Issuu

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CELEBRATING THE GREATEST FANTASY ARTIST OF ALL TIME

A TwoMorrows Publication

No. 19, Winter 2019

Plus: The Savage Brush of

JOE JUSKO

and the Reinvention of

82658 00355

Death Dealer TM & © the Estate of Frank Frazetta.

TOM GRINDBERG

Cover painting by Tom Grindberg

Winter 2019 • The Frank Frazetta Issue • Number 19

T WOODY THE BARBARIAN CBC mascot by & © J.D. KING

Painting by TOM GRINDBERG in the USA

™

No. 19, Winter 2019

Plus: The Savage Brush of

JOE JUSKO

and the Reinvention of

TOM GRINDBERG

Ye Ed’s Rant: Goodbye to old friends and hello to 2019 (and TwoMorrows’ 25th!).......... 2 COMICS CHATTER

Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick finds out about artist Greg “Chevy Man” Land............ 16 Hembeck’s Dateline: Fred throws light on Steve Ditko’s Shade, the Changing Man.. 21 THE MAIN EVENTS Art God: An Interview with Frank Frazetta. In 1984, writer/comics historian Steven C. Ringgenberg visited the great fantasy artist at the then just-opened Frazetta Museum, in Pennsylvania, and he came away with an entertaining and informative talk with the most renowned genre painter of all time......................... 22

Death Dealer TM & © the Estate of Frank Frazetta.

Cover painting by Tom Grindberg

Longtime comics pro TOM GRINDBERG jumped at the chance to depict the savage Frank Frazetta-created character Death Dealer when we asked and we could not be more impressed with the results! The artist has alluded to a possible project with Frank Frazetta, Jr., involving the axe-wielding brute, to which we heartily hope will come to pass. Our special thanks to Frank, Jr., for giving Comic Book Creator permission to use Death Dealer on our cover. Visit www.frazettamuseum.com for information and to peruse the many Death Dealer… umm… deals and other items!

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

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Frazetta Fest. Ringgenberg shares a veritable feast of features on the great artist, including Frazetta’s caricature work, rarely-seen public service strips, and the lost E.C. Comics story, “Came the Dawn”… the “one that got away”!................... 38 The Savage Brush of Joe Jusko. A career-spanning and enormously enlightening conversation with Frazetta disciple Joe Jusko, one of the finest fantasy and superhero painters working today. Included in the chat are a look at his hard-scrabble upbringing in the mean streets of Manhattan, stint as Big Apple cop, and breakthrough with his Marvel Masterpieces trading card set, plus much more............... 48 The Reinvention of Thomas Christian Grindberg. He started off as a Neal Adams clone, morphed into a busy comics pro absorbing the work of John Buscema, and completely reinvented himself to join the ranks of great fantasy illustrators such as Frazetta, Roy Krenkel, and Al Williamson, Grindberg shares about his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs, work on Tarzan, and future with The Darkness........ 74 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Photographer Kendall Whitehouse captures the living spirits....... 94 Creator’s Creators: We look at the career of guest-editor Steven C. Ringgenberg ....... 95 Coming Attractions: The “Not Your Average Joes” special is coming in CBC #20........ 95 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Kyle Baker knows The Shadow!................. 96 Right: A detail of Frank Frazetta’s cover painting used on the Flashing Swords #1 hardcover edition [1973].

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

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: $43 US, $66 International, $20 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2019 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Death Dealer TM & © the estate of Frank Frazetta. Painting © Tom Grindberg.

Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt selects some of the best war comics available..... 15

$9.95

A TwoMorrows Publication

Fleener in the Forefront: Mary’s Busy as a Bee. Part two of our jaunty interview with the great cartoonist Mary Fleener from her mini-comics work to Weirdo to Slutburger to her current-day debut, with Billie the Bee, as graphic novelist........... 3

About Our Cover

CELEBRATING THE GREATEST FANTASY ARTIST OF ALL TIME

This issue is dedicated to the memories of RUSS HEATH, MARIE SEVERIN, GARY FRIEDRICH, STAN LEE, and MICHAEL CHANDLEY ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

STEVEN C. RINGGENBERG Guest Co-Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

TOM GRINDBERG Cover Painter

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON STEVEN TICE BRIAN K. MORRIS Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK GEORGE KHOURY 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

Farewell to old friends and hello to a very busy new year! Expo Center, New Jersey, which will host many Weirdo contributors — Peter Bagge, Kim Deitch, Kaz, Mark Newgarden, and Carol Tyler, so far — plus my good chum Drew Friedman, The Book of Weirdo cover artist! For details, visit the website of pal Cliff Galbraith’s great annual Secaucus show at eastcoastcomicon.com. I am also helming a special celebration of TwoMorrows Publishing — The World of TwoMorrows — a book marking the 25th anniversary of John and Pam Morrow’s company. It goes without saying that yours truly owes much of his career to the publisher and I’m pleased as a pickle to share that appreciation by editing a detailed history of the Raleigh-based outfit’s many accomplishments. Details are still being worked out, but suffice to say, it will debut at the 2019 I write these words just beComic-Con International: San Diego, fore we close the books on 2018, where — ye ghads! — I have been eagerly awaiting the coming invited as a guest of the convention! new year. To keep readers in In addition to moonlighting as the loop, Ye Ed will be extremely an editor at It’s Alive! Press (where active in 2019, with the release publisher Drew Ford is reprinting of his 12-years-in-the-making some fascinating items of yore, tome, The Book of Weirdo, being importantly a collection of the great released by publisher Last Gasp anti-war war series, “The Lonely War come May. This will likely be of Willy Schultz,” by Will Franz and my magnum opus, an insanely Sam Glanzman), I am co-authoring Frank Frazetta by Ronn Sutton exhaustive history of Robert John Severin: America’s Two-Fisted Crumb’s legendary 1980s humor Talent. Co-writer Greg Biga hosted my visit to Colorado comics anthology, a retrospective to which over 130 in June when we visited the home of the great comic Weirdo contributors participated, including Mr. Crumb himself, who said book artist’s daughter, Michelina, and we scanned an amazing array of Severin artwork. This TwoMorrows my efforts made book is tentatively shceduled for late fall/early winter. for a “great As if that isn’t enough to do, I have written a fourbook,” adding, act play with longtime creative partner and li’l brother “So, from a, you Andrew, for which we’re currently conducting table know, historical readings with New York City-based actors. The first act perspective, you performed a read-through of The Golden Age — a poignant comedydrama based in the studio of fictional outfit Wonder great service.” Comics and set during the birth of the form — went Choke! The 288spectacularly and the Brothers Cooke are tremendouspage retrospecly excited at the prospect of an actual stage production. tive will be offiGreat White Way, here we come! cially released Alas, we couldn’t fit in the latest portion of Michael at the East Coast Aushenker’s mammoth Rich Buckler interview this ish, ComiCon, May but will strive to include next time. We do our best… 17–19, at the Gotta go… I’m off to tackle the layout and design of Meadowlands Roger Hill’s Mac Raboy: Master of the Comics! See all of you fine people in 2019! What a cascade of tragic passings in the last few months, losing so many legendary comics creators in such a short period of time, including my dear friends Russ Heath and Marie Severin, as well as pal Gary Friedrich and Stan “The Man” Lee, who was generous with yours truly. Godspeed, my friends. Also mentioned atop this page is the fine Providencebased bookseller Mike Chandley, whose sudden death stunned the book-loving community. His Cellar Stories and Books store was the stuff of legend and he long supported Ye Ed’s various projects. From my mother and myself: rest well, Mike. Memories of you will be treasured.

cbc contributors

Kyle Baker Comicartfans.com Mary Fleener Brent Frankenhoff Frank Frazetta, Jr.

Drew Friedman Tom Grindberg Fred Hembeck Heritage Joe Jusko

Denis Kitchen Stacey Kitchen Dimitri Mais Mineshaft magazine Tom Palmer

—Y e Crusading Editor

Darrick Patrick Rob Smentek Kevin Sollenberger J. David Spurlock Ronn Sutton

Wayno Kendall Whitehouse Glen Whitmore Rob Yeremian Tom Ziuko

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

TOM ZIUKO

Welcoming 2019

fleener in the forefront

Mary’s Busy as a Bee Part two of our career-spanning chat with awesome alt-cartoonist Mary Fleener Conducted by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor

Chicken Slacks TM & © Mary Fleener.

[Last issue we presented the first portion of CBC’s career-spanning chat with the great Mary Fleener, California-based alternative cartoonist — and now, with her forthcoming Billie the Bee, graphic novelist! — where she discussed her mom’s Disney Studio connection, her other life as rock band member, early contributions to Weirdo magazine, and growth as top-notch creator emerging from the quasi-underground of the Reagan era. We pick up where we left off: Mary’s time in the mid-’80s. —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: Mary, can you explain for our readers, what is a mini-comic? Mary Fleener: A mini-comic is usually 4¼" x 5½", because most people will take a sheet of typewriter paper, which is 8½" x 11", fold or cut in half, and then fold that half, and that gives you eight pages… or it can be more. It all depends on big your stapler is! CBC: There was a mini-comics movement of a sort, right? Mary: There sure was. What happened was, copy machines got better and paper stock got better, and people didn’t want to rely on a publisher to publish their artwork because really, in the ’80s — and this is why I was so intrigued that you’re doing the book on Weirdo — there was a real attitude against people who didn’t draw the super-hero style and “comics were for kids,” and they had to be nice and pure and everything. But a lot of people wanted to have an artistic bent to it that involved more attitude, and a more creative viewpoint that bordered on fine art and/or outrageous drawings, like XNO, for example. So it was easier and more fun, and quicker to make your own mini-comic, get 500 copies, go home and lay ’em on the floor of the living room, put them in piles, fold them, and staple them yourself. It was a good way of getting your name out there. Nobody wants to be handed a stack of drawings to look through. It’s much more impressive to hand them a little book, and I think that’s why they became so popular. And it was cheap to mail stuff back in the ’80s, too. It was before they started all of that Zone 1, and 2, and 3, and 4 stuff. CBC: Was there any money to be made or was it purely just for fun? Mary: We made money for the post office. [laughter] Spending $1,000 for copies, stamps, and shipping and mailing in a year was not uncommon, and I think the best part of it was we were doing something most publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. The first mini-comics were the Tijuana Bibles, as we all know. Those were the sex comics which came out of Mexico that were cheaply printed, and they would put common cartoon characters like Batman or Popeye or Donald Duck, in compromising situations. And, because of that format, there was enormous freedom for people to do it, and so it was fun and naughty and rebellious. It seemed like thousands of people started doing this all at once in the ’80s. CBC: What were your mini-comics? Mary: The first one I did was actually a calendar called “Girls! Girls! Girls!,” in 1986, and instead of having classic pin-ups, I did my cubistic style girls, so I thought it would be fun to make up a hundred of these and mail them to my favorite underground comix people sort of as a gift and just COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

to introduce myself. “Hi, I’m Mary Fleener, I draw cartoons, and here’s a calendar. I hope you like it.” I really wasn’t that into writing then, so I hooked up with a guy named John Eberly (They Were In Love) from Iowa and another guy named William Clark (The Dead Girl), who later appeared in Weirdo. John and William wrote the stories and I only illustrated them. I did a couple little coloring books called Color My Totem, where I would just do little tiny drawings, like maybe 30 on a page, anything that popped into my head. And then I decided to go to the digest-size, which is 5½" x 8½". And I got the idea of illustrating rock ’n’ roll lyrics, because, let’s face it: a lot of those songs tell stories, they’re poetry, and I’d seen that done with sheet music when I worked in a music store. I published four issues of Chicken Slacks and had various people contribute. I didn’t pay them very much, maybe $10 a page, but we had to stop after four issues because we were breaking copyright laws because you can’t reproduce song lyrics any time you feel like it. You’ve got to pay BMI or ASCAP money. After a while I got a couple of orders from lawyers up in Hollywood, and I thought, “Okay, end the series. I don’t want to get in trouble.” CBC: What notable contributors to that? Mary: Oh, really, it was amazing. Robert Armstrong, XNO, J.R. Williams, Dennis Worden, Krystine Kryttre, Roy Tompkins, Wayno (of course, who’s now a big syndicated guy), Lloyd Dangle, Gary Wray, and many more. CBC: Every single one of those people also contributed to Weirdo.

Above: Mary Fleener titled this ’10s pic of herself, standing before a mural painted by her lonesome, “Fleener Leucadia Jam Session Mural 7 11.” Below: Mary produced four issues of her mini-comic Chicken Slacks, which featured song lyrics made into comic stories. She ended the title when music lawyers started to catch wind.

AN INTERVIEW WITH

FRANK FRAZETTA

Conducted by

Steven C. RinGgenBERG

#19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Conan TM & © Cona

The following interview was conducted in 1984 within the first Frazetta Museum that was situated on the top floor of an office block Frank Frazetta purchased to give sons Frank Jr. and Billy store fronts for their businesses. It was winter and the room was cold that day. After an hour or so, we relocated to the Frazetta home to finish the rest of the interview in Frank’s studio, where the unfinished Wild Ride sat on the easel. Frank had been my hero since about the age of 13, and it was a thrill finally getting to talk to the master in person. (I had done a brief phone interview with him in 1983, but this was the first time we’d met.) Over the course of several hours, we discussed Frank’s career, his approach to his work, and Fire and Ice, the animated film he’d just worked on with Ralph Bakshi, one based on his characters and concepts. In person, Frazetta was what you might expect from viewing his work: brash, funny, opinionated, and supremely confident. I can say without reservation that he was the coolest man I have ever met. Frazetta passed away in 2010. — SCR.

Steven C. Ringgenberg: When did you start working on the museum? Frank Frazetta: I have to say it’s at least… right after I came back from California, so that would be, maybe, oh early ’83, I suppose. We bought the building and it even may have been an afterthought, quite frankly. SCR: You bought the building first and then… ? Frank: Yeah, I think that’s the way it worked, and I think we bought the building because it was here and we needed storage for our poster business; we were running out of room back home, this kind of thing, and T-shirts, etc., and the rest of that commercial stuff. And then it grew. I said, “My Gosh, we’ve got a storefront. My boys can go into business for themselves,” and then this… Oh yeah, the museum idea. It was basically all [Frank’s wife] Ellie’s idea. I’m not business oriented… SCR: You said that opening the museum was kind of an afterthought. What made you open it at all? Frank: I think it was due to the popularity of the work. You know, the fans were constantly asking if they could come to see the originals and so on and so forth, and the best we did through the years was have some exhibits at different conventions and that was kind of inconvenient, to haul the paintings around, and that kind of thing, and worry about security. And we’re simply doing it for all the people that have had fun with my work. No other reason. It’s not for profit, because… you know, the money’s here. I could’ve sold the paintings and gotten rich, probably, and they’re here for the world. You can’t take them with you, you know. And I think my joy is in showing the work. SCR: So that’s basically the primary purpose of the museum. Frank: Absolutely. No other reason that I can imagine. SCR: Will there ever be any other artists displayed here? Frank: We have considered it, but that would be in the adjoining room, the gallery room, and we have been considering that and talking with other artists, and they’re interested, but we’ll have to wait and see because we suddenly found that I have an awful lot of drawings that, like you mentioned; little doodles and watercolors and so on that simply don’t fit in in this room, and we may have to utilize our addition for that purpose. As long as people want to see them. SCR: Would you ever like to display some of Roy [Krenkel]’s paintings? Frank: I don’t have any… You mean Roy’s? I don’t have any of Roy’s paintings. SCR: I thought maybe if you could assemble a show or something. His stuff is probably pretty scattered by now. Frank: Well, since he died, I know that some of his work is being handled by the estate, you know, [Al] Williamson and some of those people, and I don’t know anything about it or what they’re doing with it, and so on. I really don’t know. SCR: When you were working for Ace back in the early ’60s, did [editor] Don Wolheim keep a lot of your paintings or did you get your work back? Frank: Ace kept them. I don’t know… I wouldn’t say Don kept them, but Ace, that was their, that was the way they operated. They kept the original

art, and that was pretty standard, I think, for most publishers at that point and one of the reasons being that most artists didn’t care. I mean they painted it and got paid and forgot about it. They really didn’t take much interest in their original art, and they kind of thought I was strange for wanting to retain the original. And that is primarily the reason I think some of that art is inferior because I saw no reason to work much harder than was necessary. The price wasn’t especially wonderful and I knew the art was just gone forever. So, I just approached the question very casually. And too many people, fans included, consider that, like, part of my growth. They look at it and they see what they consider an improvement, you know, and it’s really not so because the work I did later, like for Lancer, is really no better than what I was capable of in the ’60s, not to mention the ’50s. So, it’s just that that’s the way I feel about my work. I have to feel that the effort is just worth something. If the art is awfully good, I just can’t see it just being shipped around and lost and being put into some stockroom or something like that, and I was obviously right, since the world is awfully happy that, I do have, certainly, most of that. SCR: How many originals of yours do you still have, Frank, as far as paintings? Frank: I don’t know. I really haven’t counted… I’ve got… This is only a fraction [gestures to the 60 or so paintings on the museum walls]. SCR: Have you ever had your originals cataloged? You know, gone through everything to know exactly what you’ve got? Frank: No, not really. The posters were cataloged at some point. You know, I’ve got closets and big cabinets filled with them, you know, that sort of thing, pen and inks or… SCR: Do you just have little doodles that you draw and go, “Oh that’s nice,” and then put away? Frank: Yeah, I’ll tell you. I used to give them away, and you know… No longer. Previous page: Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for the Lancer paperback edition of Conan the Adventurer, first of the celebrated series. Left: The artist’s preliminary sketch (showing quite a different title placement) and printed version.

PORTRAIT by DREW FRIEDMAN This portrait originally appeared in Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics [Fantagraphics, 2014].

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Steven Ringgenberg shares a feast of fascinating factoids featuring Frank Frazetta!

The Fire This Time (or, How to Make a Great-Looking Documentary on America’s Greatest Painter With a Teeny Budget and Still Have Fun) “Frank Frazetta is probably the most influential artist of the last half-a-century.”

— Illustrator and publisher William Stout, quoted in Frazetta: Painting with Fire

Although Frank Frazetta has been dead since 2010, these can still be seen as still heady times for the maestro’s legion of fans because of the torrent of new Frazetta projects and merchandise pouring forth due to the concerted efforts of his children and grandchildren. Although it was not produced by a member of the Frazetta clan, one of the best Frazetta projects is a documentary chronicling his life and career entitled, Frazetta: Painting with Fire. Produced by a small independent production company called Cinemachine, the film is a triumph. Not only is it a vivid portrait of America’s most dynamic painter, it’s one of the best documentaries on any artist, worthy to stand beside a modern classic like Terry Zwigoff’s award-winning Crumb. Divided into different sections with titles like Power and Drama and An Artist Emerges, the film traces Frazetta’s life from his earliest days right up the present, exploring virtually every aspect of his art career and punctuated with commentary from friends, colleagues and famous fans like Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Nick Meglin, Bill Stout, Dave Stevens, Michael Kaluta, Neal Adams, Bo Derek, John Milius, Ralph Bakshi and Berni Wrightson. Frazetta’s children, Holly, Heidi, Frank, Jr. and Bill (with the notable exception of his wife, Ellie), were also interviewed, providing a unique view of this protean artist, whom they knew simply as “Dad.” From their comments, however, it sounds like Frank and Ellie Frazetta were fun parents.

While Frazetta’s career built to a steady stream of triumphs from the mid-’60s onward, and his artwork is always dynamic, there is a slightly melancholy tone to this film because of the section where Frazetta and his friends and family discuss his long periods of ill health due to a misdiagnosed thyroid problem followed by a series of strokes. Frazetta survived his harrowing brush with death, but it’s a little startling to hear a man as tough and self-reliant as Frazetta’s always been talk about contemplating suicide because of his seemingly unending health problems for an entire decade. Still, the film ends on a happier note, showing an older, slightly battered looking Frazetta recovered and playing (and drawing) with his grandkids. Despite being shot on the proverbial shoestring, the film is well mounted, with Michael Goodis’s rousing, classically tinged score striking just the right notes to evoke the grandeur of Frazetta’s paintings. The film’s crisp editing and cinematography imbue it with an aura of slick professionalism, coupled with vast respect for its subject, while the filmmakers’ innovative use of animation software brings several of Frazetta’s most famous paintings to life in visually dazzling ways, at one point even allowing the artist to wander into one of his own landscapes. The film’s startling opening sequence shows The Barbarian, Frazetta’s first Conan painting, writhing and moving while the flames in the background flicker and dance. Frazetta: Painting with Fire is an artistic triumph, and apt tribute to one of America’s finest painters.

FRANK FRAZETTA: PUBLIC CITIZEN A look at the masterful artist’s public service work from his early years in the comic book biz

Once upon a time, comic books had to run two pages of text stories in order to maintain their second class mailing privileges. In addition, in order to improve the trashy, low-class image of the comic book industry, some companies including DC, Famous Funnies Publications and others, also ran public service advertising. These ads encouraged their readers to engage in wholesome activities like joining the Boy Scouts, attending church, staying away from drugs, deploring racial prejudice, etc. 38

It may come as a surprise to those who know Frank Frazetta’s work only from his paintings to learn that he did a handful of public service ads during his career as a cartoonist in the early ‘50s. He drew the last one in the mid-’60s just as his painting career was to forever take him away from the seedy, low-rent world of comics. Frazetta’s public service comic strips constitute a tiny, but interesting, body of work that includes one of only two complete comic books Frazetta illustrated, and one of the very last pieces of sequential art he ever did. The very first of these ads was the anti-drug diatribe “We Can Stop the Enemies of Youth,” which first appeared in 1951 in the first issue of Eastern Color’s Buster Crabbe series, a comic Frazetta was to contribute to several more times in the coming years. “Enemies” was often reprinted during the ’50s, in comics like Black Diamond Western #31, Crime Does Not Pay #106 and 114, Daredevil Comics #82, Fight Against Crime #5, Famous Funnies #198, Crime and Punishment #46, Boy Comics #73, and even into the 1970s in black-&-white magazines like Murder Tales #10, and Tales of the Killers #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

[Greetings, fellow Frazetta aficionados, and welcome to a series of articles originally intended for a column I did called “The Frazetta-Phile” in the pages of Comic Book Marketplace on various aspects of the career of the incomparable Frank Frazetta. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the publishing business, CBM was cancelled before I was able to get more than a couple of columns into print, since they were intended to explore some of the lesser-known or even unexplored aspects of Frazetta’s work both as a cartoonist and illustrator, and of course as one of the most successful painters of the 20th century.—SCR.]

Comics #9, Famous Funnies #202, Heroic Comics #75, My Friend Irma #23, Crime Does Not Pay #114, Airboy Comics V9, #7, Romantic Confessions V2, #9, and two subsequent issues of Crime Smashers, #12 and 13. His next PSA was a one-page advertisement for the 1953 Boy Scout Jamboree that first appeared in Heroic Comics #81 and was reprinted in the next two issues of that title, as well as Buster Crabbe #9, Famous Funnies #205, and elsewhere. Frazetta rarely drew children except in his Heroic stories, so this ad features one of his infrequent depictions of young boys. It’s a well-designed page that includes a modern train and a wagon train with an atmospheric bit of background in the lower part of the page showing the Scouts’ vast tent city. In addition to its use as a full page, at least one issue of Heroic featured a cropped version of this same image. Frazetta’s next PSA is unique in at least one respect, for it gave Frazetta a chance to draw Buster Crabbe, an actor he could draw better than anyone else in comics. The “Red Cross New Method of Artificial Respiration,” which featured a photo of Olympic swimmer and serial star Buster Crabbe at the top of the page, and then went on to show four panels of his cartoon likeness demonstrating a then-new life-saving technique. This PSA was first published, naturally in the pages of Buster Crabbe #4 and was subsequently reprinted in Heroic Comics #72 and Personal Love #16. It was not as widely circulated as his other PSAs. #10. The one-page strip featured three panels showing an unnamed youth being lured into using drugs by a fedora-hatted hood, becoming a pusher to support his own drug habit, and then finally being shunned by the clean-living teenagers in his neighborhood. “He’s a dope fiend! We’d better keep away from him!” Frazetta’s next foray into public service ads was “Prayer Works Wonders,” whose five panels depicted a handsome young blond man, who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the romance comics Frazetta was doing a few years later, getting relationship advice after a lousy date from his sweet, gray-haired mom. Mom’s advice: “Your best friend Ben shows his girl how he much he cares about her by taking her to synagogue every week! Why don’t you try the same thing and take your girl to church? There isn’t a girl in the world who wouldn’t appreciate and respect such an invitation!” At the bottom of the page was the admonition: “Attend the church or synagogue of your choice…” Back in the ’50s, atheism was rare and widely scorned, and regular church attendance was the norm for most Americans, though to a modern audience mom’s advice probably seems quaint and rather out of touch. This ad first appeared in Real Clue Crime Comics, V7, #6) and, like Frazetta’s other PSAs, was reprinted in a variety of titles from many different publishers, including Buster Crabbe #7, Dead Eye Western COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

His most impressive PSA contribution was drawing the cover and 28 pages of interior art for the comic book, Li’l Abner and the Creatures From Drop-Outer Space, an assignment he got after joining Al Capp’s staff of ghosts. This black-&-white comic chronicles the adventures of Danny Driftwood, a promising but aimless young man, whom Li’l Abner takes under his wing to encourage him to seek more education or vocational training so he can get a better job in the future. This comic was packaged by Capp’s studio and published by Toby Press, the comic book company owned by Al Capp’s brother, Elliot. Frazetta did some of his very early comics work for Toby, John Wayne Adventure and the Billy the Kid Adventure (often in collaboration with frequent art partner Al Williamson). In addition to penciling the Li’l Abner Sunday page for several years, Frazetta would occasionally ghost some of the daily strips and did incidental artwork for Capp’s studio for promotional materials, product design, and advertising. A highlight from this period was the illustrations he did of Dogpatch’s pulchritudinous female cast members to accompany an article on the actresses then currently appearing onstage in Top left: Anti-drug pcomics page drawn by Frank Frazetta and published first in Buster Crabbe #1 [Nov. 1951], and reprinted in innumerable other titles in that era. Top right: BSA page from Eastern Color’s New Heroic Comics #81 [Mar. 1953]. Left: Page from Real Clue Crime Stories #78 [Aug. ’52] 39

Blame it on Jusko, I reckon! It was his phenomenal effort creating the Marvel Masterpieces trading card set — a “hellacious” effort to produce 104 paintings in almost as many days! — that launched the non-sports card craze of the 1990s. It also firmly established the man’s stature as one of the foremost painters in comic books and the world of fantasy, opening up entirely new opportunities. Today he is still a busy working professional and frequent guest at comic cons, one who dreams of tackling his “big cats” project in his Pennsylvania-based studio. As comic book icon Stan Lee had died only the day before, the telephone interview begins with talk about “The Man” and Jusko’s work at Marvel Comics… Comic Book Creator: Did you know Stan? Joe Jusko: I knew Stan casually. We had met a few times over the years. I can’t say that we had a great friendship or anything, but the times I had interacted with him were very positive. I posted a story, actually, on my Facebook page yesterday about an event way back in 1978, when Stan was still up at Marvel and pretty much overseeing day-to-day activities. All the covers and all the art had to go through his office first and he would give approval on it. The only cover I ever had killed was killed by Stan because he absolutely hated it and reassigned to Earl Norem. But it’s ultimately a funny, and educational story. It taught a young artist about not taking things for granted. I was 18 years old and I was painting covers for Marvel, and the third cover I ever did was killed by Stan, of all people! I thought my career was over! It taught me to never do less than my best work — to never take a job for granted, which was invaluable for somebody at that age. CBC: I was looking through your earliest covers and I’m surprised how many of them made a strong impression on me at the time. I vividly remember your first Heavy Metal cover. Joe: Oh, the one with the girl and the saber-tooth head? CBC: Right! COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

Joe: I painted that the summer I graduated high school. I had never painted before, and I had won something called the “DC Comics Award for Excellence” back when I was in New York City’s High School of Art and Design, which was essentially the only vocational public high school of its kind in the country, with a pretty advanced art curriculum taught by top commercial illustrators and comic artists. Legendary E.C. Comics artist Bernie Krigstein was one of my teachers. This was when, upon graduation, DC Comics would give out an award every year to the person they thought had the most promise, and I won that award that year (which was essentially a gift certificate to an art supply store and a letter from DC President Sol Harrison). I had come to the realization when I was graduating that as much as I had always wanted to be a sequential comic artist, I was never going to be fast enough to do a regular book. You know, there are guys who are just natural draftsmen, but I’m a guy who really has to work at getting stuff correct, and there was no way in the world I would ever be able to pump out 20 pages a month. But I thought, “Hey, if I paint, I can put everything into one image and move on from there!” Looking back, it was a really naïve thought to have had, but at 17, you just think you can 49

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One need look no farther than this issue’s magnificent Frazetta-inspired cover to find evidence of Tom Grindberg’s artistry, imbued with a kinetic energy and lyrical style. Recently, the long-time comic book artist finished a stint drawing the Sunday Tarzan newspaper strip (written by Roy Thomas!) and today he is toiling as artist on The Darkness for Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions. The following conversation took place via telephone in two sessions.

This page: Tom Grindberg channels his inner Howard Pyle in this pirate-themed oil painting entitled “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” Next page: At top is the artist himself working on his Tarzan assignment. At center inset is a Tarzan promotional drawing. 76

CBC: Are any of your siblings and parents creative? Tom: Well, my dad, he’s a musician. He plays drums. Beyond that, nobody else really had any aspirations or any artistic abilities like I have. CBC: What kind of music does your dad play? Tom: Jazz, swing, contemporary. He worked dance jobs in Washington, D.C., so they’d be playing the top pop hits at these clubs that he’d go to. But primarily his background is jazz and swing music from the 1940s. CBC: Was he a professional musician? Tom: Yes, a professional. He couldn’t read music, though, because a while back my dad said he should have taken it a little more seriously and he might have had an actual career in music. But, for the most part, he was just taking on small, little gigs with a small group of guys. CBC: And he could make a living from it? Tom: No. If he had, he would have had to have been on the road quite extensively, and would never see his family, like most professional musicians. It’s a grueling life, I can imagine. CBC: So what did he do? What was his day job? Tom: Good question! He bounced around from one gig to another job, but primarily he was doing clerical type work, I believe. He did work with the FBI early on, but then he left that job and went into the private sector. I mean, it’s Washington D.C., where so many governmental jobs are available and whatnot. CBC: Was your mom working, did she work? Tom: Oh, yes. My mom worked in the House of Representatives office building. She worked for congressmen primarily from the state of Texas — I don’t know why, but for some reason. Oddly enough, to this day, she lives in Texas — Dallas… [laughs] But that was a little bit more glamorous. There were a lot of interesting people, especially the fact that she worked for congressmen that were heading up the Air and Space Administration. So I got to meet the entire crew of the Apollo-Soyuz mission. I’ve met Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, from the Apollo 11 moon mission. I mean, I got autographs from these guys. CBC: Wow! #19 • Winter 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Comic Book Creator: You’re from the beltway, Tom? Tom Grindberg: Yeah, I’m from inside the beltway. Chevy Chase, to be exact. It was a nice area, a very, very pretty area. On our street, Chevy Chase Lake Drive, there was huge woods that you couldn’t build on, so it was an idyllic location to live on. I called it my “Tarzan woods.” We had ropes to swing on, we had treehouses… you name it. Bike paths ran through there. There was a nice creek with triple waterfalls. It was just so cool, in the midst of all those homes back then. Chevy Chase was really quite a nice area. Very, very fun. CBC: So you had a gang of kids that you hung out with? Tom: Not a big gang. It was a close-knit little group of guys, but a few of them were into comics. One of my friends actually, I migrated to Pittsburgh where he was located, and I hung out up there for about three years. But, for the most part, it was like, New Wavers, punk rockers, and people like that… [laughs] mostly into music, but a few were into the arts. I was a loner type. I stuck to myself. I did my art. That was just one of those things. My teachers couldn’t really reach me. They didn’t know what to do with me, so to speak. They just said, “You know, when this guy gets out of school, put him in an art school. Just get him out of school. Literally. Just take him. Go. He’s too beyond what we’re even doing here.” It would have been nice, but I never did receive formal art training. I learned all just from looking at books and whatnot, picking up on what was available. CBC: Do you have siblings? Tom: One brother passed away about two years ago, though. I had two brothers and one sister. CBC: Where are you in the line-up? Tom: I’m in the middle. I didn’t get spoiled and I didn’t get neglected… [laughs] I was not forgotten, mind you, I just, I was the middle kid. I think it’s the same way with a lot of middle kids who grow up in the center like that.

Tom: When the first photographs of the Mars mission came off the wire, she brought them home and I thought, “Holy crap, this is so cool!” The first ever images of Mars like that. CBC: She was connected to NASA? Tom: Well, when you head up the committees for money to give to NASA, that’s what this one congressman was. And prior, before that, she worked for another congressman who was there when the Kennedy shooting happened, and, oh, God, all kinds of craziness back then. My mom was always in government. She was at the Pentagon, and from the Pentagon to the House office buildings, and, after that, she went into the private sector. Now she’s fully retired, obviously, and pushing 90. CBC: So you were pretty much a middle-class, latchkey kid? Tom: Yeah, middle-class, but lived in the most affluent area of Chevy Chase you could ever imagine. The rich kids that lived up the street, they’d literally had a butler answering the front door. [British accent] “Sabrina is upstairs.” [laughs] It was crazy. But we lived a pretty privileged lifestyle. CBC: Was being middle-class and living in an affluent neighborhood an issue? We know class can be problematic sometimes. Tom: No. I had a few friends who had parents who were quite affluent, but it didn’t really affect my relationship either way, so it never really bothered me whatsoever. But it’s funny, because when I went up to DC’s offices I met Julie Schwartz, and when I said Chevy Chase, he COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2019 • #19

knew the exact zip code. Apparently, Julie Schwarz knew plenty about Washington, DC, I guess. But that was funny. People that know about Chevy Chase go, “Oh, blueblood. Okay.” [laughs] But I’ll tell you, Chevy Chase is nothing compared to what Potomac was. Potomac was another area that was just incredibly affluent, even more upscale than where I lived. But I know that my mom, she wanted us to live in a nice, affluent, nice area with good schools. It never really affected me. I had a lot of middle-class friends. They lived in Bethesda, for example. I lived in a gated community, so we had a guard. [laughs] CBC: Did you go to public school? Tom: Yes, I went to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, BCC. CBC: Were you sociable, athletic? Did you date? Tom: Nah. I was a good runner in junior high and, by high school, I was just full-blown into into art, totally… and the music scene, of course. New Wave was coming in, and I was listening to more and more progressive music and less of commercial music. I never got into bands like Rush, you know? I was more into more progressive kind of stuff. CBC: Did you have a best friend? Tom: Yes, actually, I had a really good friend. He actually has a bookshop in Pittsburgh, too: Bill Boichel. CBC: Cool. So was he into fantasy stuff, comics? Tom: Oh, hell yeah! Big time. In fact, he was going to shows like in Silver Spring and Wheaton, Maryland. There was always a show going on there. In fact, he was with me when I met Neal Adams. That 77

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