Comic Book Creator #15 by TwoMorrows Publishing

ALSO IN THIS ISH:

Remembering Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson

™

Recommended for MATURE READERS

A Tw o M o r r o w s P u b l i c a t i o n

No. 15, Summer 2017

$8.95

82658 00091

All characters TM & © Mark Schultz.

in the USA

AUTOS & ARCHOSAURS: THE ART OF

MARK SCHULTZ Cover art by Mark Schultz

S u m m e r 2 0 1 7 • Vo i c e o f t h e C o m i c s M e d i u m • N u m b e r 1 5

About Our Cover Art by MARK SCHULTZ Colors by GLENN WHITMORE

COMICS CHATTER In Memoriam — The Bijou Boys: With the participation of family, friends, fans, and peers, Comic Book Creator examines the life-long friendship and numerous collaborations of the late underground comix pioneers, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, best buddies who passed away within 11 days of one another this past March. Along with the recollections of Art Spiegelman, Denis Kitchen, Jay Kinney, Patrick Rosenkranz, and others, CBC zeroes in on the era from the cartoonists’ Kurtzman-inspired fanzine work as teenagers up until the final issue of their superb creation, Bijou Funnies, either the second or third underground comix title, one born of the tumult of the Chicago riots in 1968! Um Tut Sut! .................... 3

Characters TM & © Mark Schultz.

Incoming: Another extra-long letters o’ comment section on past issues.................... 24 Hembeck’s Dateline: Multi-hued heroes & villains, as rendered by Our Man Fred.... 31 THE MAIN EVENT

Above: Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee, the protagonists of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, the epic future-world mashing of prehistoric beasts again roaming our planet, are depicted by creator Mark Schultz on this brand-new cover created especially for Comic Book Creator! Mark tells us that, after a 20-year-plus hiatus, he is currently at work on the next chapter of the series, which will see publication (possibly as soon as next year) as a (thus far untitled) 64-page graphic novel. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

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

Mark of Excellence: The Mark Schultz Interview. Artist and writer Mark Schultz shares an incredibly in-depth and detailed look at his life as a cartoonist (with side forays as comic book scripter), from his dinosaur-obsessed childhood to his current work on a forthcoming Xenozoic Tales graphic novel. We go back to the future as the conversation ranges far and wide, from his appreciation for — and friendship with — the late, great Al Williamson, to his experience as he observed his property becoming a Saturday morning cartoon show and action-figure toy line, to growing alarm for our ever-warming, increasingly endangered home planet..... 32 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse shares his pix of pals of the comics realm .. 76 Coming Attractions: Up next are Archie cartoonists Dean Haspiel and Dan Parent...... 77 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Kelley Jones’ Deadman presentation art.... 80 Right: Detail from the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs limited edition print by Mark Schultz, published by Kitchen Sink,and also used as the wraparound cover for the Xenozoic Tales collection, Time in Overdrive [1993].

Editorial Note: As fate is wont to bestow upon us mere mortals, sometimes intentions are dashed by an onslaught of events. While we had promoted that this issue would contain a number of secondary features, the editor was compelled to postpone that material until future issues. This was to make room for an extensive look at the lives of recently-departed Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. We thank all contributors and readers for their understanding and appreciate any patience. Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are now available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com! Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly 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 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $60 International, $15 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2017 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 JAY LYNCH, SKIP WILLIAMSON, RICH BUCKLER, and BERNIE WRIGHTSON ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

MARK SCHULTZ Cover Artist

GLENN WHITMORE Cover Colorist

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 2

Ruminations on the mission of CBC and the passing of giants

friends who died in a span of time so Back when I was producing remarkably near to one another. I admit, Comic Book Artist magazine for too, that I greatly admired the Bijou TwoMorrows (circa 1998–2003), Funnies founders. As a young teen, no I had this habit of apologizing cartoonist’s style and substance was left and right within the mag, so more appealing to me than that of Skip much so that a parody of CBA, Williamson… simultaneously so comtitled Comic Book Nerd, was pelling and so iconoclastic… Snappy published, and I cringed to Sammy Smoot was simply the coolest. note that, if memory serves, Back in early 2015, I made plans to the editorial headline was “I’m visit Skip, to spend a weekend chatting sorry!”My typical mea culpa things up with “Trippy Skippy,” to regarded not having included this discuss his eclectic and varied career. or that promised item in a given I had hoped to give back to an artist issue, and I was, I thought, pretty whose work I had loved 40 years and sincere in those regrets… but more, a cartoonist who I believed was they were a bit excessive, to say woefully overlooked. But, alas, work the least, and, with Comic Book and domestic issues got in the way, Creator, I’ve kept the candor and the Vermont stay had to be postabout behind-the-scene decisions poned. “I’ve got time,” thought I. to a minimum. I lived, I learned…. Since becoming (ahem) a comic That said, to state the obvious, book historian, I hold no archivist in I’ve been relying less on material higher esteem than Jay Lynch, and I produced by others and more on was lucky to call him a friend. I had the self-generated items, and this is privilege to interview him at length and no more apparent than in this issue, moderate a convention panel devoted which showcases, besides an to the artist formerly known as Jayzey, extended letter col and a few and I’ll miss him terribly. one-page items (including Fed Two days after Skip died, another Hembeck’s “Dateline: @?*!!” and tremendous talent succumbed. Bernie Tom Ziuko’s “Picture is Worth a Mark Schultz by Ronn Sutton Wrightson, an art god since the ’70s and Thousand Words” end-of-ish kicker), a man who graciously allowed me to spend three days only two features — an exhaustive talk with our cover with him for an interview in his L.A. studio about ten artist, Mark Schultz, and, prompted by their sudden years ago, passed away. The crushing news, while not passing within less than two weeks of one another, an in-depth look at the early lives and careers of two close surprising (Bernie had been suffering health issues for years now), was nonetheless stunning. He is nothing buddies and tremendous talents, Jay Lynch and Skip less than a giant in this field and we’re hoping to pubWilliamson. While I had hoped some other items could lish an appropriate tribute — likely as a book — in the be included in this ish, such as features produced by near future. Godspeed, Bernie. More news next issue. my patient associate editor Michael Aushenker, work Just before press time comes the sad news that that has been ready to go for many months now. Rich Buckler has died. I’ve always been fascinated I can only ask for understanding. I might say I’m by his career, one celebrated and complicated, and sorry, restarting the CBA habit of confession, and had hoped to build an issue out of an extensive email much as I do wish I could bump up page-count on a whim — an impulse I would, back in the day, inflict time interview Michael Aushenker conducted with the artist (which will appear next issue). Certainly Rich was game and again on my browbeaten publisher — that era is (and perplexingly effusive with praise about yours truly long past and the parameter of 80 pages is immutable whether I was in his company or not) and we chatted (except for the occasional, previously announced about it when greeting one another at cons… I am 100-pager, such as the upcoming Wallace Wood and grateful he contributed cover art to a recent book I Frank Frazetta issues to come). co-authored and he also shared a fine testimonial for Features also get supplanted because of events Kirby100. God bless, Rich, and thanks for the respect. and, in the case of this issue, it was the deaths of All is fleeting. Don’t hesitate, peeps. Share the love. two underground comix pioneers, remarkably close

cbc contributors

Bob Armstrong Richard J. Arndt Rhonda Baker Molly Bernstein Philip Dolan Tom Firak Evert Geradts

Michael T. Gilbert Roger Hill Jim Keefe John Kinhart Jay Kinney Denis Kitchen Violet Kitchen

Jay Lynch Bill Morrison Gioia Palmieri Peter Poplaski Denise Prowell Everett Rand Patrick Rosenkranz

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Mark Schultz Jane Shay Wald Valerie Snowden Art Spiegelman Bhob Stewart Bob Stevenson Ronn Sutton

Steven Thompson The Time Capsule Kendall Whitehouse Glenn Whitmore Skip Williamson Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC Contributing Photographer

On Mags and Mortality

in memoriam

The Brothers Bijou The entwined fates of underground comix pioneers Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson

Nard n’ Pat TM & © the estate of Jay Lynch. Snappy Sammy Smoot TM & © the estate of Skip Williamson.

by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor The pair, destined to become among the earliest of the underground comix creators, were first bound together as teenage pen-pals who shared a mutual devotion to the satirical genius of Harvey Kurtzman. Though each would go on to make his own distinct impression on American pop culture, as partners they would launch arguably the second underground comic book title and solidify their respective statures in the form’s history. And, in a weirdly synchronistic twist of fate, they would also be linked in death, as Jay Patrick Lynch and Mervyn “Skip” Williamson, Jr., both aged 72, would finalize their brotherly connection by departing the realm of the living within eleven days of one another. I was about 16 when a weather-beaten copy of The Best of Bijou Funnies [1975] made it into my eager cartoon-loving hands, though, by that time, I had already been thoroughly corrupted by underground comix, particularly the work of Bijou stalwarts Skip Williamson and Robert Crumb, whose work had already — and irrevocably — warped my still-developing brain. But that collection, overflowing with an eclectic array of material, both hugely entertaining and head-scratchingly bizarre, became a much-read, treasured addition to my then-scant library of the day’s “books on comic books” because of Marty Pahl’s detailed, jaunty, and informative introduction. From my point of view, that well-written, engaging opening essay confirmed my suspicion that, despite being ignored by comics fandom in general and a category entirely absent in the purportedly authoritative Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, these irreverent funnybooks from out of the counter-culture were undeniably as much a part of comic book history as Superman, Frontline Combat, and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. I was grateful to Pahls (Crumb’s friend and brother-in-law) for widening a burgeoning appreciation of the form, and for especially sharing the story of the Bijou brothers, Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, and the origins of their renowned Chicago-based comix anthology. Pahls, the writer behind three comprehensive biographical essays in The Complete Crumb Comics (and who, in 1989, died far too young), nailed the appeal of the duo’s respective styles and signature characters — Lynch’s “Nard n’ Pat” and Williamson’s “Snappy Sammy Smoot” — as well as being a neat complement to each other: Nard (short for Bernard) and Pat were two real friends of Lynch—a conservative and a radical, respectively, just like their cartoon equivalents. Pat the Cat’s wisenheimer belaboring of his “boss” smacks more than a little of the relationship between Charlie McCarthy AUTHOR’S NOTE: Any quotes within this feature that are not attributed are from interviews conducted by this writer.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

and Edgar Bergen. But, if “Nard n’ Pat” was stylistically traditional as comic strips go, it was revolutionary to its audience. Readers who had had it to here with plotless, laughless psychedelia loved the burlesque-show banter of the new feature. “Snappy Sammy Smoot,” on the other hand, had antecedents in classic as well as popular literature. Like Candide, he was the consummate naif caught in the toils of a chaotic society. While Lynch shunned topical references and sought a timeless look for Nard n’ Pat, Williamson’s references were up-to-the-minute, and Sammy found himself coping constantly with black militants, rioting police, incendiary students, and revolutionary assassins. Even the art styles of “Pat” and “Sammy” contrasted. Turning his back on girlie-mag slickness, Jay returned to the “big-foot” cartoon styles of the Twenties and before, eventually honing and polishing his fine-line penwork to a burnished glow that remains the envy of his cartooning colleagues. Imaginative use of Zip-A-Tone and incredibly detailed renderings make a Jay Lynch page look like the work of no other artist. Meanwhile, Skip developed the use of wide crosshatching and broad, flat, open areas to give “Snappy

Above: The Bijou brothers during the underground comix days. From left is Skip Williamson and Jay Lynch. Inset left: Lynch’s trademark characters, Nard n’ Pat. Below: Williamson’s most recognized character, Snappy Sammy Smoot .

Above: Lynch and Williamson grace the cover of Don Dohler’s fanzine, Wild! [#7, 1962]. Below: Starting in ’62, Williamson produced his own ’zine, Squire, lasted for three issues, which included cartoons by pen-pal (and lifelong friend) Jay Lynch.

In late winter, the comics community was shocked to learn not only of the passing of Lynch and Williamson, but also that the deaths would occur within two weeks of one another. On the fifth of March, Lynch expired due to lung cancer, and, by the 16th, Williamson succumbed to renal failure. The proximity of these events, while tragic to their fans, friends, and family, evoke a peculiar kismet given the two comix pioneers are so closely coupled together by history, with the founding of Bijou Funnies, second only to ZAP Comix as being the first of their kind to appear in the world (though Lynch stated that Gilbert Shelton’s Feds ’N’ Heads was released virtually at the same time, so maybe Bijou was third). The story of these two lifelong buddies stretches to when, as high school students, they began to correspond in the early ’60s through the niche fanzine scene that emerged after the EC Comics heyday. Williamson shared, “It just so happened that those of us involved were Kurtzmaniacs — worshipers of the work of Harvey Kurtzman — and we followed him assiduously.” By then, the celebrated MAD creator had quit EC, made short-lived, vain attempts, withTrump and Humbug, to recap-

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Wild! © the estate of Don Dohler.

Sammy Smoot” an almost art deco look. This look is heightened by Sammy himself, with his glistening hair slicked back like a 1930s radio crooner, who looks like he could have stepped off a plywood flat.

ture that phenomenal early success, and was then editing Help!, the humor magazine whose “Public Gallery” feature would include the first respective national appearances of Lynch and Williamson cartoons. Born into a family of “nihilistic atheists,” Lynch was creative from the get-go. “I think I always thought of myself as a cartoonist,” he said. “When I was a little kid, there were cracks on the sidewalk, which I then drew embellishments so the cracks formed the outline of Mickey Mouse, then I hid in the bushes and listened to people’s comments on my sidewalk drawings. It’s not so much the act of drawing but listening to critics that I found amusing.” He lived in the same Belmar, New Jersey, home as his cousin, Valerie Snowden, who related at the Jay Lynch/ Skip Williamson memorial (held at the School of Visual Arts, on March 31). “We were raised in the same eccentric household by a bunch of eccentrics, and I think we were the only ones who turned out normal.” She also revealed, “My father, who is 92, wanted me to share about Jay’s beginnings: my father brought him comic books when he was five and Jay was just obsessed with cartooning and comics, and that’s when he became an organizer. He’d keep those comics under his bed and study them very carefully and try to copy and emulate what the artists did… He wasn’t interested in anything else, and this was from five years old on.” As a boy, Lynch was also attracted to things satirical and absurd, whether Ernie Kovacs on TV, The Joy Boys on radio, and, specifically, Kurtzman’s parody comics. “The first issue I saw of MAD was the one with the ‘Ping Pong’ parody, with people standing in a giant footprint,” he said, “which my uncle [John Snowden] brought home… and immediately I totally flipped and that was it.” By then, he was eight years old. In Pigheaded, John Kinhart’s film documentary about Skip Williamson’s life, the cartoonist (who, as a mischievous boy was nicknamed after Percy Crosby’s comic strip mischief-maker, Skippy) said, “One of my earliest recollections is really getting in trouble, when I was in the third grade, for drawing Mickey Mouse in my workbook, and having my teacher come down and whack me with a ruler. What it did was to show me that if I could provoke such anger and hostility from authority figures, then this is the way I wanted to go!” In his Comics Journal interview with Grass Green, Williamson revealed, “Of course, the early MAD comics were a big influence around that time. I would trace the drawings of Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Wally Wood. When I was in grade school and later in high school, there was a core of guys, there were three of us, and we were totally fanatic about MAD. We would sit around and try to out-Basil Wolverton each other. I’m the only one who became a cartoonist.” What brought the two fledgling cartoonists together — as well as forming a connection with others of like mind, including a 14-year-old Art Spiegelman — was a classified ad in an issue of Cracked magazine, a second-tier MAD imitation (for which Lynch would freelance in the mid-’60s). “There was an ad from Joe Pilati, who was putting together a Kurtzman homage fanzine called Smudge,” Williamson said in Pigheaded, and he, Lynch, and Spiegelman each ordered copies, resulting in all three plugging into the MAD-centric ’zine scene. “We became aware of each other,” Spiegelman shared, “and both started contributing to Smudge.” Soon enough, the young teen began his own publication, Blasé, in which Lynch and Williamson participated, and Spiegelman sent material to Williamson’s own ’zine, Squire. “Jay Lynch and I connected through it, as I did with Art Spiegelman,” Williamson said. “And that’s how we connected to Crumb, too. It was a harbinger of things to come.” “[E]ventually, we all started corresponding with each other, just asking questions about how each one had

Chicago Mirror © the estates of Jay Lynch & Skip Williamson.

gotten various shading techniques,” Lynch told Patrick Rosenkranz, in Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution. “[The fanzine] Wild was printed on a duplication machine and we had to use ditto masters. We had to use a ballpoint and it was really difficult to get fine lines. I found I could buy a mimeograph stylus and make really fine lines with that. The first letter I got from Skip was asking me how I got those fine lines.” Soon enough, Williamson and Lynch were each submitting cartoons to college humor magazines, including Charlatan and Aardvark, and, as mentioned, both witnessed their national debuts as cartoonists in Help! Williamson, the first to appear (when a high school student, no less), had his submission chosen by the satire magazine’s assistant editor, Gloria Steinem (yes, that Gloria Steinem!). His civil rights-themed cartoon, which earned him a whopping five bucks, was then shown on national TV by comedian Dick Gregory on the Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar. “All my peers saw it,” Williamson said in Pigheaded, “and it really made me feel great.” To be featured in a humor magazine edited by their idol was fitting for the MAD “fan-addicts.” Williamson told TCJ, “Harvey Kurtzman had the vision to publish the drawings of Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb, and Gilbert Shelton in Help!, and that was the basic core of underground comix. And I think that says as much about the corrupting influence of Harvey Kurtzman as does anything.” The self-described “father-in-law” of comix would, to varying degree, remain a presence during Lynch, Williamson, and Spiegelman’s time in the counter-culture years and beyond. Through the early ’60s and into their college years, the pair kept in touch. Asked when he first met Williamson in person, Lynch responded, “It must have been ’63, when I first moved to Chicago. Canton, Missouri, where Skip lived, was about a two-hour train ride from Chicago, so Skip would come into the city, and then I started going up to Canton to visit Skip, and he’d come to Chicago to visit me.” By that year, Williamson had finished his final issue of Squire and was becoming involved in campus publications. “Jay Lynch and I were corresponding while I was in college,” Williamson told Green. “He was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago and producing surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness comic strips. I was editing the literary magazine at Culver-Stockton College, and I got Jay into a couple of issues. Then we started jamming, doing the strips together. The attitude of these cartoons were kind of like early Bob Dylan lyrics put to visuals. They didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we were excited enough to continue using the comic strip format.” Their ambitions also expanded. “I knew that I wanted to publish something, though I wasn’t sure what it was,” Williamson recalled, “but I was in constant contact with Jay… So we were setting up our grandiose plans about what we would do together and… I moved to Chicago specifically to produce something with Jay.” Lynch said in Pigheaded, “We always knew that we’d have to do something together major.” COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

In later years, Lynch would abstain from drugs but, in 1966, when Williamson came to town with new wife in tow to crash at his pal’s vermin-populated apartment, Lynch was an avid LSD user with a speed-freak girlfriend. At the memorial, their future publisher and fellow cartoonist Denis Kitchen recalled, “[Lynch] told me he was high on acid and he was in bed with his girlfriend at the time and he peered over the side of the bed (in the probably lousy neighborhood he lived in at the time) and there was a rat. He said that the rat had the face of the girl and he turned to tell the girl and, of course, she had the face of the rat. I believe that Jay had that experience… but you didn’t always know when Jay was being deadpan or honest.” There was likely more than a little honesty in Lynch’s anecdote, as Williamson wrote in an excerpt (from his Spontaneous Combustion memoir) recalling that stay-over, “Jay had a problem with rodent infestation and, toward morning, he wandered into the small room that was his studio. A rat had been caught in a trap and, in its dying throes, was dragging itself across a sheet of acetate next to his drawing table. Jay read this as an omen. If there’s a rat in the house, it must be removed.” That drug-addicted “rodent” was in the cartoonist’s bed. “Metaphorically speaking, [Lynch’s girlfriend] Linda was a rat in his house,” Williamson wrote. “She kept a bag of disposable syringes in his living room closet. And the appearance of the rat indicated to him that he had to get Linda and her bag of needles out of his house before he got busted. So he took some Thorazine, in order to come down from the LSD, and escorted Linda and her bag of spikes out of the house and put her on an el[evated] train. Jay told me, ‘I had to follow the rat omen. Otherwise we’d never have started doing the Mirror, as I would have been too busy porking and taking acid with Linda to get anything done.” The Mirror was to be the first publication co-produced by the artists (aided, through the mail, by Art Spiegelman — “Me, Skip, and Artie,” Lynch wrote in The Life and Times of R. Crumb, “it was in the cards that the three of us would ultimately do a satire magazine together that would call society’s bluff”), and it was inspired by a renowned iconoclastic periodical. Since first encountering it in 1959, Lynch was a rabid fan of Paul Krassner’s revolutionary and self-professed “social-political-religious criticism and satire” magazine. “The Realist was it for me,” Lynch wrote in his Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix introduction. “[I]t completely blew me away. The Realist seemed to be publishing material that mirrored my own private thoughts on taboo topics as it zoomed in on the sham and hypocrisy of society at large.” (Lynch would Inset: Covers of the three issues of the Chicago Mirror, Lynch and Williamson’s satirical quarterly (top two with cover art by Peter Green), the short-lived periodical that would directly result in the creation of Bijou Funnies. While lauding then-husband Lynch’s dedication, Jane Shay Wald recently said, “That part I was very impressed by. I did not like that he was always after me to get down to the street corner and sell those Chicago Mirror magazines.” 5

incoming

Copious Comments on CBC! A plethora of praise and exact emendations over exiguous errors evoked by Ye Ed Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P. O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 Next page: In 1999, Ramona Fradon imagined a new cover for Showcase #30. Colors by Marie Severin. Below: For the benefit of reader Jim Long, who laments we neglected to feature any work or discussion in CBC #13, of the Marvel graphic novel, The Shadow (a.k.a. 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer), here’s a page of original art from that great art job by Michael Kaluta (pencils) and Russ Heath (inks)!

Brian Martin You said you wanted comments on Comic Book Creator, so I believe I can help fill that niche. I have been reading your work since I picked up the first issue of Comic Book Artist off of the shelf. [Yikes! That was 19 years ago now!—Y.E.] Right off the bat, let me say that I did prefer the blanket approach to a single topic that CBA affected. Immersing myself in a specific time period or company was always a pleasure. Even the companies that

I did not have any interest in I found fascinating, and that approach gave a wonderful overview of what was going on. A perfect example is the Charlton issue that gave coverage to the history of the company. Knowing why they published the comics they did served to enlighten why the content of the comics came to be the way it was. I love the medium and finding out behind the scenes workings is always interesting. I do however understand some of the reasoning behind the change. I’m sure there were significant swings in the sales figures of the magazine depending on the subject matter. The simple fact is some subjects will appeal to a wider range of fans than others. Now that your content is more varied each issue you are more likely to have something for everyone. Which brings us to CBC. Based on my comments above, I’m sure you can guess that I do not enjoy the new magazine as much as the old. However, I continue to buy each issue. The reasoning behind that is simple: There are times where, if I only based my interest in the magazine solely on the advertised content, there are a few issues that I would not have normally purchased. As I said regarding your previous effort, that could have applied there as well. The simple fact is I love comics as a medium and am always willing to learn more about the people that make them and the stories they told. Your obvious love for the form shines through as well. Even when there was/is a subject or creator that I am not truly invested in, I can always glean a little bit of insight, or find something of interest. Howard Cruise’s story about squeezing his date’s purse in the current issue [#12] is a perfect example. Denis Kitchen and Batton Lash are two creators I have not had a lot of experience with but I found both interviews fascinating, entertaining and informative. [Issues #5 and #7 & 8, respectively.] The other thing your magazine does (as well as other TwoMorrows products) is that it introduces me to comics I might not otherwise have considered reading. While this does my wallet no favors, it certainly broadens the scope of my comic reading. I mean, everyone had to encounter their favorite comic somewhere for the first time, and if you love comics, there is no telling what will spark your interest. Hearing about a creator’s rationale for telling the stories they did and/or finding out more about subjects you were not aware of previously can only broaden one’s horizons. As for the current issue, again, I have never really had a connection to Howard Cruise’s work, but still found the interview interesting. The hoops some people have had to jump through to make a living in comics… The Jack Kirby article was again a thorough examination of the subject. The scope of Kirby’s vision for the Fourth World titles, I think, was always a bit of a barrier against their success. Add to that Kirby’s unique approach to dialogue and you have something else that factored against it. Kirby’s art style might also not have been a great fit for DC. If somehow the books could have been published by Marvel, they might have found a much more receptive audience. We’ll never know. If he was around now and able to do comics for a publisher where he had total control over his own work, who knows? Of course, the factors that went into creating Kirby’s style, outlook, and work ethic would not be present so the work might have been totally different. The

#15 • Summer 2017 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

The Shadow TM & © Condé Nast.

[Looks like CBC is hitting a nice groove with letters o’ comment, with a batch coming in responding to Roy Thomas and Alan Brennert’s fun exchange on fake alien invasions, which was in reply to a missive to our humble mag a zillion or so issues back. You’ll find those comments on the final page of this, our second four-page LOC column! Now, on with the opinions and corrections!— Ye Crusading Editor]

Jim Long

fact remains that the work will always be there to enjoy and we should cherish what we have. The Steve Rude cover was awesome. I am a big fan of the Dude. If you are in need of some current comics coverage, you could do a lot worse than showcasing his current RudeDude Comics that are being published continuing the adventures of Nexus, as well as presenting other features. I think that is it for now. If you continue to experience a dearth of correspondence, I will endeavor to send my comments on subsequent issues. Heck, now that I’ve got started, I may anyway. Keep up the great work. [Shucks, Brian! I very much appreciate the kudos and am gratified that you stick with my mags through thick and thin! Makes it quite rewarding, amigo. A big part of not devoting issues to a publisher or theme is due to my intent to do more books on those bigger subjects. To that end, I am intent on compiling a tome on the history of Charlton Comics, incorporating the two issues of CBA devoted to the Derby, Connecticut, company, plus material from pal Michael Ambrose’s superb Charlton Spotlight, as well as lots of new stuff. When that will finally get done is still up in the air… I had hoped for that to happen this year, but other projects keep bumping it, such as The Kirby100 book, featuring 100 artists celebrating the centennial of Jack’s birth (coming in August), my design/production job on Roger Hill’s awesome Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics volume (out this summer), never mind this insanely detailed retrospective I’ve compiled, The Book of Weirdo, examining R. Crumb’s great comics anthology (soon from Last Gasp). Oh, and look for our Steve Rude issue in CBC #18! — Y.E.]

Howard E. Michael, Jr. I am truly enjoying the latest issue of CBC and its Gil Kane theme. But I just have to wonder if it was Mr. Kane’s enlistment papers or you as the article’s writer/editor — or the transcriber, or senior transcriber, or proofreader — who made the mistake, but somehow the error made it into print for eternity. I hope you understand when I tell you that everyone has always led me to believe that 80" is equal to six feet, eight inches, not six foot, six inches. But it was an interesting issue! [Confound the U.S. customary system of measurement! Indeed, Howard, you are correct and blame for the error is entirely mine. Hopefully, though, eternity might be a short time off if we can expand that issue to a full-blown book (with correction, natch)! In the next week or so, Ye Ed is preparing to interview Larry Koster, Gil Kane’s partner with both His Name is… Savage and Blackmark, whose contact was shared by pal Brian Kane. Mea culpa for that boneheaded mistake! I did think Gil was taller than 6'6"! — Y.E.] COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Summer 2017 • #15

I just received my electronic copy of CBC #13 yesterday. I read the Ramona Fradon interview over lunch and spent yesterday evening devouring the Michael Kaluta interview. When does the next issue come out? Seriously, I was really looking forward to the Kaluta interview. I’ve always loved his artwork, especially his run on The Shadow, in the early 1970s, and had hoped to see a little more about his Shadow: Hitler’s Astrologer graphic novel with Russ Heath, but anyway… What I found most interesting about the interview was his backstory. I was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, not far from where Mike grew up. It was interesting to hear his descriptions and see how they matched up to my memories of growing up in same time and place. I worked at the Buckingham Theatre that Mike mentions on pg. 49, in the summer of 1973, and am a 1979 graduate of the Corcoran School of Art, in Washington, D.C., that he mentions on pg. 54, so these references brought back fond memories. I also met Charles Vess in the mid-’70s when he was working the convention circuit and selling Carl Barks

cover recreations. Two corrections are in order for future printings: Pgs. 47 and 49: The Army base in Arlington is Fort Myer, not “Fort Mayer.” Pg. 54: The department store in Alexandria, Virginia, that he mentioned working in the art department is most likely The Hecht Company, not “Hick.” Thanks again for all the great work that you put into CBC!

Joe Frank CBC #13 was a gem. A neat trick as it wasn’t an immediate sure-sell for me, like with Gil Kane and Kirby. I do like Micheal Kaluta’s work, especially The Shadow. It was a short run, but absolutely terrific. I started late, with #2, but was still stunned and outraged when he wasn’t in #5. I liked it that much, that quickly. Keep in mind, too, I was never a big fan of the character. I knew nothing of the radio version and had only the most mild familiarity based on, of all things, the Kurtzman/Elder satire from MAD #4. Yet Kaluta’s art was so atmospheric and moody, that for the short time he was there, it was a must-read. All the candidates mentioned for the book (Toth, Steranko, Wrightson, etc.) would have likely been excellent, but here was Kaluta, whom I was unfamiliar with at the time, doing a tremendous rendition such that I wouldn’t have wanted any replacement. I was happy with him. When someone can make such a wonderful first impression, they must be doing something right. Naturally, I loved all the Kaluta Shadow drawings accompanying your interview. The chat itself was of interest even on non-Shadow related mat25

places him at the top of his field as a truly superb comic book illustrator. What’s equally startling is, in getting to know Mark, to be exposed to the man’s quiet, humble nature and thoughtful concern and abiding interest in the natural world outside of comic books. The following interview took place by phone over three sessions this past January, conversations bracketed by the inauguration of a new U.S. President, a development of concern that weighed into the episodic conversation. The transcript was subsequently corrected and clarified by Mark.

Comic Book Creator: If you don’t mind, I would like to talk about your relatives. Even before you graced this planet, did you have people who were creative in your family? Mark Schultz: Not really. I mean, yeah, “creative.” It’s disparaging to think that people who aren’t in the arts aren’t creative, but my family in general tends to be more… They work more with numbers than with visual images. There was someone in my family who I never knew, who was gone before I came along. A great grandmother on my mother’s side who was an amateur oil painter. She was good.

CBC: What was her name? Do you know? Mark: It’s terrible but I don’t. Her married name was Pentecost. I need to find that out. I grew up with her oil paintings. But that was it. My parents were not inclined toward visual arts. My mom loved cooking, my father loved reading. Both those things did influence me. CBC: Where was your father from originally? Mark: Right where I live now: the Scranton, Pennsylvania area. Both my mother and my father grew up in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania. CBC: Was it a middle class life for your parents?

The Mark Schultz Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcription by Steven Thompson 32

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Looking through the mammoth-sized Xenozoic ominbus collection published a few years back, it was startling to witness the remarkably swift and considerable stylistic development of Mark Christopher Schultz. The initial installments of his signature comic book series, Xenozoic Tales, betrays the influence of artist Wallace Wood. But in a few short issues —partly engendered, we will learn, by a friendship with the late, great Al Williamson — Mark’s work was rapidly infused with a level of excellence that today

have studios in the house, so we moved to this area, which I knew from my childhood. We moved here in ’93 and we’ve been here ever since. CBC: So your both mother’s and father’s families came from the area. Do they stretch back? Mark: Well, the Schultzes came over in 1857, part of a big wave of German immigration in the mid-19th century. I think, if I understand correctly, they were escaping the military conscription that was going on in middle Europe at the time. So they came here. The father died before he arrived and the mother came over with her children and worked as a laundress. They came straight to the Scranton area. The Schultz family branch that was my immediate family stayed in the area. Others dispersed all over the place. My mother’s family are Armstrongs, Scots-Irish who came over before the Revolutionary War. They’ve been here a long time, and had pretty extensive landholdings in the area where we live now, outside of Scranton, that were sold off long before I came along. So both sides of my family have pretty deep roots in this area. CBC: Do you remember roughly what year your father was born? Mark: He was born at the very end of 1924. CBC: So did he serve in World War II? Mark: Yes, he did. Yep. He was in the Army Air Corps and did decoding. He served in the Middle East, in Egypt. CBC: Did he have stories that he told you? Mark: Yes. In fact, those are some of the earliest stories that I remember as a kid [Mark was born on June 7, 1955. — Ye Ed.]. I would have been learning this stuff in the late ’50s/early ’60s, and he would be telling me stories and showing me photographs he took of his time in the Middle East. To me that was so exotic and it seemed like centuries ago at that time. [laughs] I realize now that it was less than 15 years earlier. But, to me then, it seemed like it was incredibly distant and exotic. So he had these great photos of the Middle East. He climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza,

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Mark: Yes. They were children who came up through the Depression, but both of their families were, for that time, relatively comfortable, because their fathers had government jobs. Both my grandfathers worked for the post office, which helped them get through those years in relative comfort. CBC: What was the industry for the region? Mark: Coal! Coal made this area an important industrial center. In fact, Scranton is the place where the American industrial revolution started, with the manufacturing of iron nails and rails for the railroad. This was before steel. When steel came along, the industry moved west. But there’s a wealth of anthracite coal here in this area, hard coal, which burns much cleaner than soft coal. So, when the technology in the mid-19th century got to the point where they could efficiently burn hard coal, this area became wealthy… or, at least, the industrial robber Previous Spread: On left page barons who lived here became extremely wealthy. And, as is Mark Schultz’s cover art long as coal was a viable fuel, this area did very well. But in for The Comics Journal #150 the ’30s and ’40s of this past century, hard coal was in steep [May 1992]. At right is Mark’s decline and the area’s never completely recovered. The Xenozoic Tales print, published cities here are old coal cities, a mixture of the grim remFlesk. Above: The How and nants of the coal industry, as well as the fabulous Gothic Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs architecture that recalls the wealth that was here. You get [1960], an influential book on the outside the cities, outside the coal valleys, and, because it young artist. Below: Five-year- is a relatively depressed area, it hasn’t been over-exploited, old Mark lining up his plastic so it’s just lovely, beautiful country. And it’s much more afdinosaurs in parade formation. fordable to live here. My wife and I wanted enough room to

Mark: My sister’s name is Lisa and my brother is Kurt. CBC: And your parents’ names? Mark: My mother was Mary Frances Armstrong. And my father was Joseph Harry Schultz. CBC: Was your father well read? Mark: He was well read! He liked to read a lot. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of him reading to us kids. I’m like eight years old and my sister was seven and he’s reading Edgar Allan Poe to us. And he had a good speaking voice — a good reading voice — and he would read dramatically. He enjoyed public speaking and singing. He had a good voice and he could really do a good dramatic reading of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” CBC: Was he well liked? Mark: My father was a very isolated person. He really was not a social person. He had kind of a typical German mentality where it was his way or the highway, so he could be difficult. He had a small group of friends from way back when, but, to be honest, he didn’t really go out of his way to make new friends. CBC: Was it a big family where he came from?

This page: Filmed simultaneously on the same RKO lot (by the same movie-makers and starring two of the same actors), King Kong [1933] and The Most Dangerous Game [’32] were seminal movies for film aficionado Mark Schultz when he saw them as a youngster.

back before it was protected, as it is now. He and a bunch of friends just climbed the damn thing. And also, he was in the Air Corps, so he had this interest in the warplanes of the time. He had all these great photographs, and I developed a real interest in World War II technology. CBC: You mentioned he was a civil servant? Mark: Yeah, he was in the Social Security Administration. All his adult life. As a result, to take promotions, we would move to different areas, so we moved quite a bit. All within Pennsylvania. We spent a lot of time in the Pittsburgh area, some in central Pennsylvania, and later in eastern Pennsylvania. CBC: Did your mom work? Mark: She was a mother and homemaker while I was growing up. Later, she went back to work outside the house. She worked as a bank teller before I was born and went back to that when the kids were grown. CBC: Did they struggle during the Depression? Were there stories about that? Mark: I don’t think their families struggled a great deal, not like many others did, because their fathers both had secure jobs in the post office. It all sounded exotic to me as I was a kid, hearing about how they planted victory gardens during World War II. It was definitely a different time. They did not have cars. They relied on public transportation. But, no, they did not have bad lives comparable to other people in the Depression. Or, maybe they just didn’t talk about the bad stuff. CBC: Were they New Deal Democrats? Mark: That’s a good question. I’ve been trying to remember about my parents’ political persuasions… they were supporters of Roosevelt. I can remember as a kid they went through different iterations just based on expediency, who they wanted to see put onto office at the time, who they thought was a better candidate, as opposed to having an hardcore political agenda. And then, later in life, much like myself, they became much more affiliated with the values of the Democratic Party. CBC: When did they meet and get married? Mark: Boy, my memory is foggy. They met in the early ’50s. They got married in ’54 and I was born in ’55. I was the first child and I have a sister who is a little more than a year younger than me and a brother who is six years younger than me. CBC: What are their names?

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Above: The actress Frances Gifford made an impact on young Mark Schultz when he viewed her Republic movie serial Jungle Girl [1941] on local TV. She also appeared with Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan Triumphs [1943]. Inset right: Mark confessed his first “man crush” was on Vic Morrow, star of the ABC TV series Combat! [1962–67]. 36

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Above: At top is Montague Rhodes James [1882–1936], renowned author of ghost stories, whose collections profoundly affected Kelley Jones. Inset right: Kelley, who drew this portrait, is also fond of the weird fiction of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Below: Teenagers Kelley (left) and Jim Sinclair about to depart for the 1978 Creation Con in San Francisco, where Kelley would meet Marshall Rogers.

How many brothers and sisters? Mark: He had a brother and a sister. There were just three kids in that family. CBC: And your mom? Mark: She was an only child. CBC: Did you have much of the extended family around when growing up? Mark: We never actually lived in the northeastern Pennsylvania area, where our relatives lived, though we would visit once or twice a year. So I knew my extended family, but it wasn’t a large family and we would just see them on occasion. CBC: What’s your first memory? Where’d you live? Mark: Well, I was born outside of Philadelphia, in a town called Bristol. I really don’t have any memories of that, but we moved to a small town, Hulmeville, outside of Philadelphia, and my first specific memory was waking up in the middle of the night to hear the fire engines go by (which I think is probably typical for a lot of boys). [laughs] But it was an exciting thing when the fire engines went by. I must have been about two at the time. My other memory from this house is taking my tricycle up a long hill — our house was more or less at the bottom of this hill — and letting go, coming down on that tricycle until I wiped out about halfway down. CBC: [Laughs] Were you all right? Mark: Oh, yeah. Just scraped up. But it was the first time I can actually remember getting away from parental control. I must have snuck out of the yard. I remember that my mom wasn’t pleased. CBC: Overall, were you an obedient child? Mark: I think so. I was into reading and drawing. I wasn’t a troublemaker. CBC: Did you have a TV in the house? Mark: That’s another thing I can’t quite remember. Both my parents are gone now and I wish I’d thought to ask them all these questions. But I must have been about five when I first remember seeing television in our house. I remember watching shows like Sea Hunt and adventure-type shows. I remember when I found Combat! Are you old enough to remember Combat? CBC: Oh, yeah! Vic Morrow! Mark: Vic Morrow was my first guy-crush. [chuckles] I loved Vic Morrow in Combat! That came on in ’62. So I was aware of the TV then. Here’s an important part of my childhood: We were living outside of Pittsburgh and there was a local show on Saturday mornings, at around 6 a.m., awful early. It was hosted by this guy who dressed like a hunter and he would show wild animals and they would broadcast old jungle movies. That was where I first saw the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, but also Buster Crabbe playing Tarzan. They also showed the old Jungle Girl serial, with Frances Gifford. [laughs] And this was the first time I really appreciated girls! I mean, here’s this jungle girl in this mini-skirted outfit riding an elephant! What’s not to like? That’s also when I first saw King Kong and Son of Kong. So that was an important influence on me. That set up my whole interest in adventure. This was around ’60, ’61, and it was about the same time I was first noticing comic books, too. CBC: So, you could turn on the TV whenever you wanted or did you have to sneak it? Mark: Well, obviously, if we were getting it at six o’clock in the morning, my parents were not up at that time, [Jon laughs] so we had permission but, I think, it was pretty closely regulated. CBC: I had to sneak it! [laughs] I remember I used to get up at 6:30 in the morning to watch reruns of Biography with Mike Wallace. It was my little world here. Mark: I remember my sister and I seeing this stuff early in the morning when my parents were still in bed. This was before even the cartoons started coming on. But it was nice because we just had it to ourselves and it was this great world! We had this little Philco black-&-white TV, with the rabbit ears, so it was all radio wave reception, pre-cable. The reception was pretty sketchy… It was like the signal was coming from another planet. It was mysterious. I remember watching Kong and trying to see it through the static. Everything was very shadowy and dark because the image was so bad. It just seemed like there was so much

in those shadows I wanted to see. It was like a dream image coming through. CBC: Obviously, you immediately responded positively to King Kong. Can you describe what appealed to you? Mark: Just the mystery of it. By that time I’d already fallen in love with dinosaurs and exotic adventure. There was just this atmosphere in Kong, this feeling of mystery and weight that lies over everything, which is the craftsmanship of the guys who made the film — Willis O’Brien, the people who created the sets, the directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. It has this lush denseness to it, this layered feeling. And it’s a great story! It’s a moving story. I don’t think I appreciated that consciously at the time, but it’s not just your standard adventure story. There’s an emotional depth to it. CBC: No, it’s the Greatest Movie Ever Made, thank you. [laughs] Mark: I will still argue anyone to the death in any forum that, Kong is the great example of what cinema is capable of and what it can accomplish. CBC: Were you fully cognizant that it was special effects? Did you buy into it that this was a giant ape? Or did you let yourself buy into it? Mark: Wow, that’s a good question. I let myself buy it, absolutely. I had no idea if this was a real giant ape or not. I don’t remember even questioning that. I just accepted it. It was just so engrossing. That begs the question of when I did learn, you know, how stop motion was effected. That came a bit later, probably with Forry Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland, and that stuff. For my generation, that was the source you went to and learn how that type of film was made. CBC: So, okay. In the early 1950s, there was the cover of Life magazine that started a real renaissance that was taking place where dinosaurs suddenly became the purview of children. That came on really strong. When do you first recall realizing that there were prehistoric beasts that roamed the countryside… especially in Pennsylvania! Mark: Sometime around the late ’50s/early ’60s, I remember seeing comic and books in stores with dinosaurs on the covers. Like the How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs primers for kids, which my parents, to their credit, bought for me. I remember expressing to my parents an interest in dinosaurs and my mother taking me to the public library to get a book on that subject. That was probably before I started going to school It was right around that time that all this stuff was coming together for me. Another important thing at that time, too, because I was so interested in dinosaurs, my parents took me to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh, which, excepting New York’s American Museum of Natural History, has the most significant collection of dinosaur fossil material in the United States. I was just blown away to see the scale of these critters! And there was a huge painting. It’s gone now, but at the time there was a huge painting of a tyrannosaurus behind the tyrannosaurus skeleton. It was a mural, a two-story high piece of art. That impressed me. About the same time, the movie Gorgo was in theaters and it was advertised in the newspapers, back when the

studios took out big ad spaces to promote their movies. There was this advertisement for Gorgo with the monster towering over the typical stuff, buildings shattering and people running away. But it was, in my mind, very close to that painting of the tyrannosaurus in the museum and it just kind of gelled in my mind these two images — the Hollywood monster version of a dinosaur and the attempt at a scientific re-creation of a dinosaur. CBC: Did you frequent the public library much? Did you go once a week? Mark: Probably. When I got a little older, definitely. I went frequently. I spent a lot of time at the library. CBC: Just to get an idea, when you were five years old where were you living? Mark: When I was five, we were living outside of New Kensington, which is just north of Pittsburgh — western Pennsylvania. CBC: When did you move from there? Mark: Well, we were there from about the time I was three until I was eight. Then we moved to the Northumber-

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Above: Mark’s early visits to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh fostered a growing interest in prehistoric creatures, particularly when he marveled at the Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit, which displayed the fossil bones in a “tail-dragging” stance later found to be likely an erroneous pose. In 2008, the museum revised the display to represent T. rex in a horizontal, bird-like posture, with tail in the air as counterweight to its monstrous skull. Painter O. von Fueher’s rendition of the beast also had an impact on young Schultz. Below: Gorgo, the 1961 monster-on-a-rampage movie, held the boy’s rapt attention.