. My high school buddies had real hot rods, and many, many evenings were spent cruising and occasionally — actually! — picking up girls, American Graffiti-style! “The closest thing to a real hot rod that I had was a bored-out ’48 Chevy coupe with a very loud muffler. Once, while writing a ticket, a cop said, ‘It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard!’ Plans to install a ’50 Olds V-8 with a Lincoln Zephyr tranny remained just plans. Drawing was a different thing, since, if I can draw, I reasoned, I can create anything! I became the school cartoonist and study hall was all about drawing cars and airplanes.” His aspirations during those years? “Young men are going in all directions,” he said. “I also wanted to be a Marine, which is really stupid, and a pilot. So I was an aviation cadet for a very short time and it finally occurred to me… I was in junior college, and one of my art instructor’s former students came in with some of his work, and he had gone to Art Center [College of Design], and this poor guy looked like he had just gotten out of a prison camp. He somehow that inspired me. ‘Oh, I want to do that!’ So I did.” TO LIVE AND DRAW IN L.A. Until it moved to Pasadena in 1976, the prestigious Art Center was located in downtown Los Angeles. “At the time,” Errol said, “it was the finest commercial art school there was. And I disappointed them because I turned out to be a cartoonist.” He had, Errol confessed, became a mildly subversive influence at the institution. “There was a funny thing that happened at Art Center, which is kind of a lah-de-dah art school,” said he. “One day, we’re all out in the atrium having lunch, and another classmate and I started talking about comic books, and pretty soon there was a group around us. We felt conspiratorial because this was, like, 1965, and comics were so out of [favor] back then. But it was great, man. And comics stuck around and came back, didn’t they?” And it was at Art Center where Errol would meet his future bride, Margaret May Hakes — Mitzi — who expressed a tolerance for his passions. “Our first date,” he explained, “was a hot rod show and a trip to a comic book stand. She passed the ‘test’ and we were married.” That “test,” he later elaborated, “Well, that she saw what I was really interested in and accepted me for what it was.” The two were wed on September 23, 1967. He proudly declared, “I married a very fine artist. I mean, she’s really terrific.” In 1968, Errol graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree, and he shared in a jocular biographical sketch he scribed, “My first art job out of school was as an illustrator at McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft. It was 1969 and the new three-engine DC-10 had just come out. I quickly found out that my real talent was as a cartoonist — not a lah-de-dah illustrator! After that, I did posters and funny stuff. I had failed Art Center School! Boo-hoo-hoo, etc.” The artist continued, “My first freelance comic-book job came from answering a want ad in the [Los Angeles Times, in 1971]. It was a one-shot [magazine] entitled Car Nuts. It was published by Quentin Miller, who had been a CARtoons regular. That job, plus an underground comic story, led to Petersen Publishing, which had three comic books at the time: CARtoons, Hot Rod Cartoons, and Cycletoons. I soon had work in all three, plus my full-time job as an illustrator at McDonnell-Douglas.” (Robert Petersen, who had launched Hot Rod magazine in 1948, spun off CARtoons in 1959, a comics/cartoon magazine started by Pete Millar and Carl Kohler, launching a genre. Millar later described CARtoons as dealing “mostly in humor (albeit often politically motivated or peppered with insider jabs).” CARtoons lasted 182 issues, plus specials, folding in 1991.) COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

CARtoons CARTOONIST Around the end of summer 1973, The Daily Chronicle, of Centralia, Washington, later noted, “Errol McCarty and his artist-wife, Mitzi, retreated from the ‘rat race’ of California to the glory of Pacific Northwest living… They chose Centralia because Centralia College offered them an opportunity for supplemental employment.” Errol took the position of part-time commercial art instructor, teaching illustration, lettering, and photography, as well as giving a night course in painting. Mitzi taught evening craft instruction, including weaving, and, as if the couple wasn’t busy enough, in between those responsibilities and Errol meeting his freelance obligations for Petersen, husband and wife built a “picturesque home overlooking Offut Lake.” Errol explained, “We were busy all the time. We were teaching school in a small town in western Washington, near Olympia, and building a house, which is crazy. But we were young and dumb. We were literally doing it ourselves! I still can’t believe how busy we were.” Amidst all that exhausting labor, the cartoonist was also having a blast with his Petersen comics accounts. “My favorite work in CARtoons was probably the posters, but I enjoyed it all and wrote nearly everything that I did. It was also wonderful working with the talented editors of the three books — Jack Bonestell, George (Pappy) Lemmons, and especially Dennis Ellefson (who later worked with me at Mattel.)” The artist also said, “It was great fun and I can hardly believe I got paid for it! They even let me write some of it.”

Above: We’ll show more of Errol’s comic book cover pastiches like this one next ish! Below: Hogg Ryder and Tanya by Errol McCarthy.

the dowers legacy

The Story of Steve Starhead

Pat Moriarity’s super-rare interview with the late mini comics maestro, Michael Dowers

MICHAEL DOWERS

The number is staggering: 47,000 comic books collated and stapled by Michael Dowers [1950–2024] from the time he started his own comics journey, in 1982, until 2013. Bruce Chrislip, onetime Starhead co-publisher, said, “Michael Dowers was a multi-talented individual. He was a wonderful musician, editor, comics publisher, visionary, and friend. It was his dream to revive underground comix and to restore them to their former glory. The real tragedy was that he attempted to do this through the comic book direct market, which proved to be mostly uninterested.”

Conducted by PAT MORIARITY

Pat: What was the very first mini comic you ever published and what were the things that influenced you at the time, that may have led to your decision to start making little comics? When and where did you get started? Michael: The first mini comic I printed was Starhead Comix #1, in 1982… a very poorly drawn comic based on a character I invented named Steve Starhead… kind of embarrassing these

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Starhead Comix logo by Steve Willis. The Official Underground and Newave Price Guide © the respective copyright holder. Zippy the Pinhead TM & © Bill Griffith.

[I’ve known Michael Dowers since 1991, when I first showed up in Seattle. He was already a known creative, and was also well into publishing mini comics through his own imprint and running the warehouse of Fantagraphics Books. He’s very private, and not the most likely person to show up at an event or party, even if it’s comics-related. It was like pulling teeth to get this guy to even do this interview. When approaching him about this, Michael responded, “I’m really not a fandom type… I forgot getting involved with this is really a fandom kind of thing to do… not much of a fandom person… I have been able to mostly avoid anything that has to do with fandom over the years, so if I have to face it now, I am willing to try and participate… at least just this once.” So we are lucky to get this info out of one of the great influences on the cartooning scene of the Northwest. I love this guy and he published many great artists early in their careers. Let’s talk with Micheal Dowers… — P.M.]

days… I was like 31 and was drawing these stupid silly cartoons… I had started drawing again after many years and that was probably the most rewarding part… the drawing part… I found a small article in Jay Kennedy’s Underground Price Guide about how “you, too, can make your own comix”… I had written and drawn and assembled my first comic within three days after reading that article. I would have to say I was always influenced by art… fine art… paintings and sculptures, and all that… From a young age, I was very moved by paintings in art galleries… From the ancient classics to contemporary art, I like it all… Always had an interest in drawing and painting, but had limited skills… It has taken a lifetime to bring some of those skills out… Pat: You said you found a small article in Jay Kennedy’s Underground Price Guide about how “you, too, can make your own comix.” Did you ever get into any of the newsletter circulars, like the Geerdes newsletters, City Limits Gazette or White Buffalo Gazette? Michael: The newsletters were the only network we had back in the ’80s… One of the best was a magazine-sized ’zine called Factsheet Five, a monthly ’zine that listed and reviewed all the ’zines every month… All you had to do was send a couple of copies of whatever you wanted listed and you would find it listed the next month in Factsheet Five… I made a lot of mini comix connections with Factsheet Five… Geerdes’ and Willis’ newsletters were quintessential… White Buffalo picked up the newsletter thing in the ’90s, when everybody else had died off, one by one… Pat: Huh, I’ve never seen Starhead Comix #1. Are you suppressing it? Hah! I missed it because I did not show up to Seattle until 1991. When did you start publishing others, how did you meet them, and who were the earliest creators you featured, besides yourself? How many comics did you publish before you started the Seattle Star, the popular Seattle free paper that featured so many cartoonists? Michael: I started publishing mini comics in 1982… the first two issues of Starhead Comix were basically solo comics by me and, yes, they would deserve suppressing… By #3, I had started including other artists like Wayne Gibson and my brother… Gibson did the cover for #3… After that, I started including many different artists like Brad Foster, Steve Willis, David Miller, Gary Hardman, and many more… even got Peter Bagge, Robert Armstrong, and Lynda Barry into the later issues… The series ran for nine issues, into 1985, and that is when I started in on Seattle Star. Pat: What method of printing did you first use for these issues of Starhead Comix? Were these mini comics or 24-page, standard-size comic books? What was the early press runs of these

Michael Dowers portrait © Pat Moriarity. Starhead Comix T-shirt design by Dennis Worden.

Portrait by Pat Moriarity

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

Illustration by Rick Veitch. Courtesy of & © Rick Veitch. Color assist on “The Wheel of Life” by Ezra Veitch.

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

V IS FOR VEITCH We know Richard Ian Veitch as RICK VEITCH, one of the wildest, most creative talents in American comics, be the category mainstream, underground, or

to interview the writer/artist/publisher about his life and art. And, at the end of

was first noticed by the world via his collaboration with brother Tom Veitch —

a delicious straight-from-their-garden lunch. Almost two decades prior, yours

alternative. Selected as his native Vermont’s official poet laureate in 2020, Rick Two-Fisted Zombies [1973] — the artist’s first published comic book. From there, the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art was next, where he enrolled

during its inaugural year. Then, unleashed on the comics world, the creator has since maintained a remarkably vast, diverse, eclectic, and rich body of work.

Your humble editor travailed the wilds of forested Vermont last summer

Comic Book Creator: I read something interesting in the interview you did in that newspaper called Arthur. You said that your older brother Tom had a relatively normal childhood or home, but you did not. Rick Veitch: Yeah, my parents were kind of losing it as I came of age. They had six kids, hardworking, hard-smoking, hard-drinking, and when they hit their 40s, they were exhausted. So, about the time I become aware, like in fourth, fifth grade — when I was 10 or 11 — my parents were disengaging from parenting. They weren’t watching me. I never went to doctor or the dentist… I never got my shots. CBC: It wasn’t even benign neglect; it was just neglect? Rick: Yeah, I was smoking in my middle-school years, and drinking in junior high. Basically running wild in a Wild West kind of town, where there was a lot of crazy stuff going on. CBC: Did teachers take notice or were neighbors concerned? Rick: My parents were able to put up a good front. They still looked to the community like they were okay. Not upper middle class, but middle class people in a factory town. CBC: Was there ever any reconciliation or did you come to terms with them? Rick: I came to terms with it myself. It sounds really negative, but there’s a positive aspect to it, in the sense that I got to think my own thoughts. I wasn’t programmed. CBC: You mean that was a positive element of that, of being untethered…? Rick: I was able to think my own thoughts. They might have been wrong thoughts, but they were mine, so I wasn’t being shaped for society in any meaningful way. That’s also a hindrance, because I wasn’t getting guidance, but, fortunately, it all worked out for me in the end somehow. [laughs] When I was in seventh grade, there was this big blow-up. They gave us these intelligence tests at school and, even though I didn’t understand half the stuff in the test, I scored high enough that the teachers talked to my parents and they said, “Ricky’s not

our conversation, we were joined by wife Cindy Veitch, who had prepared for us truly had visited the couple’s hilltop home (and Rick’s trailer-home studio on

the property) in the southern part of the Green Mountain State to chat for the

Swampmen book, and I’ve enlisted the man into a project or two over the years, including Ye Ed.’s Slow Death Zero during the recent pandemic. — Ye Editor.

living up to his abilities.” And so everyone came down on me. That was the last time my parents really tried to structure me. All the comics disappeared, all the art supplies disappeared, my allowance disappeared, and everyone is dictating, “You’ve got to focus on schoolwork, not art.” But fate intervened. While all this was coming down, I received a package from Big Daddy Roth. I had gotten honorable mention in his “Draw the Monster” contest for CARtoons, and he sent me a copy of the issue with my name in it and a decal of Rat Fink. And, wow, there was my name in CARtoons! And then I knew I wasn’t going to listen to those parents and teachers anymore. [laughs] I had connected with this magical art thing in far off California that meant so much to me and, somehow I knew, there lay my future. CBC: Was the iconoclasm, subversiveness of MAD magazine, was that also an element there? Rick: Absolutely. My brother Tom was addicted to MAD. He wouldn’t let me read his MAD comics, but we had the paperbacks. And so I would just pour over them endlessly, finding new gags in the backgrounds of panels. They were just irresistible. I can remember “The Katchandhammer Kids” [MAD #20, Feb. ’55], I must’ve read it 10 times until, all of a sudden, I realized that the dialogue in the word balloons was written in pidgin English. I had thought it was just gibberish and all of a sudden, I was, like, “Whoa! There’s even more jokes in here!” [laughter] CBC: A whole another layer. Rick: Yeah! So MAD was it and, also, Tom was 10 years older, so he’s out of the house by the time I’m 10. CBC: Did he even acknowledge you? Rick: Oh, yeah. He was definitely a guiding light. CBC: He liked you? Rick: Yeah, he liked me and he was also into all the same stuff I was. So he reinforced the idea of drawing comics and being an artist. He was also hanging

Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

Previous spread: On left page is Rick Veitch’s “Self-Portrait in Six Dimensions,” which appeared as the cover of Arthur Magazine [#33, Jan. ’13], a California based “All Ages Counterculture” tabloid. The right page features 1995 self-portrait of Roarin’ Rick, this one inspired by artist Maurits Cornelis Escher. This page: Top and inset Ricky the Kid, circa 1955, and a 1958 portrait of the wee laddie by his Scottish-born father, Robert Veitch [1912–1970], below in a 1937 Columbia University class portrait.

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

All items courtesy of Rick Veitch.

meeting my mother and settling. She was from Bellows Falls. CBC: So he was going to school in Manhattan. Rick: He was originally from Scotland and immigrated when he was 12. He lived in Queens, and he and his brothers all worked their way through Columbia. CBC: Veitch is a Scottish name? Rick: Yes. CBC: Is there any meaning to it? Rick: I believe it is a Norman word related to cattle herds. CBC: About your other siblings: what did they end up doing? Rick: Let’s go back to Tom first, because that’s really a key thing with the family. He was the oldest son, a brilliant guy, really talented. He got a full-boat scholarship to Columbia out of high school and he was born on my father’s birthday. So it was like he was “The Guy”: good-looking, smart, good with his hands, good with schoolwork. He just seemed to do everything well. But he got to New York, took acid, dropped out of Columbia, and started living the poet life, emulating Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, and all those guys. And that was part out with beatniks in New York, writing of what knocked the blocks out from under my parents. Then poetry, and they were sending the poetry Kennedy got assassinated. Everything got really hard for them ’zines back home, so they’d be floating and they never really pulled it together again. around our house. The rest of the kids all had some sort of talent. My sister CBC: He had a poetry ’zine with a title Wendy was an accomplished actress. My brother Michael is a named after him, Tom Veitch Magazine. singer/songwriter. Brother Peter builds houses. Brother Rob Rick: That came later. But in 1961, 1962, became a corporate consultant. We were a wild creative bunch! I was reading Joe Brainard and Frank My dad, even though he worked at the paper mill, would bring O’Hara and Anne Waldman stuff. I couldn’t home weekend art jobs doing logos and pen-&-ink illustrations make sense of it, but it was just something for the wrapping papers they printed at the mill. I absorbed. Tom was part of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and The thing is he didn’t even acknowledge that I was an he put us on the comp list, so we got everything they did. They artist. I was making art all the time, and his response was, “You published the first underground comic by Joe Brainard. It was can’t make a living at it.” That was his whole attitude, I guess. called C Comics and it was like scratchy drawings of Henry and He hadn’t been able to make a living at it himself, so he was Nancy f*cking, but it predates ZAP by three or four years. convinced that it was a waste. He had the tools I needed to CBC: So your parents understood the content was beatnik? learn, too — pen-&-ink and brush — but he never showed me Rick: Yeah. They sort of frowned on it and couldn’t relate to it. how to use them. CBC: But they let the ’zines… CBC: How do you feel about that now? Rick: Yeah, they’d float around the house. Rick: Well, there’s a weird disconnect. What I did get out of CBC: Was there any pride about Tom and what he was doing? it was observing him when he was working on art projects, and Rick: No. He’d dropped out of Columbia and they saw his life sensing that he was really happy doing art. And somehow, I as a poet as a failure. think, that strengthened my resolve to follow through and do CBC: Originally, what’d your father do? what I was born to do. Rick: My father was the sales manager for the Robertson CBC: With [Rick’s youngest son] Kirby, do you share that with Paper Company, in Bellow Falls, Vermont. It was an office job. him? Has he been witness to that same joy? CBC: Middle class? Rick: Yeah, I’ve tried to. I mean, he went to art school. He’s a Rick: Yeah, we were middle class. classically trained water colorist and I brought him into coloring CBC: White collar? comics…but it’s not his thing. He’s good at it, he likes it when Rick: Yes, white collar. He was also he’s doing it, but it’s not something he really wants to pursue. intermediary. He worked with the workers, CBC: What were the first comics you read? but he would go to paper mill conventions Rick: Comics for me begin at three or four with my brothers in New York City and stuff like that. reading Uncle Scrooge and Little Lulu to me. We got the Boston CBC: Could he work with his hands? Was Globe and, on Sunday, they had this big, beautiful comic he handy around the house? section that I’d just pore over. I became really fascinated with Rick: Yeah, he was very handy around any form of graphics. So, at one point, I collected signs. In the house. those days, some guy would silk screen signs like “The Circus CBC: But he couldn’t comprehend the is Coming to Town,” or “Fair Day,” or something, and they’d put creative impulse…? ’em in the shop windows. And so I would go downtown, me and Rick: Well, I think that’s really the core my friend, and we’d watch the dates and, when the sign was of the problem: he was creative, he was a out of date, we’d ask for the sign. So we had this collection of very good artist. He had worked his way silkscreen signs… through Columbia University and took a CBC: Those would actually have value today. lot of graphic art courses, and I think he Rick: I lost them all, but the best one was the Hell Drivers. wanted to be an illustrator for advertising. CBC: The “Hell Drivers”? But, somehow, he ended up in Vermont, Rick: There was these guys who would drive cars up and over

‘Last Gasp” © the respective estates of Greg Irons and Tom Veitch. CARtoons TM & © Marc Methot. Tom Vetch items © Tom Veitch estate.

ramps and through flaming hoops and stuff. And there would be a cool graphic of that. And, as the ’60s progressed, the poster thing happened. So I was buying posters that you could order from the backs of magazines. CBC: Did you buy any of Rick Griffin’s posters? Rick: Oh, yeah! I had the eyeball one and was fascinated by the lettering styles the poster artists were using. Tom had gone to San Francisco and was sending me stuff and bringing stuff back when he visited. So that’s how we got the first ZAP Comix. He might’ve bought it off the street from Crumb. CBC: So he corrupted you. Rick: It wasn’t corruption, it was just, well…I was totally into it. I loved all cartoons and experimental graphics. For instance, I have this memory of being pre-kindergarten and going into the little neighborhood market and looking up at the comics shelf to see what I know now was The Double Life of Private Strong. It had a film strip around the top and sides. I didn’t know what a film strip was but I was fascinated by the idea that — whoa! — the guy drew a whole action sequence. CBC: Did you notice the title just vanished after two issues? Rick: Probably not, because at that age I had no idea how or why publishing worked. But it was something that made me pay attention to comics. I was getting to the age where I could scrape together 10¢ or 12¢, and buy one of my own choice. CBC: Interesting that it was a Kirby comic book. Rick: Yeah. Jack has been a constant in my life. At that same time, The Adventures of the Fly was released and I had those comics, as well. The Marvel monster comics were coming out, but they were a little too scary-looking for the parents to allow them in the house. But when I went to the barbershop, I got to see all of them there. CBC: Did you see Kubert’s war books at all?

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

Rick: Oh yeah. It’s like the spinner rack was designed so, if you’re a little tiny kid, there are Baby Huey and Harvey stuff on the bottom, and then above that there’s Archie, and then you start getting up into the super-hero comics, horror comics, and way on top, the Kubert war comics with screaming haunted faces and swastikas and stuff. CBC: Wow. I never thought of spinner racks in that way. Did you read the Kanigher stories? Some of them were crazy… Rick: Oh, yeah. CBC: Did you see some of them as almost surreal, like the story about talking guns? Rick: They were great storytelling devices. They drew you in and I was looking for that, because I was making my own home-brew comics. So any kind of little trick of storytelling would fascinate me. When those reprints of Eisner’s Spirit came out, they were all the best Spirit stories in a couple of thick comics. Oh, man! It was like a dream! A mind orgasm. At home we also had a copy of Feiffer’s The Great Super Heroes and some of his early graphic novels, like Tantrum and Hostileman. We also had Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo. And I’d just study it endlessly, drink it in, because it was so beautiful to look at, and his characterizations, and how he did his lettering. CBC: Right. And touching upon Kanigher again — and Eisner, too — of beating a theme to death: I was always impressed how every third panel always related to the theme, whatever it was. Kanigher especially… Rick: Well, Kanigher is an interesting cat. I got to know him just a little bit when he was at Kubert School. He taught the year behind us and, legend has it, he failed everybody in the class. But Kanigher liked me for some reason. He showed up at my drawing table one day and said, “I hear you’re doing some of my scripts for the back-ups in Sgt. Rock.” And I showed some stuff to him and he didn’t tear me a new asshole. He seemed to like it. But he was a really odd duck. The best way I can describe

This page: An example of a “Hell Drivers” poster; Tom Veitch poetry collection; two issues of his self-titled ’zine; splash panel, Slow Death #5’s “Last Gasp” story, by TV and Irons; and Rick points out his credit in CARtoons #14 [Nov. ’63]. 47

* Spearheaded by alternative comics creator Dave Sim, the “Spirits of Independence” tour was a series of events at comic shops in North America in the mid-’90s celebrating the independent, creator-owned comics movement. 60

CBC: How was the income from that? Were there flush years? Rick: They were. We’d probably bring in $7–8,000 a year, which was not huge, not enough to live on. I still had to work. But I was finding gigs directly through the site, selling sketches and books, and people finding me through Comicon.com, as well. CBC: So you didn’t feel like you were not giving all to your work with the time spent on the website? Rick: It was part of my work because we were looking for a new way to get our comics out. The door was being shut at Diamond and we all knew that. So it was time for a new form of distribution and that’s what we were hoping to build. We were a little ahead of the curve. I mean, there’s a lot more going on right now in terms of selling online and stuff but, in those days, there was no credit card online or PayPal. So it was all done by mail, but what we were hoping was that we could build a network of retailers and start soliciting books just like we did through Diamond, but we were never able to pull that together. It needed somebody else to focus on the logistics. Steve and I just weren’t able to do that. CBC: Right. And you need to have a guaranteed income to be able to attract somebody like that… Rick: Or someone could see the potential in it and just start a business by themselves. It was really what was needed and it never quite happened. [After a break, talk resumes about how Marvel and DC deal respectively with on-screen credit and reprint fees.] CBC: Marvel’s been good, I’ve heard. If they put a name on the screen, that person gets a check. Rick: But it’s not a big check. For all the books that have been reprinted through DC, I get quarterly royalties. CBC: Can you buy groceries with your four checks a year? Rick: I probably pull in about $15,000 a year now, but depending on what’s released. When they released the Alan Moore/Rick Veitch Swamp Thing stuff, I made $25,000. But there are constant sales of the backlist and they’re really good about getting checks to freelancers. CBC: And people are really good about buying them again! Rick: Yeah! Everybody must have bought those Swamp Things a dozen times by now. CBC: This independent streak of yours: where did this start developing? Rick: It’s an extension of what I was doing as a kid; making my own home-brew comics. I wanted to make my own comics and tell my own stories. That was me from the beginning. Even at Kubert School, I remember articulating to my lettering teacher, Hy Eisman, “I really want to learn lettering because I want to move back to Vermont and just do my own comics rather than stay in New York and become part of the machine.” And so I took the time to learn lettering and doing that opened incredible doors for me. CBC: That and everything else you learned, right? Coloring, production techniques of separations… Rick: Yeah. The whole nine yards. CBC: With Epic, did you ever do press checks or anything like that? Or how deep could you go into production…? Rick: You couldn’t. I was doing fully painted comics, but these were gang-scanned on this giant drum scanner, so you never knew what you were going to get for color separations. And it was always about saving money, so it always looked like sh*t. But now, with desktop publishing and my own high-end scanner, I can get those painted pages to look just #38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

in that phone call, the name Comicon.com popped up, and we were in business. CBC: How did it go? Rick: The first couple of years were great. In the beginning, we were selling advertising and virtual booths and people were sending us checks. The concept was growing by leaps and bounds. People liked it. People wanted to have booths. What really kicked it off was when Marvel sued their freelancers. Do you remember all that? CBC: I don’t remember them suing their freelancers. Rick: Well, it was something that happened during the Marvel bankruptcy. One of the parties to the bankruptcy was suing the freelancers and ex-employees for their severance packages, and Above: Ever an advocate for we got the story. We ran it on our little news site, the Splash, self-publishing and independent and it attracted all kinds of people to the site; so much so the comics, Rick has compiled his she servers couldn’t keep up with it. We were able to build on creator-owned material into that, build a readership, and also build a network of sources. color collections to be sold on his Because, once that hit, I got contacted by people up and down website, including Abraxas and the and in and out of the industry, wanting to describe what was Earthman, bringing together really going on behind the scenes at Marvel, DC, Diamond, and his nine-part Epic Illustrated others. They were all pissed off that the once promising direct serial from1982–83. sales market had been hijacked by the greed heads. And we were doing great getting that information out and Below: The cartoonist has also selling ads. But then Google came through with their targeted partnered with IDW on occasion advertising. So, instead of going to Comicon.com to find comto create hardbound editions of ic-book people, you go to Google. And that caused our income earlier efforts, including The One stream to vanish and it was all downhill from there. We kept it [2018], collecting his 1985–86 going for another 10 years until we finally sold it. six-issue mini-series for Epic CBC: I remember being astonished in those first few years of Comics, edited by Archie Goodwin. connecting with any number of creators and the concept of it alone, it did feel like a comic convention. It lived up to its premise, a rare thing. Rick: And I love working with Steve. He’s a sweetheart. CBC: He’s a fine artist. Where did he, just quickly, where did he develop his chops? Rick: I think he was like me. He was a kid doing comics, but he caught onto computers really early somehow. So he was like 12 or something when he got his first Mac. And so, by the time I met him, he was probably… well, actually, I had met him before we started Comicon.com. He had come to a couple of the Spirits of Independence* things, and so I got to know him a little bit there. But he was writing code while I was still learning to copy and paste.

us. And then, when I met Cindy, she was from New Jersey. I brought her back to show her Vermont, and she’s like, “We’re living here.” [laughs] So she helped kick my butt to get me back here. CBC: So do you maintain contact with Ezra? Rick: Oh, yeah. He lives a few towns over. We work on comics together, as well. CBC: Cool. What does he do as a day job? Rick: He’s an art teacher. He’s teaching comics at a local private school. CBC: How are you as a dad? Rick: Probably not as attentive as I should be, but I’m not overpowering either. I’m sure I fail on many, many levels. I try to be there. Now there’s a grandson, too, so that’s awesome. like I want them to. CBC: What’s his name? CBC: So the IDW collections, for instance, all of that was Rick: Jasper. He’s 12. re-scanned? Rick: Anything I owned and knew I wanted to republish later, CBC: How’s it to be a grandfaI kept, so I’ve got all that Epic art. Brat Pack was rescanned from ther? Rick: Completely changes your the original art. The One was recolored by life. You see your genetics carried Kirby Veitch. on. CBC: So you lived in Dover, right, and frequented New York CBC: So you got divorced in what year, roughly? City. What did you think of the city? Rick: Probably would’ve been… well, we separated while I Rick: I was younger then and so I was really into the hustle was at Kubert School. So that would’ve been, like, ’77. And then and bustle of it. This was just at the beginning of hip hop, so it took a couple of years for the divorce to actually be finalized. you’d see that kind of music going on in the back of buses CBC: What was your or on the street corners. And I found that really interesting. I reaction to the Steven was reading Henry Miller Spielberg letter about at the time, and so he’s got Bissette and your work on the this thing about walking the 1941 adaptation?* streets cogitating about life Rick: We were too green and philosophy, and so I was to even understand what we into it on that level. But it was had done. Heavy Metal gave also that it was the center of us this job. We lit out for comic book publishing at the Vermont and just went crazy. time. And a very easy 30-minWe weren’t even thinking that utes from Dover. and you’re this was a commercial gig into lower Manhattan… and we needed to make sure CBC: So, from early on, at the client’s happy. We just the Kubert School, you knew went with our underground you were going to come back instincts. And the production up to Vermont? became such a beast between Rick: Well, it was my hope Steve and I. Trying to get him because I really love Vermont focused and working was a and I had a kid up here by my major, major problem. first wife, so I wanted to be a CBC: Is that when you part of that. vowed not to work with CBC: When did you get him again? married? Rick: Nineteen seven*The comics adaptation of Spielty-three, maybe. Something berg’s movie was not appreciated like that. by the director, who, despite CBC: This was after your calling the artists, “ruthlessly epiphany? talented (though demented),” Rick: Yeah. I had Ezra with was disturbed by the “savage representation.“ her. But it didn’t work out for COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

This page: After a period of animus between creator and corporation, Rick Veitch is now having his Swamp Thing stories collected by DC featuring his credit as author. Does that mean his unpublished Swamp Thing #88 will ever see the light of day? Stranger things have happened… Oh, and we include a panel from Miracleman #9 [July ’86] and a specialty drawing.

Inset right: Rick estimates he produced 200 or so pages of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles material for creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, including TMNT #25 [Sept. ’89].

Below: Rick Veitch is just too cool for school with this wild TMNT commission that’s a pastiche of Jack Kirby’s great final New Gods #1 [Mar. ’71] page, seen above. Kirby pencils, Vince Colletta inks.

Rick: Well, not to rely on him for a production job. I really loved working with him on the creative end, In fact, the way I got drawn into Swamp Thing was by ghosting pages for him; not for the money but just the pleasure of drawing comics together and working on Alan’s scripts. CBC: To what do you attribute your pragmatism and keeping an eye on the ball? Rick: I think it goes back to me doing this as a kid, For me there’s a certain element of play in making comics. And it’s still how I want to center my life, playing with this amazing art form every day. The way the industry is set up, you’re often overworked. But the way I’m set up now, it’s just perfect. I get up every morning and go, “Oh, boy. I get to draw comics.” And then I just spend as much time as feels right. And I’m not on the monthly grind anymore, but I’m turning out new Maximortal comics all the time, and Rare Bit Fiends and the Panel Vision series. CBC: Are you the happiest man in comics? Rick: I don’t know if I’m the happiest man, but I found my groove. In fact this is how I always imagined it would be as a kid . “Oh yes, I’ll live in the country, with a beautiful wife and kids, in a beautiful place, get stoned, and make comics.” CBC: Do you say, “I’m having my play, but I’m not going to hit miss my deadline.” That’s your gift to yourself or whatever? Rick: Well, I was always good at doing production work, but I have to say that, over time, it would wear you down and the play aspect would dissipate. So it’s great to be free of the production aspects and let the creativity flow more naturally.

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC: Typically, for a mainstream series, how long would that period last? You were cut short with Swamp Thing, right? Rick: Yeah, but that was a good solid three years. I was either penciling, or writing and penciling, so that was an insane amount of work. CBC: What is your limit, typically? Rick: Swamp Thing should have been my limit, but also I was doing side jobs. I took on a couple issues of Miracleman. I did a fill in on Nexus, “Munden’s Bar,” stuff like that. We’d bought this old house in need of work. So, if it was time to put a roof on it, and I needed five grand, I’d pencil an extra issue of something alongside Swamp Thing and not sleep for a couple of weeks. CBC: So that part’s no fun. Rick: It wasn’t horrible. I take some perverse pride in being able to do it. I think Army@Love was the last big grind. CBC: How long did that last? Rick: It was 18 issues, bi-monthly books. So that was about three years, too. CBC: What years? Why am I blanking on that? Rick: Launched in 2007. It was after Can’t Get No. CBC: Was that working for Shelly Bond or… Rick: No, that was Karen. Although, day-to-day, I worked with [associate editor] Pornsak Pichetshote. He was awesome. CBC: What do you think of that whole Vertigo thing? Rick: It was great. Karen had amazing instincts for finding audiences for stuff that was outside of what was considered the norm. I mean, she midwifed Sandman, which was unlike anything else at the time. She gave it all the power of a major label and built it into a giant franchise. That’s really an achievement. CBC: They just let it go. Vertigo’s gone… Rick: Yeah, but Sandman lives on. DC is a whole different organization now. Because of super-hero films they’ve been swallowed and digested by the corporate food chain. CBC: It’s interesting that Kinney National Services bought DC

Comics because of the success of Batman TV show because they saw the licensing as cash cow. But DC still maintained a separate identity, to some degree. Even when the Superman movies happened, they were still distinct. But now DC is corporate through and through, and it’s become a living entity unto itself that doesn’t even seem to have a human presence in it. Rick: Well, Jenette told me about that the guy who ran Kinney, Steve Ross. She was dating him when he had bought DC and he told her that he was going to fire everyone and go all-reprint. She talked him out of it, saying “No, comics are an American art form…” And so he gave her the job as publisher. And here’s like Sol Harrison and all these old guys that have been around forever, and she had to face them down and try to make sense of DC Comics.

CBC: Sol adapted, but Carmine was already out. Rick: Carmine was out, but it was still this guard of old guys. Been there forever. And, of course, here comes this young woman, who’s dating the new corporate master, and you can imagine the dynamic she was put into. I think she did a really great job on many levels. CBC: She did just an astonishing job, I agree. Then the Implosion happened, and that was a great loss… Rick: But it’s almost as if that was done to her. That was her first year-and-a-half in there. And so, she’s like, “Okay, we’re going to do all these new books.” Sabotaged because they wanted to get rid of her. CBC: Did the Implosion affect you? Rick: Yes. Coming out of Kubert School in 1978, here was no work for us at DC. That’s why we ended up at Marvel. We went up to DC and they didn’t know what to do with us. There was no work for even the older guys. So we went over to Marvel and the black-&-white magazines were just starting to get going under Rick Marschall. He was looking for weird stuff. And here come Bissette and Veitch. CBC: Rick was out of Marvel pretty quickly… COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38

Rick: I don’t know what happened, but one funny thing that did happen afterwards was, when I was at Lucca, Epic won the Yellow Kid Award and Rick accepted the award for the magazine. He’d just been fired, so he kept it. [laughter] CBC: He bought an interesting sensibility to that stuff, and he understood what Heavy Metal was doing. Rick: It was odd that he was in Marvel because he loved weird material. You’d bring in really crazy experimental stuff and he would dig it. And his vision for Epic was spot on. CBC: For what you’d think was a Heavy Metal knock-off, it actually had its own identity. Rick: It did. Archie Goodwin was the perfect guy to carry it on. Besides just being a lovely guy who you naturally liked and trusted, he was a terrific editor with a great eye for improving what you brought him. He’d look at what you brought and, if he didn’t like it, he’d just sort of lean back and say, “Oh, we have enough of these,” and very easily let you down. But, if he liked it, he would lean forward and would pull something out that was exactly what was needed, something simple. It might just be one panel or one word balloon or something to bring the story into focus and then — bam! — it would work a million times better. CBC: Is that learned or is that… Rick: Instinctual? He had both instinctual sense and learned talent. I mean, he wrote those Creepy stories that were so perfect realized, every one of them. CBC: And artists and creators, and writers, they loved him. Rick: He was the best. He was the antidote to Shooter. Shooter was all sharp elbows. And Archie was just the opposite. Alan Moore wouldn’t work for Shooter, but he would work for Archie. CBC: Archie’s carrot or Shooter’s stick. Rick: I connected with Archie because I worked with Al Williamson. Al needed a letterer for The Empire Strikes Back. So I drove out to his place in Honesdale [Pennsylvania]. I’d stay overnight for a day or two, and just letter whatever he had going. And, on one of the early trips, he was working on the scenes in Empire with the [At-At] Walkers on Hoth. And Lucas, who normally supplied him with reams of photo reference, had only sent him two little Polaroids of the mode and

Above: After the Swamp Thing #88 debacle, Rick channeled his frustrations into the searing “kid sidekick” satire, Brat Pack [’90–91], launching his King Hell Heroica universe in the process. Inset left: House ad promoting Nexus #29 [Feb. ’87]. Below: Rick delved into his love of old comics with the 1963 Image mini-series [’93].

Above: With the riches derived from sales of the 1963 mini-series, Rick launched his Rare Bit Fiends self-published series, which lasted 21 issues between 1994–96, though it’s been revived in recent years as a thick (sort-of) annual. Inset right, below: Rick often worked with Alan Moore into the 1990s, particularly with their great Supreme and Greyshirt collaborations.

self-publish, Rick.” And so, when the Swamp Thing #88 situation blew up in my face and they were looking for people to do the Turtles book, I did four issues of Turtles then the Casey Jones mini-series later. Kevin and Peter offered a low up-front page rate with a generous 50/50 back-end. This worked out good at first. I was receiving royalties for the trade collections and foreign editions. But then Kevin and Peter reneged on the agreement. They demanded that I sign over all rights for a very small amount of money, like $2,500. CBC: What else were you doing? Rick: Well, by that point, I was working on Brat Pack. Tundra had happened, but I still had equity in these Turtle books, and they refused to reprint them at the original terms we agreed on. And so they have sat fallow all these years. The thing is, I understand that they had to get control of the licensing phenomena that Turtles had become. But there was no need to deny the artists who’d trusted them. We all would have been delighted to sign contracts giving them all rights for a guarantee of the 50/50 back end we’d been promised. CBC: What was the timing with this, with Denis Kitchen merging with them? Rick: It was before Denis. This was at the beginning of Tundra. I wouldn’t sign, and it became this sticking issue. CBC: A betrayal? Rick: You half expect it from the big publishers. But when it’s your friends, man, it really sucks. CBC: You never had a reconciliation at all? Rick: Over the decades, we have tried, but every time they give it to a lawyer or a business guy, and then nothing happens. This year, I got approached by Paramount, who now owns the Turtles, and they asked for a proposal on a buyout of my stuff. But then said they changed their publishing plan. So the thing is all in limbo. It’s a big chunk of my creative work, like 200 pages at a key moment when I’m really cranking on all cylinders.

they didn’t show much. So Al was really fretting. Carlos Garzón was first assistant, and he was flummoxed, too. I had worked on cars and machinery a bit, so I sort of had a basic idea of how mechanical things had to work. So I said, “Let me try to figure it out.” It was a pretty simple robot actually. The knees and hips had to have joints, the neck had to flexible etc. And I was able to make drawings for Al. And he was like, “Yes, yes, yes!” And so I was promoted to second assistant, penciling the Walkers. And Al was so happy that I solved his problem. I was on his team forever after that. A few days later, I’m going up to Marvel to visit Epic, expecting to see Rick Marschall but he’s been fired. Here’s Archie Goodwin. And so Al had been talking to Archie about how happy he was with me because I’d solved this problem for him. So I think that made Archie really open to working with me. And I became part of that tight-knit group of Archie and Al and a few other people. CBC: That must’ve been something! Al was such a charismatic guy, such a guy’s guy… Rick: What an artist! He was in his mid-40s, pushing 50, when I hung out with him, but he was still a kid at heart. He was like us. He still loved comics. And, every time I go over there, he’d go into his closet and out would come some batch of original art that he had picked up somewhere. “Have you seen Cisco Kid by Salinas, old sport?” [laughter] And just blow your mind with some stuff. And then, to watch him actually draw, and how his hands worked, and the tools he used to get the effects… I wish I’d paid more attention! CBC: And so you got mainstream jobs or whatever with Eclipse, also with the Miracleman and with Swamp Thing after Epic. The alternative comic scene is rising up. Independent comics were rising up. What was your plan? Rick: I was still working, doing Swamp Thing. Things were always rocky with DC behind the scenes, but I was still committed to it, and we hadn’t reached the final explosion yet. But I was hanging out with Bissette, Eastman, [Peter] Laird, [Michael] Zulli, Murphy and a few other people who were trying to come up with new ways of doing comics and getting around the comic business. We met sometimes as the Blacklist Group. CBC: How far do you live from Northampton [the location of Mirage and Tundra]? Rick: It’s like an hour-and-a-half away. Eastman and Laird were allied with Sim, and they were putting together these meetings — they called ’em the summits — with larger groups of people, also trying to come up with new ways of doing comics and figuring out how to get around the horrible business sh*t that was going on. So I was someone who could produce comics, and Eastman and Laird were saying, “You need to

#38 • June 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

minutes every day figuring it would add up to 24 hours. CBC: Are they all just freehand and no penciling at all? Rick: There might be the slightest bit of penciling underneath, but mostly freehand done in the back of taxis or bars. It was, like, this weird obsession. But, after I had done 100 or more dreams, I saw the value in it. Like, “Oh man, I could really give this my full illustrative abilities. I could really do something.” CBC: How were the sales on Rare Bit Fiends? Rick: Good. It made enough to keep me going until distribution blew up. I did 21 issues. Then I took a pause of twenty-odd years. Once I figured out this whole Kindle direct paperback stuff, I got back into it and I’ve done four more issues. CBC: I meant how many copies were sold? Rick: We started out about 7,000 and it just kind of slowly went down. And then it seemed to level at around 3,500, but since it was a monthly book, it paid enough. CBC: So you did it for two years? Rick: Yes. Plus we were barnstorming the country, going to conventions, pushing the indie thing. It was a really crazy time. CBC: Was it fun? Rick: It was fun, but it was crazy. CBC: You put a strain on your marriage? Rick: No! Cindy was brilliant. CBC: So you’ve restarted the series? Rick: Yeah, once I’d figured out print-on-demand. CBC: How long ago? Rick: Maybe 2016 or 2017, something like that. I’m just starting a new issue of Rare Bit Fiends right now. I got a new True-Man, the Maximortal coming out this week.

This page: Post-Brat Pack, the King Hell Heroica titles. True-Man #1 was released in September ’24.

CBC: So it’s never been collected. Rick: It was collected in ’91, while they were still honoring our agreement. After I didn’t sign they refused to keep the stuff in print. CBC: So when did Rare Bit Fiends come in? Rick: That came after I made a nice pot of money on the 1963 series. This bought me the time I needed to get self-publishing up and running. By then, I’d learned how to actually solicit books myself and get everything through production, and so I did my dream comic. CBC: Well, let’s back up to 1963 then. Why wasn’t that finished? Rick: I guess the core of it is that Alan and Steve’s friendship blew up. It was a very stressful project that had a lot of kinks that had to be worked out on the fly. But we ended up making this really beautiful thing. And more money than we’d ever made on anything before. And so both Steve and I decided to take our shares and pour it into self-publishing, and he did Tyrant and I did Rare Bit Fiends. CBC: How do you feel about Don Simpson going ahead and making the 1963 annual recently? Rick: I’m for anything that gets him back drawing comics. He’s one of those cartoonists who can make me laugh. CBC: What a great cartoonist, for sure. So, Rare Bit Fiends: what was your thinking with that? Was that “I’m going to express my spiritual center,” or “I’m going to make something that somebody wants to buy”? Rick: It’s me following my creative muse. While we were at Tundra, Scott McCloud came up with the idea of the 24-hour comic. But I didn’t have time to take a day and do 24 pages, so I started doing one page of my dream sketchbook for 15 or 20

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • June 2025 • #38