Bonnie’s Lass: Chatting with the creator of Trots and Bonnie, Shary Flenniken, in part one of our interview, talking about her upbringing and entry into the Air Pirates 3
Above: The so-called “Avenging Wrath of God” gets positively Old Testament in Pat Broderick’s tremendously effective cover art, originally composed for The Spectre #31 [Nov. ’89], with inks by Bruce Patterson. The original art for this impressive piece was once owned by none other than the late, great science fiction author, Harlan Ellison.
EVENT
artifact from the 1946 New York
Pat Broderick: Bronze Age Star
By pure grit, tenacity, and tremendous talent, Patrick Rodney Broderick broke into the comics industry (courtesy of a note from Carmine Infantino) and the Florida man has been gracing his artistry in American comics ever since. In two revealing interviews, Pat discusses his start at DC, work at Continuity Associates, breakthroughs with Firestorm and The Micronauts, creations of “Creature Commandos” and Tim “Robin” Drake, and work outside comics, with special emphasis on his current work with writer Mike Baron on horror-Western Bronze Star and forthcoming Cobalt Blue 52
BACK MATTER
Coming Attractions: Big John Buscema and his Workshop’s Buscema Boys 75
Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse takes pix of Baltimore Comic-Con ................. 78
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Tom Z. shares José Luis García-López art . 80
Right: Detail from Pat Broderick’s cover art for The Fury of Firestorm #1 [June ’82], with inks by Dick Giordano.
CORRECTION: Apologies to Christine Vadala for failing to mention costume-maker/photographer Kathy Sanders, who was responsible for the pic and costuming in Christine and Len Wein’s pic last issue, on page 75.
Pencils by PAT BRODERICK Inks by BRUCE D. PATTERSON Colors by GLENN WHITMORE
and my pal ART STEIN up front
Bonnie’s Lass
Part one of our in-depth interview with the creator of Trots and Bonnie, Shary Flenniken
Conducted by JON B. COOKE
[I’ll be upfront and confess, with some degree of contrition (and also relief), that this interview was conducted almost a quarter-century ago, when I was preparing the Comic Book Artist issue devoted to National Lampoon. Besides the fact this was one of my favorite interviews I’ve had the pleasure to conduct, as I found the cartoonist friendly, forthcoming, and funny, I’ll also never forget the fact it took place one year to the day after the events of 9/11, on Sept. 11, 2002. I was certain one day I’d finally have this Q+A published and, with the help of underground cartoonist Becky Wilson, I was able to re-connect with Shary for her to approve the interview, which she kindly did… And that leads us to this, the first portion of that chat! Thanks, Becky and Shary! — Ye Ed.]
Comic Book Creator: Where are you originally from, Shary?
Shary Flenniken: I’m sorry, I wish I had a good answer for that. My dad was in the military. I spent most of my life in Seattle. I came here when I was four.
CBC: Your father was an admiral?
Shary: Well, he was a rear admiral, which means he retired as an admiral, before that he was a captain when he was active.
CBC: Did you move around a lot?
Shary: We lived in Southern California, Alaska, and Panama. My dad’s military career was exciting because the whole family was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He was an underwater diver, so he did rescue work at Pearl Harbor with submarines, stuff like that. He knew Jacques Cousteau when he was just starting out in his career. He used to drink with Ernest Hemingway down in Key West.
CBC: Wow! I saw in an old Comics Journal interview that he was even a cartoonist…?
Shary: Yeah! He drew cartoons when he was at the Naval Academy pretty much for his buddies, and they’re in the Naval Academy yearbook, which I have. I think I said in there that he had known this cartoonist H.T. Webster’s mother when he was a little boy, and Mrs. Webster encouraged him to be a cartoonist. So when I started drawing, I was looking at all the H.T. Webster books. And my strip, “Trots and Bonnie,” is pretty much drawn in that style. I liked the style but, coincidentally, it was an influence on my dad, too.
CBC: Who was H.T. Webster? What did he do?
Shary: He was a cartoonist who was syndicated in the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, and he did a single-panel ongoing series of gags. And what he would do is give them titles. He did comic strips, as well, but he didn’t spend as long a period of time doing them. He was best known for “Caspar Milquetoast, the Timid Soul.” And then he did a series on golf and “Life’s Darkest Moments.” He drew a lot
of really neat kids’ jokes and real funky kind of Midwestern-average people, which is, I think, what attracted me to the look of it. You know, real suburban neighborhoods, big lawns…
CBC: So Webster was obviously collected and your father kept the collections…?
Shary: Yeah, uh-huh! He had a lot of the collections around here and I’ve accumulated more of them.
CBC: “Trots and Bonnie,” as you just said, is something of a homage to Webster. Is there a sentimental thing because your father had this connection, or did you just get into the art and the ambiance of it?
Shary: Hmmm. That’s a good question. Part of this was what you would call my training. It was informal, but it was with the Air Pirates. I was working for an underground newspaper, and my style… I was looking at things like the Chicago Seed and the artwork in there…
CBC: The Chicago what?
Shary: It was an underground paper called Chicago Seed. And, among underground paper aficionados, it was the most avant-garde, I guess, of the undergrounds, in terms of their layouts and their art. I don’t know who was doing it, but they had these beautiful, big color spreads in their paper. I mean, most underground papers were being done by revolutionary nuts, with no talent whatsoever, and here was this really gorgeous artwork in the paper. So I was looking at that and loving it and really wanting to be like that when I was working for underground papers. So, if you go back and look at my artwork, you would see a lot of things, a lot of parallel linework I liked — it’s not quite crosshatching, more like using almost a grid pattern in the art for shading. That was something that I added to the under ground paper design. It was the only way you could get color variation in your artwork.
Above: Shary Flenniken in a photo by Clay Geerdes taken at the Berkeley Comic Con. Below: Shary’s signature characters.
Above: Shary Flenniken in 1960, hand-and-paw alongside pooch Bonnie and, in her lap, Mr. Bones. Below: In her formative years, Shary was hugely influenced by one of her father’s favorite cartoonists, H.T. Webster [1885–1952], who was said to have produced 16,000 single panel cartoons, including this one from 1916. Note the similarity of the girl’s appearance here to “Trots and Bonnie” co-star (and oft-antagonist) Pepsi.
CBC: We’re certainly getting ahead with the chronology here, but there’s this classic look to the work of Bobby London, of you, and certainly of Dan O’Neill, as well as Gary Hallgren and Ted Richards, that really harkens back to the early days, of Herriman, and, as you say, H.T. Webster… It’s interesting that in this really radical, anti-establishment, underground comics movement, you guys pushed the envelope with this really wonderful old style that really was all but dead at the time.
Shary: Oh, absolutely, and it was intentional, and not just the art, but also most of the writing. Looking back at Carl Barks’ writing in Uncle Scrooge comics and really paying attention to it. There was a lot of looking at the old masters. And it was also because people like Walt Kelly, who worked for Disney and had his own irreverent comic strips, politically, we looked at what he did in terms of — I’m trying to think of a good word for it — being revolutionary at a time when he was fighting the establishment. When they were telling him that he couldn’t put belly buttons on his characters, he went and put belly buttons on all his characters, including the chairs
and the trees, to rebel against it. And we were looking at those because we all went into that group respecting the power of comics and cartoons.
CBC: And that was certainly atypical for the time, as the radical youth was rejecting virtually everything that came before. It’s almost epitomized by the first issue of the National Lampoon, when it was basically this ugly magazine to look at. It didn’t know what it was doing. It was trying too hard to be smart and hip and funny, and it was trying too hard to be like a poor R. Crumb style visually…
Shary: Now you’re talking about the days before [NatLamp art director] Michael Gross.
CBC: Yes, exactly.
Shary: Michael came in and, all of a sudden, it became a great thing. It shows you that one person can really make a change.
CBC: Obviously, there was this great talent within Ted Richards and within Bobby London and within yourself. Is it really, profoundly, the influence of Dan O’Neill as someone who held up the torch, so to speak, or was it just the combining of like minds?
Shary: I want to make it clear: I am totally loyal to Dan. I love the way his brain works, and I think that, more than anything, he provided the vortex of energy for the community, and you can’t discount the importance of that. It was the most important thing that was going on. He provided the ideology, I think. And everyone brought with it their own like-mindedness. You know, where we all thought comics were really important. We had all experienced a lot of difficulty and rejection by everyone we worked with. So it wasn’t just the establishment press that was giving us a hard time or not letting us in, or, in Dan’s case, firing him about talking about LSD. But Bobby and Ted and I had experienced this rejection by the alternative press, by the underground press, where… Oh, gosh, I don’t know. The thing that I always remember about the Weathermen was they made me burn my Christmas tree, because it was a symbol of bourgeois economic domination. It was awful!
CBC: In today’s environment, it’s almost beyond the pale for a lot of people to relate to those days and how extreme it seemed, how polarized the times truly got. [Hah! — Ye Ed.]
Shary: It is, but it was because of the Vietnam War. And it was because we were, like, in high school… not Dan… but the rest of us were basically in high school, and we were seeing our friends die. It was totally traumatic. They died for basically no reason. It was a huge traumatic thing that was impelling us to find something to do about it.
CBC: How do you look at it now? Do you look at it with somewhat bemusement, did you go “too far,” and were you taking things to extremes perhaps on a personal level… Certainly, just as a personal aside — I’m talking way too much here — but, like after 9/11, it made me think a lot. I mean, I grew up as a radical kid, and I was on marches with my mom during the October moratoriums, and even though I was 11 years old, I vividly remember when Kent State happened and the repercussions of that. And yet, 9/11 certainly made me stop and think about that, and think about my relationship to my country, and things like that. And I’m just wondering if there’s any retrospection in you now…
Shary: Having to do with 9/11?
CBC: No. Just now, with time passed…
Photo courtesy of Shary Flenniken. Webster cartoon courtesy of John Kelly.
esquiring artists
Heroes of the Seventies
In 1972, upscale men’s magazine Esquire asked comics’ young Turks to create new characters
by JON B. COOKE
The comic book nerd of 1972 who paid attention to newsstand offerings other than funnybooks was rewarded if the fanboy happened to crack open Esquire cover-dated March of that year. Therein, the men’s magazine pages contained a feature titled “In the Absence of Heroes for the Seventies,” a comics section which featured the work of future members of The Studio — Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones, and Barry Windsor Smith — along with young Turks Ralph Reese and Alan Weiss, and a 30-something then-newbie to mainstream comics, Mike Ploog, each conjuring up a new super-hero to represent that rollicking decade.
Above: Splash from “Superwoman,” drawn by Herb Trimpe, the first of three pages in the October 1971 issue of Esquire. Trimpe would later consult for the magazine, suggesting freelance artists for the comics section in the March ’72 edition. Below: The cover of that very same Esquire issue.
Boomer acceptance of comics as no longer simply kid’s stuff was an outtasight development in those swingin’ days and with such prestigious periodicals as the one dubbed “The Magazine for Men,” the form found itself embraced as previously never before. The “Backstage with Esquire” page in that ish shared insight into their thinking: “Some months ago, the editors of this magazine became concerned about the poverty of our current age in heroes of either [the Tragic or the Promethean]… and appealed to the world of the comics, that fertile breeding ground of heroes, to see if any objects of unusual stature might be looming on the pulp horizon.”
Esquire continued, “Associate editor Aaron Latham asked relatively old-hand comics artist Herb Trimpe (he is 32 and has drawn The Incredible Hulk for three years) to search among the young artists in the field for people who have talent, like to draw, and have ideas about contemporary heroism.” The fact Latham turned to Trimpe for help isn’t surprising, as the incredible Herb had been recruited earlier by Latham to illustrate “Superwoman,”* a humorous comics depiction of feminist icon Gloria Steinem as super-hero, a three-pager appearing in Esquire’s October ’71 issue. (After departing that mag, Latham did eventually marry 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl and became a Hollywood screenwriter of such movies as Urban Cowboy, Perfect, and The Program. The writer passed away in 2022.)
You’ll find the sextet’s efforts on the following pages but, all the same, your humble correspondent reached out to Alan Weiss to inquire about that freelance gig of 53 years ago. “I wouldn’t have remembered the Herb Trimpe connection,” he shared, “but it makes sense… I think the world of him. He was just the most solid, nice guy.”
Of the Esquire assignment, Weiss said, “All I remember is getting the gig and doing it. Wrightson and I were rooming together at that time. Kaluta had been in the same building, too, and Jeff and Weezy Jones lived downstairs. Kaluta was on the sixth floor, we were on eight. Kaluta and Wrightson had lived together for… I don’t know… at least a year, maybe more, before I showed up. So I was the new kid, in that respect.”
In that 135 West 79th Street apartment building in Manhattan, the roomies worked on their respective Esquire pages in late 1971. “Bernie and I were doing them at the same time, at different sides of the room. It was like a big kind of a studio apartment, one big room, and then a couple other little rooms outside, like a gallery thing.”
Of his entry, “The Incredible Phizgink,” Weiss revealed, “Look, I know who’s working on this project. One of the guys is in the same room with me, so Bernie’s doing ‘Red-Neck.’ I knew that Jones was doing… I didn’t know what everybody was doing, but I knew the guys. So I thought, ‘I want to do something that’s more strange, wilder, farther out — something with a bit of a Dada/surrealist absurdity angle — than where any of the other guys would go. Blasting the archetypes, if I could. And I wasn’t thinking about practicality. I certainly wasn’t thinking about this being an ongoing character, but it made sense to me what Jones did, a kind of an astral travel-type character. Smith doing a robotic soldier made perfect sense… Ralph doing ‘Comrade Brother’…
“What had happened in the later ’60s/earliest ’70s, the hippies were dissipating. It was becoming commercialized, but the rock music wasn’t slowing down. It was increasing. It was getting farther out, more operatic, right? More glam rock, etc. The politics were crazy. The war was still going on. So there was creativity and there was stress. There was the whole psychoanalytic movement that had taken hold in the ’50s, though now you add Eastern thought and actual psychedelics and other drugs to the whole equation. And I’m
*Today, Trimpe’s then-partner Linda Fite, back in the day herself a writer and staffer at the House of Ideas, has zero recollection of the “Absence of Heroes” feature, but had this to say about “Superwoman”: “I have no memory of anything interesting around that job Herb did, except that he was enthusiastic about the assignment, did quite a lot of research, and I think he said that he liked working with Aaron Latham (I actually remembered that name!), though he didn’t like some of the snarkier writing (he himself had nothing whatsoever against Ms. Steinem, of course), but hey! Esquire paid well (especially compared to Marvel, of course), and he liked the national exposure. I think he did a good job, don’t you?”
comix for a democratic society
The Radical American
A visit with graphic novel champion and early underground comix advocate Paul Buhle
Inset right: Keep in mind that Buhle’s Radical America Komiks [V3 #1, Dec. ’68] appeared within a year of ZAP Comix #1 [Feb. ’68] first hitting the streets of San Francisco!
by JON B. COOKE
To tell the truth, I can’t recall precisely how I came to know Paul Merlyn Buhle, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he emailed first after the Providence Journal published a feature on me in late 2003. Buhle, with whom I shared a keen interest in underground comix and graphic novels, was a senior lecturer at Brown University, our state’s Ivy League school. Phone calls ensued and we’d always make vague commitments to have lunch together that invariably went unscheduled, but we’d remain friendly and finally pressed flesh when he invited me up to meet the great Harvey Pekar in 2007.
Buhle is an interesting cat: a historian of the U.S. labor movement, avowed Democratic Socialist, and founder of the SDS journal, Radical America, of which he entirely remade the Vol. 3, #1 [Nov.–Dec. ’68] edition as an underground comic book, Radical America Komiks, which was packaged and edited by Gilbert Shelton. He’s also authored and/or edited a boatload of graphic novels and anthologies over the decades, so I thought I’d pay him a visit and find out what made this academic gent so enamored with comix. Buhle described the town of his 1944 birth and upbringing — Champaign, Illinois — as situated in “a rock-ribbed Republican county, but with a major university town and university bookstore where I discovered, in my mid-teens, books about the Beat Generation, Jules Feiffer’s Sick, Sick, Sick paperback, and Shaft, a college humor magazine that was slightly daring. Occasionally, there’d be a book of poems by Diane de Prima or Allen Ginsberg. In other words, even though it was a very Republican town, there was a little hint of something else.”
A major development came at 16. “One day, in 1960, I was walking around downtown with no intent whatsoever, and there was a civil rights picket line across the street from a local department store, which had refused to hire anybody Black, except as an elevator operator. And, boy, it didn’t take me even one thought to join that picket line. It was the happiest day since I pitched a no-hitter in Little League, and I knew it within five minutes. Suddenly, I was there with these people who I admired.” Also making an impact was science fiction and comics. “There was a fairly goodsized drugstore in the deepest Champaign,
where not only was there Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Listen, Yankee by C. Wright Mills, but also a twirling rack of sci-fi novels, and some of them were socially involved sci-fi novels.” And then there was MAD.
GOOD DAYS AND MAD
“That same store had the four or five volumes of reprinted MAD comics,” Buhle said. “I didn’t know there was an original comic book! I just looked openly as this little MAD Reader… I think I read those four paperbacks a hundred times, because they literally explained modern life and modern America to me through a critique of not only commercial culture, but militarism… and everything, everything, everything was in there.”
(Still, it was only after he picked up Russ Cochran’s oversize MAD reprints in the ’80s, when Buhle discovered there were items omitted from the ’50s paperbacks. “There’s so many things that were left out, but it probably didn’t make sense to include the ‘Special Art Issue’ [#22, Apr. ’55] about Willy [Elder], all of which seems to be a critique of abstract expressionism, among other things.”)
Regarding the MAD creator, Buhle said, “In 1980 or ’81, I got money from the National Endowment for the Humanities to run a two-year program called the ‘Oral History of the American Left.’ So I could spend a fair amount of time out of Providence, in New York, in the labor library at the Tamiment Library at NYU. So I got Harvey Kurtzman to come, and we had a nice interview about which somebody later said that
Above: SDS button.
Harvey had been interviewed a hundred times, but nobody else ever asked him about politics. And I think that, literally, is true. Not that he had anything so didactic to say, but that at least he could talk about his mother reading The Daily Worker over supper and the kind of leftist Jewish milieu in the Bronx that was among the origins of his anti-racism and his satires on capitalism, and so forth.”
At this point, Buhle jumps from his chronology to make sure he shared an anecdote about Kurtzman. “I think I’ve told this story so many times, but I don’t want to fail to tell it to you. Radical America Komiks is published and I’m in touch with [Kitchen Sink publisher] Denis Kitchen, mainly because we’re so close to each other [in Wisconsin]… So this is 1969, and Denis said, ‘We could send a copy of this to Harvey Kurtzman’… and then he reported to me that Harvey found it very interesting. So I wrote Harvey a note — such a presumptuous note! — him being my childhood hero, he and Willie Mays being my first two childhood heroes, and asked him why he was involved with ‘Little Annie Fanny,’ which was so degrading to women. (Those were the days!) And he wrote back, ‘I had to make a living. All these other magazines failed and I had to make a living.’ He didn’t say it was a good, he didn’t say, ‘I’m proud of it.’ He just said, ‘I had to make a living.’”
THE MAKING OF A RADICAL
“So there I was,” Buhle related, “hating high school and starting college at the University of Illinois, in the spring of 1962, when I was 17 years old. And, within a year, after I’ve been going to concerts of the Folk Song Club with a young woman, Mari Jo Kupski, along with many other people, going to where all the bohemians hung out on campus… she and I and a bunch of people all decided we would go to San Francisco, in 1963, to find the Beat Generation, who were already gone. But City Lights Bookstore was definitely still there and wonderful to visit. So we got together and have been married for 60 years.
“Here’s a story for you: there was no phone in this apartment and my parents got very worried about me. They hadn’t heard from me in 10 days or so and didn’t know what else to do. So they called the City Lights Bookstore and said to the person on duty, ‘We’re very worried about our boy.’ Whoever it was said, ‘I just saw Paul Buhle the other day and he’s just fine.’” Buhle added with a chuckle, “That’s probably the same thing they told 1,000 other parents!”
By the time JFK was assassinated, Buhle had joined the Socialist Labor Party. “It had a real cerebral appeal. After all, the long-dead — since1914 — [SLP leader] Daniel De Leon had only left behind a body of work, but it was a body of work that was the central philosophical idea of the [Industrial Workers of the World], which was that political government would be dissolved, replaced by these workers’ councils making all their own decisions. And it’s true that the SLP had no activity except to run candidates and pass out leaflets but, for a cerebral kid like myself, that was appealing. If we had managed to remain in California and go to Berkeley, Mari Jo and I, I’m sure I would’ve been part of a
much more exciting crowd by the following year.”
Instead, the couple moved back to the Land of Lincoln, where he pursued his bachelor’s degree. “So I probably stayed in the SLP long enough to get signatures to get the party on the ballot in Illinois, in 1964. And, by that time, that seemed terribly silly. And the anti-war movement was coming in just a few months.” Still, becoming a socialist guided his decisions in higher ed. Along with studying De Leon, “My more general idea that I developed, when I was 20, was to write a history of socialism in the United States — a dissertation finally accepted in 1975 — which plunged me into happy decades of archival work and gathering the life stories of living people. I founded the Oral History of the American Left archive, as I got grant money to travel around and interview people, overwhelmingly left-wing octogenarians eager to talk.” Many of those interview subjects spoke Yiddish and were “incredibly fascinating and loving people.”
Buhle admitted, “That was a happy time. How all this connects with comics is a good question and a good mystery. I don’t know the answer… the other thing I would say is I asked Kurtzman how he came up with that ‘Special Art Issue’ of MAD, and he said, ‘When you have blank pages, you could come up with a lot of ideas.’ So I thought, ‘How many times did I think that as the editor of Radical America?’”
Top: Buhle joined with Denis Kitchen, longtime art agent for Harvey Kurtzman, to produce a biography published in 2009. Above: Starting in 1954, Ballantine published a series of paperbacks reprinting MAD comics. Below: Paul and Mari Jo Buhle in a photo dated Dec. 1969.
About Skrenes & ‘Funnyboox’™
Plus another of Joe Frank’s always-appreciated, ever-dependable LOCs gets trimmed by Ye Ed
This page: In 2016, superstar comics artist Neal Adams had his own “Variant Cover” series, which primarily included pastiches of the man’s own iconic DC covers from his early years. Below is the legend’s Strange Adventures #207 [Dec. ’67], where he used the likenesses of many DC staffers of that era. His Deathstroke #15 [Apr. ’16] cover, above, features DC folk from the last 50 years.
[Ulp! My bad for being extremely late in including Dennis Summers’ missive, which follows Ye Ed.]
Dennis Summers
I just wanted to drop you a quick note about the Mary Skrenes interview [CBC #33]. I only pick up fanzines occasionally when there’s something pretty compelling. I’m an old guy who doesn’t spend too much time with comics any longer. But Steve Gerber got my attention (I also sort of knew him, as I was very involved with Detroit monthly cons in the late ’70s/ early ’80s that were held by Stu Shapiro — who went on to fame and misfortune — and who brought Gerber to town a couple/few times). But that’s clearly not why I’m writing.
The Skrenes interview just knocked my socks off. It was so refreshing to get, not just a woman’s perspective, but an outsider’s/insider’s perspective on that very interesting time in comics. And her life is just so different than most typical interviewees. (And, by the way, I too can remember exactly where I was when I heard the first Pretenders album.)
[Glad you dug it! At the suggestion of Skrenes pal Alan Weiss, no stranger to smart, interesting women he — hell, he married one… hi, Pauline! — plans are in the works for interviews with a few other femmes who were among the Young Turks in the ’70s, including Lark Russell and Heather DeWitte. It’s vital to get diverse perspectives that adds dimension to CBC — Y.E.]
Jeff Goodman
Just to let you know: it’s your forays into underground and alt comix (and National Lampoon, etc.) that I look forward to the most, and usually the reason I buy an issue of Comic Book Creator. The Michael Dowers article [CBC #38] was the main reason I bought the latest issue! Thanks for all you do in illuminating those aspects of “funnyboox”! [Signed] A fan since Comic Book Artist #1!
Steve Englehart’s interview [CBC #37] had so many interesting tangents. One was when to stay and work through contention or hit the road and keep one’s self-respect intact. Being bounced off a long-running Marvel assignment, by the new editor du jour or being promised a certain page rate at DC, and retroactively informed, after the assignment was done, no, the company’s editor shouldn’t have quoted quite so high a rate are good examples. Some things, minor in nature, you can compromise on or ignore. Other things you can’t. It’s up to the talent where to draw the line.
Another was to use research and imagination in getting into the mindset of the characters. He noted studying elements of mysticism for Doctor Strange. Yet it’s his talent for capturing the various distinct character elements or “voice” that make them stand out. The writer may not be an extraterrestrial, supervillain, or Celestial Madonna, but should know how to write them. I mean, Steve Gerber wasn’t a duck.
Also, Englehart was open to different challenges and experiences. He started with aspirations of being an artist. Yet he had the talent for writing and, eventually, the opportunity. It was reinforced with increasingly better assignments and superior results. But it didn’t stop there. He wrote novels and got into gaming. So, not limited to one thing…
It was touching how Neal Adams took him on, in a mentoring role, at the start of his career. and gave him credit for his efforts. A foot in the door and name value. Steve seemed very appreciative still. But he had a comment which threw me: “Neal was just the best guy ever in those days and I’m fully aware that he changed over time.” At some later date, was he not the best guy ever? The only negative thing I’ve read was how he could be lax or late with deadlines.
Though acknowledged as covered earlier, in a separate article [CBA Collection V. 3], my favorite of Steve’s work was his Detective Comics stories with Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. I’m admittedly not a big Batman fan, but those I loved.
I really appreciated the Jack Miller article. I remember hearing the name in the context of being a DC editor when I was a kid, but honestly knew next to nothing about him. (Or Barbara Friedlander, for that matter.) Rarely do we hear about such contrasting virtues and vices of one man.
The finale of your Arnold Drake conversation wasn’t exactly a testimonial dinner for DC’s editors and publisher. Drake, too, knew when to leave; after an assured rate increase failed to be honored. What I thought most intriguing was Drake could do more than write. He could analyze company problems and inspire solutions. Or offer options…
(P.S.: Besides Jack Miller, did Neal Adams include other co-workers on his faces-in-the-background covers of Strange Adventures #207 and Green Lantern #86?)
[Can’t say I know about the noggins on GL #86, but as pointed out in our Jay Scott Pike feature last issue, Adams did incorporate the bald visage of romance/pin-up artist extraordinaire JSP on SA #207. So there’s one, Joe! — Y.E.]
Pages 31–38: Other than it obviously being produced as promotion for the re-election of New York Attorney General Nathan L. Goldstein in his 1946 campaign, we know nothing else about this terrific, well-drawn eight-page comic book story discovered by Ye Ed. pal Rob Yeremian, proprietor of The Time Capsule store in Rhode Island. Thanks, R.Y.!
the willis legacy
Morty Maker Makes Mark
Two associates, Bruce Chrislip and Tom Fellrath, talk about cartoonist Steve Willis’s impact
spread: Above pic of
Steve
, who was a guest at the Short Run Comix Festival, on Nov. 1, 2025 . Appearing with the man was Bruce Chrislip (moderator of a panel with Willis) and Tom Fellrath, Phoenix Productions publisher, host of Willis at his booth, where debuted Willis’s The Collected Cranium Frenzy Reader (below) and The Tragedy of Morty — Prince of Denmarke (next page), the latter which, Fellrath gratefully shared, had been digitally remastered by Jeff Wood initially.
by JON B. COOKE
[In CBC #39 and 41, readers got to hear from the prolific (if modest) mini comics maven himself, so we thought, to get a fitting assessment, we’d reach out to a pair of his appreciative friends, and throw in some our own findings and thoughts to wrap up our three-issue celebration of the great Steve Willis. Bruce Chrislip is the author of the (just reprinted!) exhaustive history, The Minicomix Revolution 1969–1989, and Tom Fellrath has been collecting Willis’s Cranium Frenzy in four volumes and just collected Willis’s masterpiece, The Tragedy of Morty, under his Phoenix Productions imprint. — JBC]
That Steve Willis isn’t exalted with the highest of appreciation in the world of comics is ridiculous, says I, but a degree of solace can be found in the fact the cartoonist has graced us with his presence at all, though there’s only a limited number of souls who — select, as of now — recognize his brilliance. Among such lucky folk is Bruce Chrislip, who blogger Nik Dirga has called “one of the foundational members of the small press ‘scene’ of the 1970s and ’80s.”
(Chrislip’s connection with mini comics does, indeed, stretch back to the form’s early years, with his City Limits Gazette fanzine, a nexus for mini comics creators to connect and check out one another’s work (and a publication that Willis himself helmed years after Chrislip gave it up). He was also cover and centerspread model for the Peter Bagge/ Helena G. Harvilicz-edited I Like Comics [’93], which labeled him a “longtime Seattle cartoonist, fan, and scene-maker.”)
When I inquired about Willis’s standing in the comics pantheon, Chrislip, without hesitation, praised the man’s importance. “He’s the guy who has had the greatest impact in the mini comics world and, not just in the small press, but he’s had some impact in comics in general. For some, he’s under the radar screen, but he’s still an influence… It’s like Robert Crumb with underground comix or Elvis with rock ’n’ roll. I mean, he’s the guy, the main man.”
Asked what made that so, Chrislip offered, “Well, he’s an original. That’s one thing. I mean, that’s what he has in common with Elvis and Crumb. They came out of the blue and they’re doing something nobody
else was doing. And also, Steve’s very inventive… He went to Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, and he was up there with Matt Groening and Lynda Barry, and they had lots of classes in writing. I think that’s the big part of it. The writing is so inventive and so clever. And the art and the writing work well together.”
As to whether Willis ever permeated out into the greater comics world, Chrislip points out Morty the Dog making a cameo in a “Munden’s Bar” episode, in Grimjack, and a reprint of an issue of Morty Comix (and other Willis material) that’s included in Eclipse’s Giant-Size Mini-Comics [1986–87]. And, as noted in an earlier CBC segment, publisher Michael Dowers attempted to break into the direct market with Starhead Presents starring the pooch (to lackluster success).
Morty the Dog is, of course, Willis’s signature character, a cranky, cigar-chompin’ canine who its creator has killed and resurrected time and again. Chrislip described the curmudgeonly critter as “an anthropomorphic, misanthropic wiseguy talking mutt,” adding, “He’s a career cynic and pessimist often to be found hounding his erstwhile friend and drinking partner, Arnie Wormwood, down at a seedy dive called The Glass Crutch.”
In 1987, after being knocked off yet again by its creator (“This time for good!” declared Willis), Morty was celebrated by its cartoonist fans with a 52-page mini comic, Heir of the Dog, an “affectionate tribute/roast/eulogy,” which included the character meeting the famed signature character that R. Crumb kept buried, Fritz the Cat, in a yarn by David Tosh.
In Newave: The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s [2010], Willis confessed to Rick Bradford that Morty* just might live forever. “He is not dead. In spite of my efforts. My fellow Newave cartoonist Jim Ryan once suggested Morty was not an individual, but a race. Such as: a Collie, a Golden Lab, and a Morty Dog. Hence, there is more than one. Eliminating just one Morty will not wipe out the whole goddamn lot of those miserable curs!!! *Ahem.* Obviously I still have a few issues to work out.”
PRINCE MORTY
Whatever his mixed feelings about Morty, Willis utilized the hound as titular star of what many call the cartoonist’s magnum opus. In the exhaustive “Newave Comics Survey,” serialized in The Comics Journal in the mid-’80s, associate editor Dale Luciano described the artist’s masterwork. “Among the most unpredictable of cartoonists, Willis combines cartoon humor and metaphysical preoccupations. It’s altogether fitting that his latest project is adapting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in comix form, using Morty the Dog as the central character and making each act of the play a separate comic. It’s entitled The Tragedy of Morty — Prince of Denmarke, and
*Of Morty, Willis told Bradford, “My creation had eclipsed me. After awhile, Morty the Dog was more real to me than I was to myself. He was the only character I created who became a tulpa.”
in January 1985, Willis completed the last of the five installments. By self-publishing standards, it is a rather epic achievement. Willis’s lampooning tribute to Shakespeare is, I think, a genuine newave landmark.”
Besides the effort’s “generous share of gags, puns, expletives, and anachronisms, all designed to debunk the Bard,” Luciano writes, “Yet in The Tragedy of Morty, there is undeniably an intelligence in control which is fully appreciative of the play’s complexities and nuances, yet not at all intimidated by them. Willis embarks on this project in a playful mood of parody, lampooning the play (and our familiarity with it) while respecting the basic integrity of the play’s characters, structure, and thematic design. The marvelous thing about Willis’s adaptation is that the simplicity of his cartoony renderings, like Spiegelman’s in Maus, enhance the effort. Willis doesn’t hem the play in. His quick, quirky style opens it up, leaving us free to enjoy both the intent and achievement of Shakespeare’s original, as well as the spoof and tomfoolery of Morty. In its own cheerfully demented way, The Tragedy of Morty — Prince of Denmarke is the best comic book adaptation of Shakespeare I have ever seen.”
In that “Newave Comics Survey” entry on Willis, Luciano made note that the cartoonist had begun a new volume of Morty Comix, another run of original one-offs he’d send out individually, with each including a single line from Eugene O’Neill’s play, Long Day’s Journey into Night. Recently asked if he actually completed that endeavor, Willis replied, “I grew tired of it and probably didn’t get beyond 50 ‘issues.’”
ORPHANED OFFSPRING
In my chat with Chrislip, he brought up how, despite the many cartoonists who jumped into mini comics in the 1980s, mainstream fandom kept the upstart category and its aging progenitor at arm’s length. “When Krause Publications took over the Comics Buyer’s Guide,” he explained, “the editors were a little leery of giving much space to undergrounds or underground-inspired mini comics.” But the exact thing that mini comics were being criticized for — the difficulty to catalogue and categorize the genre — was its strength, that this wasn’t about the collecting, it wasn’t about the value, but just about the comics themselves. “As far as collectability, you not only had Steve Willis doing his one-of-a-kind hand-drawn Morty Comix, but also you had Matt Feazell, who started a series called Not Available Comics, meaning, ‘You’re probably not going to see these after I go through my 100-copy print run.’”
Chrislip continued, “The mini comics were absolute freedom in publishing anything you wanted to do. And a lot of them were tweaking their nose at the collector, so nobody
had control of these things. I think that’s dangerous, just all this creativity being unleashed.” And Willis was the embodiment of that freedom, exerting his efforts not to follow any norm or meet anyone’s expectations.
“Steve flirted with doing comics cartooning professionally, when Jay Kennedy approached him, Lynda Barry, and Matt Groening about doing the work for Esquire. But he had a day job, and he just got into other things and just didn’t want to pursue it. I think actually his work benefited from not being in the comics business, not having deadlines. He was able to draw when he wanted to. And, in that time period, the mid-’80s, he was really, really motivated. He was knocking ’em out, he was just really prolific. I think that was just it. After a while, he took a good hard look at it and said, ‘Why put up with the deadlines?’”
Chrislip continued, “One other thing I should say about Steve is that he turned cartooning into a more social thing. It’s the cliché of the comic book artist, the cartoonist, just sitting in a room somewhere, for long periods of time, alone for hours and hours and hours. They’re not seeing anybody. They’re like a hermit. And Steve just started doing comics jams with all kind of people. I mean, this goes back to the ’80s. He’s doing comics jams with people, so he turned into more of a social thing, opening things up a little bit. (You’ve heard Wally Wood’s description of what it is to be a comic book artist…? I’m paraphrasing, but it’s doing manual labor in solitary confinement for minimum wage.)”
Inset left: Morty: The Dog That Walks like a Man [’87]. Below: Heir of the Dog [’87]. Bottom: Pic of Bruce Chrislip (left) and Steve Willis, December 22,1985.
Two Interviews with
What follows is a thoughtful and honest interview I conducted with Pat Broderick, which was recorded at the hotel the artist was staying at during the 2022 Colorado Springs Comic Con, held in August of that year. We conversed in the hotel courtyard that Saturday afternoon and, despite the wedding party music that was excessively loud, I clearly heard him share a candid story of a savvy professional who has toiled in the comics biz for five decades. — G.B.
Comic Book Creator: Obviously we can’t start off without going to the beginning. Were you born and raised in Tampa?
Pat Broderick: I was born in Brandon, Florida, which is a small community about 17 miles outside of Tampa, and lived there until maybe 11, then moved into the Tampa/Seminole Heights area, going into sixth grade, and I went to junior high and high school there. Bob McLeod and
I went to the same high school. We were, I think, one or two years apart and graduated from there. I went on to various jobs — auto parts store delivery driver and a counterman. Then I worked in a glass factory, and also a little bit of construction, and then into a small-scale advertising art department. They did Yellow Pages [ads] with mostly clip art. This was before computers, when everything had to be pasted-up for the [stat] camera.
CBC: Growing up, where you were at? Was there any kind of art in your life? How did that start to grab hold of you?
Pat: It caught a hold in, I think, 1963, after Fantastic Four #1 and 2. Then also there was “Thor,” and the birth of Marvel super-heroes. And I was out in Brandon, at the time, the youngest of three brothers — actually there’s five of my family, but three were living with us altogether. Our mother raised us by herself, a single mom, and so I had some time on my hands. I did a lot of just copying the stuff that was in the comics and get kicked outside to play. But comics held my interest, drawing-wise, sketching-wise, and you’d probably find Spider-Man, Ant Man, and Hulk drawings on my test papers instead of doing the work that I was supposed to be doing. I’ve been drawing comic book characters since, I’d have to say (good Lord!), seven or eight.
CBC: So your entrance into the art itself was through that narrative illustration in comic books?
Pat: I liked all the pictures individually and some struck me more excitedly than others, especially when they came out, there was a specific panel of them racing and they were all in the same scene, and that was one of ‘em that I copied and showed Mom and she’d tell me to go outside and play. continued on page after next
Below: Photo of Patrick Rodney Broderick at the 2024 Indiana Comic Con. Inset bottom: Pat and his two brothers, all decked out in the chic Western wear of 1950s’ American boyhood. The comic book artist is in the middle here.
Photos courtesy of Pat Broderick.
the Comics Creator
I first encountered Pat back in 2003, when I visited the Future Comics offices, when we shared a smoke outside and I immediately related to his working-class, pragmatic sensibility. (Plus, I’ve enjoyed his art for a half-century!) So, a mere 20 years later, at the 2024 Heroes Con, I asked if he’d care to be a coverfeatured creator and he answered in the affirmative! The following, intended to supplement Greg Biga’s chat, was conducted by phone in January 2025.
Comic Book Creator: Three years ago, you did an interview with Greg Biga, who’s my associate editor. It’s a fine talk, but it was an hour-and-a-half, and I’d like to fill in some spots. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to jump around a little bit to flesh that interview out, okay?
Pat Broderick: Okay, Jon.
CBC: We didn’t spend a lot of time on childhood. What kind of household did you come from? Was it working class?
Pat: Yeah, lower working class. Single mom, family, dad left, three boys. I was the youngest.
CBC: That’s a rough and rowdy household, right?
Pat: Well, yeah. If you really want to know the horrific side of it, she was a public-school lunchroom worker, and that was the sole income. In the ’60s, that was, like, $1,500 a year.
CBC: Oh, that’s brutal. I’ve got the same background, too. My mother was a house cleaner. But did that give you some freedom, having a mom who worked outside the home?
Pat: Yeah, until she came home. She was a great mom, who ruled with a very strong hand. She had to, and we were very… lemme see… one word would be “conditioned,” the other one would be “raised correctly,” and we’d be getting our chores done before she came through the door. You know what I mean?
CBC: The scramble!
Pat: Yeah!
CBC: You had two older brothers.
Pat: Yes, I did. I was youngest of three.
CBC: Was there a big age difference or was it pretty close?
Pat: Pretty close. My oldest brother is four years older than
me, and my middle brother is two years older, but he’s no longer with us right now.
CBC: I’m sorry. Were you guys close as kids? Was it highly competitive?
Pat: It was like… well, let me see: Eddie Haskell was my older brother’s treatment of me. You understand what I’m saying?
CBC: Insincere?
Pat: Insincere and brutal. But it was just brother stuff, kid stuff. I was the baby of the family, so therefore, he had just gotten over the middle child being added. He wasn’t keen on having another one. Well, tough toenails! continued on page 65
Below: Detail from the cover of Bronze Star #1. Inset bottom: Pat is the no good cheatin’ sidewinder in the top hat on the left in this novelty photo taken with his two older brothers.
CBC: At any point in time, did you ever want to pursue anything other than doing the cartooning aspect?
Pat: No.
CBC: Obviously, advertising can pop up in comic book people’s lives… but, at that age, were you like, “It’s comics for me”?
they were announcing their “Junior Bullpen” contest and explaining it. So I decided I wanted to go try out for that. I was 17 and that would’ve been the summer of ’73. It was at Phil Seuing’s July 4th comic con at the Commodore Hotel. It was there where we got in line, in the ballroom, where they were doing the portfolio reviews and we waited in this long line. We saw a short stout man and a very tall bald-headed man, who had a cigar in his mouth, but wasn’t smoking it. I thought, “That’s Carmine.” And I heard Carmine say “Sol,” and I went, “That’s Carmine and Sol from DC Comics, who will be reviewing our portfolios.”
CBC: So that was Carmine Infantino and Sol Harrison?
Pat: Yes, and they had taken a break and were in a minor anteroom on the side of a larger ballroom. And I just told the guy I was in line with, “Would you hold my place in line if I walk away for a minute?” And I walked over and stood about 10 feet away, and Sol looked at me and said, “What do you want, kid?” I said, “I’d like for you guys to look over my work if you got a moment.” And Sol got a little irritated with me, scolded me, but Carmine said, “Sol, let the kid show his portfolio.” I didn’t know it was going to happen and I laid it down, on the floor, opened it up, and spread my pieces out in front of him and Carmine, an artist whose work I had seen and liked, and I told him that. I also said I liked Wrightson and the new guys who had broken in, and the work of Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Joe Orlando, and Neal Adams. I liked their work more than the Marvel stuff, I said.
He said, “Kid, this is DC Comics,” and he handed me his card. He wrote something on the back of it, handed it to me, and told me to see Joe Orlando when I got inside the [portfolio review] room and the time came and got inside the room. I handed Joe the card, and Joe read it, and said, “You’re the kid Carmine told me about.” Joe said that Carmine wanted me in the program, that I’d been selected. So I was kind of stunned and said, “Great!” They gave me paperwork to sign and I had to give my address and ID and all, and told them how to get a hold of me.
Pat: Well, it was drawing for me, which developed through my time in the libraries during my elementary school years, and then, in junior high, I was introduced to art department courses. So there was that. And the teacher saw my interest in drawing and, once again, I was down in the library copying paintings of the Roman conquest and Byzantine conquest, and spent my time doing that during my junior high school years. Then I got to high school and the art department was a little more diverse.
When I was out of high school, working at the small ad agency, I ran across an ad in one of — I think it was by Russ Heath — “Sgt. Rock” [Our Army At War #258, July ’73] from DC Comics, and
Joe told me it would be starting — I think he said October — after summer was over. So I went back to Tampa and told everybody that I had won and nobody believed me, and I showed them the paperwork I’d signed and then it started to sink in, and then my brothers were like, “Oh, you’ll be back in two weeks!” The typical childhood competition amongst brothers, the usual jives and stuff, and I gave notice to the art director at the company I was working for. I think he was shocked and happy at the same time. So he was happy for me and shocked that I’d won, and I closed out my job there, gathered as much money as I could save (which was not much). So I did pieces of art for friends around town and went up to New York. I flew up.
While I was at the show, at the July 4th convention, I ran into Bob McLeod in the lobby, and since Bob had recognized me from Tampa, he came up and started talking to me about Hillsborough, about art classes. He was a year ahead of me in high school, and he was there to enter the contest, too. He was staying in Brooklyn at the YMCA. He had been up there for, I think, about three or four months, on his own dime. And he was running out of money, and so, after I won, I said, “When I get up there, I’ll come up to the same Y where you’re at. We’ll get together, pool our funds, and get an apartment, get out of there and see how it plays out.” We did that.
I went to work at DC in the bullpen. I met Neal Adams and the people at Continuity, and I’d been up for going up
Above: In Our Army at War #258 [July ’73], Pat read notice of DC’s Junior Bullpen Project. Below: Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired illo rendered by Pat in 1973.
there for, I think, about two weeks. And I told Bob he also needed to go up there and meet Neal, who could help him get work, which Neal did. Neal got him work at Marvel in the production department. So things were going good, though I wasn’t making any money at DC. I was doing table of contents pages and stuff for the [100 Page Super-Spectacular and Treasury-size] books.
It was [Batman #256, June ’74] that has me hanging out the window and it’s dated 1973. That was the first piece I did for him. And I was young and my ego was blowing up in my mind. I mean, I was working in comics, but then, about two months later, things got kind of iffy around the office. I was getting plenty of work there, but things were going on outside. I was being introduced to the politics in comics that were playing out at that time. Neal was like DC’s golden boy, but he was also battling with DC about the return of artwork and stuff at that time. Sol Harrison had found out that I had been going over to Continuity, and he told me that I wasn’t allowed to go over there, and I took that as any Southern boy who wasn’t educated about power struggles like that. So I told him, “I don’t understand how you could tell me where I go after work.” And he said, “Well, I can and I am.” Word got back to him that I had been up there again and I went to work one day, and he told me to clean out my desk. He had found out and I was terminated, so I cleaned up my desk, said goodbye to [assistant production manager] Jack [Adler] and the guys in the photography department and to some of the editors, and I had to get out of there. So I went over to Neal’s studio and Neal looked at my work, and he gave me a brutal but honest evaluation of my skills.
CBC: Oh my gosh. Of which he was famous for. Pat: Yeah, but I respected the man’s talent, and I knew that what he was going to tell me was the truth. Because he told me so. And I’ve heard him be brutal to other people around me and after me. And he was right in every respect, every time. He said to us, basically, that it can be very brutal out there in the advertising world, getting enough work and all. And he said, “You have to be tough.” And that I had to basically forget everything I had learned. I was self-taught, trying to copy the styles [of others] and stuff from comics when I needed to understand more of the basics of design and illustration and the process, because I wasn’t trained in the process. So he taught me systems of how to draw, the tools to use, and how they’re applied and how you use ‘em. And, from then, I started understanding comics more and started studying comics and specific artists. I’d always been in love with the old EC Comics guys — Wally Wood and the others — so I was well versed in his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and stuff, and his early Marvel work and then his MAD work, of course. Then I got over to Continuity and I started getting illustration work at Marvel for their black-&-white monster line.
CBC: Was that the Curtis line?
Pat: Yeah. And that was fun to do, but there was only so much of that type of work at Marvel, and Marvel wasn’t ready to give me a script. So I was doing work, coloring, and whatnot for Neal’s storyboards at the time and developing my samples for both Marvel and DC. Later on, Marvel bought my Conan samples… and then I heard about new company starting up, and I learned that it was Atlas Comics and that it was a spin-off. The guys behind it were former owners from Marvel.
CBC: That was Martin Goodman…
Pat: And Jeff Rovin was the editor-in-chief and Steve Mitchell, who had worked with me over at DC Comics, was
there, and a few of the people that I’d known who had been up at Neal’s studio. So they were handing out comic [assignments], and I went over and talked to ‘em. Larry Hama had already gotten Wulf. I think Jack Abel was already working on one of their projects as an inker. Neal had already started doing cover work for him on Ironjaw, and I think Dick had done one or two things for him at the time. Ernie Cólon was getting a lot of work for him.
CBC: Ernie really blossomed when he got there.
Pat: Yeah, he did! And Ditko and Wood were working
Above: Pat drew himself sneaking a smoke at work and catching a glimpse of the Caped Crusader in his first published work at DC Comics, the table of contents page in Batman #256 [June ’74], one of the 100 Page Super-Spectacular series. Below: Broderick spot illo from Superman Family #164 [May ’74], another 100-Pager.
requests over the years, and I’m real happy for Gerry and Al Milgrom for the success of the character… So it was great to see that happen with [the character]. He’s an easy character to draw, to get inside his head. And I got to do Green Lantern for about 18 issues.
CBC: Who did you follow on that book? Was that Dave Gibbons or…?
Pat: Yeah, I think it was Gibbons. Staton was already doing some of ‘em. Gibbons was doing some. Gil Kane was doing some. And I also did “Batman” with Doug Moench for a year for Detective Comics. We did some very nice issues there. That was, I guess, right when Denny O’Neil came back and took over editorial. So that’s when the creative team and everybody changed. And Karen Berger had me do a couple of fill-ins with The Legion again, and also do some work with Steve Bissette on a Swamp Thing Annual with Batman.
CBC: Now, at this point, you had your own character (though obviously not one you created). So, after the early struggles and fisticuffs that you probably wanted to have with some folks, what was it like having established yourself as a commodity? To really have your feet firmly in place?
Pat: It felt secure and the effect of seeing these cycles… I would say management was flipping over about every two to three years at the companies and people were going back and forth that everything looked like I would not have to struggle to find work. And it was that way for eight, nine years, right up until the mid-’90s.
I got to do a six-issue [Lords of the Ultra Realm, June–Nov. ’86] mini-series with Doug again at DC, where we got to create all our own characters, and it was a run of books of scifi fantasy, and so I enjoyed that period, when I also was doing the Green Lantern stories. The problems began was over conflicts with editors and, basically, DC would overwork an artist at a time. They would get into emergencies where they would have to have books done under really crushing deadlines. And they started doing that with me, and I produced the work, but there was a lot of hollering over the phone back and forth. I mean, when you’re working 20 hours a day for a month, seven days a week, to meet the deadlines,
it wears on you and you’d reach a point of having conflicts.
Conflicts in my history are like roadkill behind me with editors. It happens and it always will happen, but it got so difficult to work with a certain editor I was with at the time that I decided that I could just leave the book, leave the troubles behind, leave the editor behind, and just go over to Marvel Comics again.
CBC: Before you make that break, you got the opportunity to co-create “Creature Commandos.” Who was your co-creator?
Pat: J.M. DeMatteis, I believe it was. That was in Weird War Tales [#93, Nov. ’80], and it was a weird goofy story
CBC: Goofy as hell. No doubt about it!
Pat: I’m surprised that they actually got to do an animated series for a little while.
CBC: Walter and Weezy did the script for it. And, when you were playing in the Batman sandbox, you co-create Tim Drake, a new Robin, one of the more popular characters in that canon.
Pat: Yup. I did create Tim Drake and did get credit for it, but I’m doing more exciting work now, basically.
CBC: And we’ll get to what you and Mike Baron are working on…
Pat: I’ve got completed six issues of Shatter with Peter Gillis that has been ready to go to the press. But, because of the pandemic, production was slowed down… a lot of properties have gotten shelved until people are able to get stuff back up and running again. And it led into doing this work now with Mike.
CBC: So you go back to Marvel and Shooter’s gone, and a whole new group is there. They started their 2099 series…
Pat: I was invited to join the was offered Doom. And [writer] John Francis Moore had a beautifully devised first year, and we did a really nice run with it.
CBC: Being a guy who grew up reading Fantastic Four entrance into comic art, how special was it to take on the Doom character?
Pat: For me, it would’ve been actually scarier if it was just him and his old costume, but the fact that it was him in his old costume, but going through a change in his life made it… I didn’t feel like it would be graded “against,” as graded as “an extension of.” So it was a wonderful book to do. It’s always fun to do the book from the point of view of the villain. It really is, especially
Above: Character designs of “The Dark Avenger,” the Batman-esque character at Atlas/Seaboard Pat created with writer John Albano. Inset left: Shaun Clancy related that Pat told him, “A 15-year-old kid named John from Hillsborough High School was trying to assemble a fanzine called AIPOTU which he never published but Pat contributed cover art by mail hoping to be published and help his future career in comics.
Above: Pat scored the “Iron Fist” penciling assignment during his stay in New York City, work that was published in Marvel Premiere #23–24 [Aug.–Sept. ’75], though the artist confessed he “choked” on the gig amid his third issue. This Gil Kane-inspired detail is from #24.
Above: The first issue of Pat’s memorable run on Captain Marvel, #55 [Mar. ’78], which lasted until #62 [May ’79] and three issues of Marvel Spotlight featuring the character, #1–3 [July–Nov. ’79]. That run was mostly written by Doug Moench, which the House of Idea’s newly installed editor-in-chief Jim Shooter complained in a May 14, 1979, letter (shared by Shaun Clancy)to a reader as “overcomplicated and very difficult to follow.”
Below: Commission by Pat featuring the onetime Kree Warrior.
megalomaniacs. They bring you back to your childhood when you’re dealing with bullies and stuff. So it was a good run. We got close to two years out of Doom 2099. But that brings us up to the crash of comics.
CBC: So what do you do when it crashes? I mean, everybody had their own way of with it. How did you manage that timeframe?
Pat: I lost my mind. It was terrible. During that time period, I went full-time into advertising, in Tampa, doing storyboard work for all the agencies there and was able to make an okay living. But it was very difficult collecting funds from some agencies. So it was not regular though, at times, you could get a large check, but it did allow me to network with art directors who got picked up by other agencies nationwide. So I ended up going from Tampa doing storyboards to Dallas, Texas, and working for Tracy Locke and Partnership. I lived in Dallas and ran an in-house art department for him, which was computer art. We did package design and pitches for new clients and promotional campaigns. So we had Pizza Hut, Hasbro, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, and I handled storyboards package design, end-aisle design displays, and redesign of fountains and drive-throughs. And I did that for two years, close to three. And then my oldest boy was getting ready to get married, so my wife wanted to move back to Tampa to watch Jim start a new life. And that’s when I started a career as an adjunct, started teaching at college, teaching storyboarding, drawing, perspective, and advertising.
CBC: Which college were you teaching at?
Pat: The first college was in the IADT network of schools, the Academy of Art and Design. And the second one was the
Art Institute of Tampa. So I worked for both colleges and it was really a boon, because I was hired on life experience by that time. I even had Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, under my belt. I picked up that job while I was in Dallas and did some design work for him — prop designs and concept designs for parks and themes and rides — and started becoming a college teacher and started getting into that. But, during the time, they offered me a chance to get my BFA. So even though I was teaching the classes, I was also a student during the evening. So I got my BFA in animation and in advertising. It turned me back to what Neal had taught me: I learned the foundations, learned the basics, so I revisited the fundamentals again. I already had a lot of experience in storyboarding and doing cinematic storyboarding, so it changed how I was doing comics completely.
I ran into Mike [Baron] at Alamo Comic-Con about, I guess, maybe five years ago, maybe six. And we just became very quick friends, and I told him I’d always loved his work. He’s a wonderful writer. He always writes very proficiently. I was a huge, huge fan of Nexus and Badger, and he said that we should do a project together one day. So that leads to this being now that “one day,” because it reached the point of being able to draw Social Security, and started going to conventions and started saying that there was an interest in my work again, and picked up a job with Peter Gillis doing Shatter 2.0. And that led from, seeing those pages, picked up work with Mike doing Bronze Star. So now, I’m having the time of my life, I haven’t drawn one super-hero at all. It’s no cars, no car chases, no buildings, no urban skylines… it’s all beautiful nature. So it’s just having a wonderful time with it.
CBC: Was doing a Western something that you had in your back pocket? Or was it just because it was the material?
Pat: Well, I done a couple of just… let’s say, “art samples,” to see if the pieces could be sold on spec. And I did a Two-Gun Kid and Rawhide Kid and they got a really good response. And the thing was, I really enjoyed doing those two pieces. So I mentioned that to Mike about what a great time I had. He actually called me after seeing one of the pieces I’d put up on the wall in Facebook, and I told him, I said, “Yeah, it’d be great to do a Western. I’d love to do a Western!” He said, “I’ll have a script for you Monday, Pat.” And I said, “Oh, come on.” Then I didn’t think anything about it.
So Monday came and Mike was true to his word, and I had a 48-page story in my mailbox. I read it and loved it. I called him up and said, “You had this already written! There’s no way you had this, that you just banged this out.” [Greg laughs] And he laughed about it, and he probably had this idea kicking around beforehand and he did a wonderful job. So I started drawing the script and just was having a great time with it. I knew how I wanted it to look, because I just wanted to do an authentic Sergio Leone-style Western. Something that would appeal not only here, in the American market, but might have an appeal in the European market. And I decided I was going to put a lot of work into it, and Mike’s been real happy with what I’ve turned out so far. CBC: It looks great. Mike Baron is over the moon with it… when I spoke with him, he got to the topic of Bronze Star, he just paused and then gave you, in my opinion, the best compliment anybody could get. Which was stating that, when it comes to this type of work, you are literally the heir to John Severin doing Westerns, and I can’t think of a higher compliment.
Pat: Yeah, it’s a big compliment, but Mike’s such a good
writer, and he is so prolific. He’s been a crowdfunding monster-machine, and I was looking for another project to do to keep busy with, and I told him, “Mike, I’d be more than happy to do this. I’d love to do this. I call it my Social Security book, since I’m drawing a check every month, and it gives me something to draw and just able to lay back and get into it instead of chasing a monthly deadline.”
The best part about it was the fact that I’m working without editorial control, like I said — and I’ve got the understanding that editorial control has a job to do; they’ve got to get that book out, so somebody’s barking at them, they’re going to bark at somebody to get it done. So tell all the editors I’ve offended over my career: it sucks! [laughs] What can I say? It sucks! I understand it. It is what it is.
I’ve reached a point in my life now, where I look at this story as giving the kind of inspiration that I once got when I picked up Micronauts to do as a series, but this is ours. It’s not doing it for Marvel, not doing it for DC; we’re doing this for us, and I’ve already got people interested in it in Portugal. So the problem is me. I have to reach that page number where the project’s completed, and I’m like… ahh… about 20-something pages away from it. I’m closing in on the 48-page first story concept that he sent me, but we have a 15-page back-up, I believe he wrote, which we’ll add to it to round it out to a decent trade paperback-size, and then we have another project to do after it, Cobalt Blue, and then I get to go back to Bronze Star again.
CBC: So you are working with him on the Cobalt book?
Pat: Yes. So I told him I wasn’t… and this is not a slight to the character or the material… I was just expecting to do another Western right after this, just roll right into the second one because he’s already sent me the script, and it’s a wonderful script. I’ve already done a concept piece for it that I suggested we use for a cover, but we may decide to do another cover before it manifests itself.
Who knows…? It’s a nice idea and, if I can keep a Western on the supernatural track, there’s a lot of legends, a lot of lore, and we ought to be able to get at least three trades out of this. But who knows how far it can go…?
I’m not getting any younger, so I’d rather concentrate on stuff that is exciting to draw again, and I may become just as excited doing Cobalt Blue for a stretch, but do I foresee going back into super-heroes…? No, I’d rather do something else. I really would.
CBC: Is this something you might have held onto for the last 40 years to take a run at?
Pat: I don’t know. I like working with a writer with a good creative mind. I’m better as a duo than a solo. So, as long as I continue with Mike — and, as far right as
This page: Pat’s commission work (drawn for Shaun Clancy) featuring Micronauts characters — and a few Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — the above inspired by the story in Micronauts #28 [Apr. ’81], written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by PRB. Below: Bug!
to improve my art, Jon.
I feel like my work on both Shatter 2.0 and Bronze is the best work that I’ve ever had published. And Shatter hasn’t been published yet (and I’m angry about that, but it is what it is for the moment). But my work has constantly improved and people have complimented me on it, and I’ve appreciated the compliments.
CBC: Besides being impressed with your table of contents pages on the DC 100 Page Super-Spectaculars, I recall being knocked out with “The Dark Avenger,” where you showed enormous promise, and you lived up to it, too. Your fannish enthusiasm shined through.
Yeah. Well, I’ve always been a fan all my life.
I’m just jaded now in my old age but, at the time, I was! What you saw in “The Dark Avenger” was the effect of instructional training at Neal’s studio. I did thumbnails for everything, and then I took photos of every pose. I mean, Terry Austin was one of the main characters in that, and I used those thumbnails to draw from. I would never have
done that here in Tampa. I would’ve never thought about doing that here in Tampa if I hadn’t gotten the benefit of somebody who had professional training. And that was the best thing about working at Neal’s studio, having the benefit of the knowledge of Dick Giordano and Russ Heath and Neal Adams guiding us, and Ralph Reese and Larry Hama working there. That’s where the formal training affected my art.
CBC: And what a wealth of talent that was there at the time! You really stepped into a wonderful place. Can you remember when you heard about Atlas/Seaboard? Was it by the grapevine or…?
Pat: I was sitting at my desk in Continuity and heard about it starting. Now, this would probably… say it was a Monday, so by Tuesday people were coming in saying that they had picked up this title or that title from ‘em that they had spoken to Jeff Rovin, and it’s an open house, and they’re serious about it. And, I would say, by late Wednesday afternoon, I had already gone down to see Jeff, and I picked up the title, [chuckles] and I come back and told the guys at Continuity that I’d picked up Planet of Vampires. And I don’t think they had a writer for at the time — that was before, I believe Larry had signed on to writer, but he was already doing Wulf for them — so it was, like, in my mind, this company’s handing out titles left and right, and I want one. “I’m an ambitious young man! I want one!”
CBC: Planet of Vampires was a great concept, I always thought…
Pat: I enjoyed it. But it was also, unfortunately, doomed to failure as all the Atlas titles were shortly gone.
CBC: To what do you attribute that to?
Pat: Poor business management. They went after a distributor who wasn’t as good as the one Marvel had, for whatever reason, that prevented them from using the same distributor.
CBC: Did you know [Atlas/Seaboard publisher] Chip Goodman at all?
Pat: No. I’ve never met him.
CBC: And then Jeff was out and Larry Lieber came in.
Pat: And I was down in Tampa by that time.
CBC: What was the decision to go back home?
Pat: Well, I had a secure assignment [from Atlas] and I had the instructions of how to produce it and had the training at that time, and I felt that I could handle it and went to Tampa. Everything was signed, then got the notification that they were going out of business. So I picked up “Iron Fist” from Marvel. Well, I picked up black-&-white work from Marvel, and then I insist that I was already down in Tampa, scrambling for work, because I had not expected that to happen.
CBC: How did you hear about it? Did they call you?
Pat: God, I am thinking I had heard via phone call, but not from them first, just from somebody at Continuity, I believe.
CBC: Kind of naive, right? To put so much faith in a new startup?
Pat: Well, yeah. Also naive and thinking that… well, we’ll cover that later on.
CBC: You said to Greg that you got ahead of your guns. That means because you moved down to Tampa and put more faith into the job than it proved to be worth?
Pat: Yeah, exactly.
CBC: Do you have any of the unpublished work of your Atlas/Seaboard work?
Pat: No, I don’t. They were sending me pages that Larry Lieber laid out and I think I did, like, four, and I mailed them in, and I told him I couldn’t do it anymore, because it was ex-
Pat: Well, yeah! Of course, Gil always brought it down to a personal endearment, so it was great.
CBC: Very warm. I used to speak to him on Saturday mornings. That was just great. You mentioned Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. What did you do on that property?
Pat: I was a member of their design team. My area of concern was props, which was environment, things that would be in the environment, and I had to sketch them out in a cartoonish style for the 3D animators,
CBC: Was this in Florida?
Pat: Oh, no, this was in Texas? I was doing that in between working at Tracy Locke and then getting my job teaching. I had just finished my work on Jimmy Neutron and had that credit to my resume when there was a job opening at a technical art college here [in Florida]. And they just opened up an animation program and I sent them my resume because my family wanted to return to Tampa and an interview was set up, but I was hired before the interview, and that year I started the fall session. That’s where it went from there to here.
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The thing about Jimmy Neutron was I loved the job, Jon. I ended up working myself out of the job because I finished everything that they had for me to pencil and design two months early than what they had projected it should take. So they told me, “Thank you.” And I’m like, “What’s next?” And they said, “Well, we didn’t expect you to be done. There’s nothing ‘next.’” And I left there disappointed and also thinking, “You lazy animators!” They had their own little group. I was an outsider. I just sat there and worked. I wasn’t even invited to lunch with those guys. So it’s, like, “Well, I just get my work done and impress ‘em by how quickly I can do this.” They were so impressed, I was out of a job!
CBC: American Flagg… How’d you get that gig?
Pat: Actually, Mike Gold called me up and said that he knew that I was looking for work. He knew that I would be available and that I was working in Milwaukee, which was right across the lake from him. He asked me if I’d be interested in , and I said, “Sure, I’d love to.” And that was the one fill-in that I did for him. My other experience with First Comics was later on, with Shatter 2.0.
COMIC BOOK CREATOR #42
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! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_132&products_id=1851
CBC: What were you doing in Milwaukee?
Pat: Was sharing a studio with Jerry Ordway and Mike Machlan and Al Vey, and I was doing Firestorm and Sun Runners at the time.
CBC: So did you bring your family up there?
Pat: No, I was divorced from my second wife and was single. I was “mingling.”
CBC: Making up for lost time, eh?
Pat: Yeah. The second marriage lasted eight years. So two failed marriages and I wasn’t looking to get married again. And then, irony being the twisted sister of fate, my present wife was put in my way. I’ve been married to her for going on 40 years. She’s a wonderful woman.
CBC: Topps Comics: did you know Jim Salicrup?
Pat: It was through Renee [Witterstaetter]. I worked for Renee at Marvel, doing a Spider Woman feature for the Christmas issue of one of the Spider-Man books. And then, when Jim went over [to Topps], I believe Renee went with him, if I’m not mistaken, and I got to do a couple of at least one piece for their Jurassic Park book. I would’ve liked to have done more, but they were more interested in… well, they had a short line, too. So what can you say…?
CBC: What was T-Rex?
Pat: While I was teaching, I had decided to go ahead and do some concepts I had in my head, and one was a post-apocalyptic Army Ranger who was the son of a militant survivalist growing up. And, in the Rangers, he was assigned a dog to work infantry with. Keep in mind, this was 20 years ago probably. Anyway, the dog carried a camera that he broadcast what he could see and had an earpiece to receive verbal commands from his trainer. And it was used for infiltration, with the dog being ahead of the soldier behind enemy lines to find the danger spots, the enemy agents. And, if it was feasible, he could give a command to the dog to attack… So, after the war, he and the dog were basically bounty hunters, so it became Mad Max Now, Jon, I love watching shows about military
Above: The second Bronze Star story arc features this butt-ugly critter! Below: As a gift to fellow Hillsborough High alumnus, Bob McLeod gave this portrait to Pat.
