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A TwoMorrows Publication

No. 21, Fall 2019

82658 00389

R. Crumb Interview Steve Mannion Diane Noomin John Romita Sr. Rick Trembles & Jack Tremblay Ryan North

ERIC ERIC POWELL: POWELL: 20 20 YEARS YEARS OF OF THE THE GOON! GOON! Cover art by Eric Powell

Fall 2019 • 20 Years of Eric Powell’s The Goon • Number 21

T DEPRESSION ERA WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

About Our Cover Art and Colors by ERIC POWELL

Ye Ed’s Rant: Goodbye, MAD magazine, and Ye Ed’s plans for autumn and winter........ 2 COMICS CHATTER R. Crumb on Weirdo: A chat with the greatest cartoonist of all about his anthology..... 3 Incoming: Letters on the “All Joes” ish and about CBC’s reason for existence............ 16 Weirdos All Around Us: It’s been the Summer of Weirdo for Mr. Ye Ed and the Missus after they embarked on their epic San Diego Comic-Con adventure........... 18

John Romita Sr. on Milton Caniff: The great artist discusses Terry and the Pirates, the death of Gwen Stacy, and his two finest issues of Amazing Spider-Man.......... 22 Bearing Witness: Diane Noomin discusses her #MeToo comics anthology, Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival................. 28 Darrick Patrick’s 10 Questions for Ryan North: Q’s for the writer of Squirrel Girl .30 Trembles on Tremblay: New wave/punk cartoonist Rick Trembles shares about his dad, Jack Tremblay, Golden Age “Canadian Whites” comic book artist............ 32 Above: The Goon gets the job done in this cover drawn and colored by ERIC POWELL.

Please Note Due to international trade issues (hopefully resolved soon), to stay economically feasible, we faced the necessity to either raise the price of CBC or cut the page count and keep the same cover price. We chose the latter and thus had to postpone items intended for this issue, including part two of the Craig Yoe interview and our brunch with Joe Sinnott feature. Look for those next time!

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!

Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred imagines some super-hero mirror opposites...... 40 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt talks of finding comics in the strangest places...... 41 THE MAIN EVENTS The POW! of Eric Powell: A conversation with the creator of The Goon on his background and career development, just as his publishing outfit celebrates the 20th anniversary of the character and ambitiously expands its line of titles...... 44 Man, Oh Mannion!: The terrifically talented and terribly overlooked artist Steve Mannion gives a biographical sketch of life before his creation of Fearless Dawn and his great work today for Eric Powell’s Albatross comic book line........... 66 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse lenses the 2019 Eisner Award winners!...... 76 Coming Attractions: The Lyrical Art of P. Craig Russell.................................................. 78 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Aquaman by Ramona Fradon in color!........ 80 Right: At right is a detail featuring The Goon and Franky along with some evil dead fellers from a promotional poster by Eric Powell.

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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: $45 US, $67 International, $18 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.

This issue is dedicated to the memories of ERNIE COLÓN, SAM GAFFORD, WILUM PUGMIRE, and BILL SCHELLY ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

ERIC POWELL Cover Artist & Colorist

GEORGE KHOURY RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

STEVEN THOMPSON STEVEN TICE ROSE RUMMEL-EURY Transcribers

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK GEORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail Comic Book Creator a/o Jon B. Cooke P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892 2

Ruminating on today’s comics—and socioeconomic—scenes The spirit of Harvey Kurtzman had First on the agenda is to lived on though, importantly (sez I) acknowledge that, rather than in the pages of the 1980s alternative raise the per copy price of CBC, comix anthology, Weirdo, the history TwoMorrows has dropped the of which yours truly has made a page-count of this mag from veritable industry out of. Promoting 100 to 84 in response to the The Book of Weirdo has involved tariffs. We can only hope this is various events held throughout the a temporary situation and pray year, including appearances at San you derive the same pleasure as Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum and usual during this time. As always, a jaunt to Winters, California (where thank you for your support. lived the Crumbs during the Weirdo Next up is to bid adieu to years). Plus there was the TBOW the newsstand edition of MAD panel at San Diego Comic-Con (which magazine, an American cultural bestowed an Inkpot Award on myself, institution over the past 67 years, thank you very much!) and a presever since it debuted as a comic ence at Terrificon, in Connecticut. book in the summer of 1952. But likely the most memorable It was that initial incarnation, occasion of them all will be the under the obsessive direction of upcoming “final” date of TBOW tour, creator, editor, and pretty much to be held at Columbia University, sole writer Harvey Kurtzman, and featuring the first and likely only which would, over the years, joining together of all three Weirdo eventually make a massive editors at a public event. Yep, none impact on the art form. other than Robert Crumb and Aline If you’d care to hear my Kominsky-Crumb will be joining Peter opinion, I deem MAD #1 as the Bagge in Manhattan for the onesecond most important American night, “sold-out” affair, planned for comic book, ranked after the a few days before Halloween. As Ye first issue of Action Comics and Ed has spouted ad nauseam, I think above ZAP Comix #1. My judgR. Crumb is the greatest cartoonist ment is based not on the huge of all time and, as the man is usually financial success and cultural Eric Powell by Ronn Sutton extremely reluctant to make public influence of the subsequent appearances (particularly in the U.S.), this “Night of magazine edition, but rather the incalculable effect Weirdo” may be my greatest achievement in comics. Kurtzman’s irreverent and downright subversive satire But life isn’t only about Weirdo. Big plans are afoot would have on an entire generation of iconoclastic for the coming year, including authoring a book devoted cartoonists. These artists would go on to establish underground comix, a movement which would lead to the to the 50th anniversary of Last Gasp, thus far called alternative comics and graphic novel world of today. Mind-Candy for the Masses, as well as editing Slow I confess I hadn’t read an issue of MAD for many Death Zero, a trade paperback anthology of horror years, certainly not with the same regularity as I did in comics stories featuring environmental themes. So the early ’70s. That is, until it’s very recent reboot with far, Richard Corben, Bruce Jones, William Stout, Rick a new #1 under the refreshing direction of incoming Veitch, and other stalwarts have signed on, thus it’ll be editor (and CBC buddy) Bill Morrison. The revitalized worth a read, I promise… There’s also a revised edition mag was not only funny, but it featured a boatload of of R. Crumb’s The Weirdo Years to come and possibly a new, exciting talent — and a lot of pals! — so I was reprint collection entitled The Weirdest of Weirdo. genuinely excited when my step-father gifted me with a And, natch, I’ll be continuing to work with the outfit subscription. Then, the sudden departure of Morrison, that got me into this crazy business, TwoMorrows whose awesome career at Bongo Comics was detailed Publishing, particularly to finish up the 25th anniversary in his CBC #7 interview, was a huge letdown. So the celebration, The World of TwoMorrows, and to finally subsequent announcement regarding the demise of the finalize co-writing and designing John Severin: Amernewsstand version just hammered nails into that coffin. ica’s Two-Fisted Talent with chum Greg Biga. Oh, and continue putting out this rag! See ya!

cbc contributors

Abrams Books Rich Arndt Peter Bagge Maya Bradford R. Crumb Chris Anthony Diaz

Frank Forte Gregg Gannon Karen Green Carol Hernandez Heritage Auctions Joe Jusko

Denis Kitchen Ivan Kocmarek Last Gasp Steve Mannion Una McGurk Mannion Diane Noomin

—Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Eric Powell John Romita, Sr. Joe Sinnott Mark Sinnott Rob Smentek Rick Trembles

Connie Tsang Colin Turner Kendall Whitehouse Rob Yeremian Craig Yoe Tom Ziuko

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE CBC Convention Photographer

MAD Nevermore?

up front

R. Crumb on Weirdo A rare chat with the great cartoonist on creating and editing the comix anthology Conducted by JON B. COOKE [The legendary Robert Crumb was very helpful when I was putting together The Book of Weirdo, a retrospective about the humor comix anthology he created in 1981, and (despite what he says below) I sensed his assist was because he had an enduring affection for his creation, which had ended in 1993, after 28 issues. What really clinched it for me was that the usually reticent cartoonist readily helped with the book’s promotion, whether posing with a copy alongside the author last March, or agreeing to participate in an upcoming panel talk, in New York City, to be moderated by yours truly. Plus he agreed to the following interview, which was originally made for the inaugural episode of my ongoing podcast devoted to underground and alternative comics, Subterranean Dispatch (which can be found at www. subterrdispatch.libsyn.com or from most podcast providers). The chat took place via Skype on March 28, and it was transcribed by Steven “Flash” Thompson. — JBC]

Art © R. Crumb. Weirdo TM & © R. Crumb. The Book of Weirdo © Jon B. Cooke.

Comic Book Creator: I’ve been in contact with you, as you know, very erratically for the past 12 years. And you don’t seem to suffer nonsense too easily. You can be a little… well, you know… you can be impatient with fools. [laughs] R. Crumb: Or just like stuff that I’m not interested in or I don’t think is worth bothering with, you know. CBC: But this seems to be different—me working on The Book of Weirdo. You were extremely helpful to me and you were enthusiastic about this project. Why? Crumb: Yeah. Uh… why? I guess because you were so dedicated to it. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it and a lot of times I felt if I… the more I cooperate with this guy, the more he’s gonna ask me. The more he’s gonna want from me. That’s the impression I got over the years, you know, that every time I answered a bunch of questions in writing — like, spent hours and hours writing these long letters answering stuff — I would just end up with more questions

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

and more answers. [Jon laughs] And I thought I’d just… Jesus. That’s why I put off sometimes answering you for that reason. I thought the more I cooperate, the more sucked into the project I’ll become. Because you just can’t help yourself. You’re so… utterly and completely like… thorough! [Jon chuckles] You could have devoted that dedication to thorough research to some great worthy project like discovering the corruption in bio-medical science or something. [laughter] Instead of dedicating it to Weirdo magazine! But, no. It’s sort of flattering on the one hand and then on the other hand, do I really wanna get sucked into this, y’know? [laughs] CBC: But you did let yourself get sucked into it! Crumb: To some degree, but, like I said, sometimes I just would put off answering you and sometimes I wouldn’t answer you at all and you would kinda let it drop and then you’d re-contact me a few months later or a year later or whatever. ’Cause, you know, it did go on for a long time. CBC: I sense that there’s something about Weirdo magazine that you’re proud of. Did you want a book like this done? Did you want a history of the magazine? Crumb: No. I had no idea or desire or interest to ever have a review of Weirdo done like that. It never occurred to me. It just never even occurred to me. CBC: And now that it’s done, what do you think? Crumb: [Chuckles] Well, as I’ve often told you, I sit down and I always find something new in there. I never actually read it from cover to cover when you sent me those galley copies. I’d just pick up and flip through and find something of interest. It’s so vast! There’s so many people that give testimonials in there. I just… To me, after spending a few hours looking at it one day, I said, this is an unbelievable monument to Weirdo, the crazy f*cking magazine that I did, and Aline and Peter Bagge did for ten years. It’s an incredible, amazing document! [laughter] And, like I think I told you before, to me it’s like it’s not just a monument to Weirdo, but to that decade, the 1980s. It really kinda says a lot about that time period. It’s a strong statement of that time period. As strong as anything I’ve seen! Don’t know how much attention it will get or how much people will look at it and recognize it. I don’t know. [laughs] Probably not because it’s so obscure. It’s not a… oh, how would you say it? A high-class operation, y’know? Now the whole thing — neither the magazine nor your monumental commentary on it. [laughter] CBC: I’m misguided, is that it? [laughter] Crumb: Mmmmm… maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I have to admire your dedication. Jeez! You know? Wow. CBC: It was pretty obsessive. There was a list. I had an index. I built an index. These are real people and I can do my best to try to track down these people. Into the rabbit hole! Crumb: You certainly did. You certainly did that. Incredi-

Above: Self-caricature of R. Crumb hawking ZAP and Weirdo. Inset left: Logo of Ye Ed’s Subterranean Dispatch podcast. Below: Drew Friedman’s cover of The Book of Weirdo.

This page: Above is a Topps salesman brochure produced by R. Crumb in 1965. Below is the cover of Help! #26, the last issue of Kurtzman’s mag. R. Crumb, briefly on staff, appears in a fumetti in the issue as a party guest. Circle image is the cartoonist from the back cover, and bottom is from an actual print. Next page: At top is Weirdo #13 [Summer 1985]. At bottom is Erna Rae and Jenny Burger, modeling for a fumetti in Weirdo#3 [Fall 1981]. Photography by Gregg Gannon.

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Salesman brochure © Topps Chewing Gum Company. Help! magazine TM & © the respective copyright holder. Photo print courtesy of Denis Kitchen.

ble. Amazing. CBC: I thought as a side thing, was your life at the time. I was able to get a real true sense of you. I look at it as between the years with the IRS troubles and the house in Madison… Crumb: Yeah. CBC: [Between] when you moved to Winters and when you moved away, and I hope that was conveyed. Crumb: Yeah, it’s definitely living in Winters’ Central Lane period. We moved there in 1978 and then we had Sophie in 1981 and Weirdo starts right around the exact same time that Sophie was born. Then it ends around the time we left America and moved to France and we did that one more issue in France [#28], that Aline more or less put together, that Verre D’eau. CBC: How did the idea for Weirdo start? Crumb: I was meditating… I was just beginning meditation and it came to me in a flash like maybe the second time I meditated. [laughs] The name and the whole idea and kind of basing it sort of partially on Kurtzman’s Humbug and on this kinda new, sorta like punk attitude that was coming up in these little zines, and all that stuff. And also, I guess, a way to continue the whole comics thing in back to a more semi-underground attitude, you know? I decided to keep it all loose and crazy and it all kind of came to me in a flash. [laughs] I even saw, like, the logo and stuff in my mind, you know? That first cover. I kind of saw it in my mind.

CBC: Besides Kurtzman’s covers, was the interior based on anything or just an amalgam of different things? Crumb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was an amalgamation of the old underground comix thing, the punk zine thing, and Kurtzman’s attitude in his last issues of MAD magazine and Humbug of doing all kinds of oddball stuff. And even Help!, where he had that “Public Gallery,” where he had young amateur cartoonists — including me — in there, and Jay Lynch, Paul Merta, and other people like that. And using old stuff, throwing in old stuff. Kind of inspired by that. CBC: Just as a side thing, Kurtzman was the creator of MAD comics and then MAD magazine, and you worked for him briefly. Crumb: Yeah, I did. I worked for him in the mid-1960s. I went from the summer of ’64, when Terry Gilliam was working there as assistant editor and I worked with Terry Gilliam on some stuff, appeared in one of those fumettis, one of those photo funnies things, and just, you know, I was a “go-fer.” I ran around taking materials over to Harry Chester who was the production studio. Then, in ’65, he hired me to take Terry Gilliam’s place. Terry Gilliam had left for England so it would be me as assistant editor. So it would be Gloria Steinem, Terry Gilliam, and then me! [laughter] So I show up and the day I get there… I moved to New York from Cleveland with my wife. We rented an apartment and moved in and that Monday I reported for work at Help! magazine and there’s Kurtzman with a forlorn expression on his face, leaning on the wall outside of the office door and guys are taking desks and furniture out of the office so I said, “Harvey, I’m here! I’m here to start working on Help! Um… What’s goin’ on here?” He said, “Oh, James Warren decided to fold the magazine. It’s over.” [laughter] “Really? Oh jeez, I moved to New York, I rented an apartment!” He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find you work.” He felt guilty, y’know? He felt responsible for me. So he connected me with Woody Gelman at Topps, the bubblegum company, and I worked for them for several months. It was just awful workin’ for them. Totally awful! [Jon chuckles] Woody Gelman was a nice guy, but he didn’t set the rules. They were set by the guys who owned the place, who were just cheapskates. CBC: Was this Nostalgia Press or Topps? Crumb: Well, Woody Gelman had Nostalgia Press as a sideline thing of his own, but he was an executive at Topps, the guy in charge of the creative department, making card sets and other gimcracks that they sold with bubblegum — like the worst, sh*ttiest… the flat squares of gum that they used to put in with the cards. You ever see those? CBC: Of course. Crumb: Maybe you’re too young for that. CBC: No, I’m not. [laughter] Crumb: Often the gum was stale. It was like hard and would crumble when… CBC: Oh, yeah. Crumb: It was awful. Topps was a sleazy operation. CBC: You sent Harvey issues of Weirdo, right? Crumb: I guess he saw it. He was kind of in decline in the ‘80s. Started getting Parkinson’s Disease and he became increasingly out of it. I don’t remember what his reaction was to Weirdo. CBC: Yeah, you published a letter, a note. Comments from

Weirdo TM & © R. Crumb. Bean Sisters photo courtesy of Gregg Gannon.

him. Crumb: Did I? Oh. CBC: It was a [wise]crack, y’know? So how did you go about… Were you a house on fire making Weirdo? Crumb: “A house on fire”? Is that what you said? CBC: Yeah. Crumb: Gee, I don’t know if I’d categorize myself that way. All I remember is trying to find time to get any work done. We had this babe, this child, and I had to do other stiff to make a living. There was no money out of Weirdo. Editing something like that, I saw that this was probably going to be only as good as the amount of time and effort you’re willing to put into it. It was just very hard to fight for the time to do that. So I had to do a lot of things that were cheap. No money. I don’t even know what I was doing. The layout and paste-up and all that was all new to me pretty much. And when you had to set type and use images from other sources and all that, I didn’t know what I was doin’. I learned as I went and got better at it. This guy Gary Howard who had a production studio in San Francisco… He was a really decent guy. I took some of the first stuff down there and tried to get him — his production studio — to so those photo-funny layouts, and he said, “It’s gonna cost you a huge amount of money. You can’t afford to have us do this for you. You’ve gotta learn how to do it yourself.” These photo layouts. Because I had just drawn like rough sketches of how everything should be laid out and hoped that his production studio would do the work. Give ’em the photos. “Here’s the photos. Here’s how I want it laid out.” He says, “You’ve gotta learn to do this yourself. You’ve gotta get these screened, get the photos screened to the size you want ’em and use this hot wax method and… ” He explained it all very carefully, how to go about doing it. So I struggled to try to figure out how to do those photo layouts myself and got better at it as I went along, with my model being those 1940s girlie magazines like Pin-Up, or whatever they called it. Twitter, Wink, Flirt, Peek — all those things that had those photo-shoots with girls with geeky guys, mostly burlesque comedians I suppose. And the layouts were so bold and great. Worked so well with the flashy logos and photos at all kind of angles and cut at different angles and stuff. Very bold. The guys obviously who did those had a lot of experience behind them to get to that point of doing ‘em that way so I kind of gradually figured out how to do that better and better and got better at it. The hardest part was getting decent photographs, professional looking photographs was very hard. And that guy Gregg Gannon, that “Stomp Ganos” that’s in there… ? You put him in the book. He had all this fancy equipment and told me a whole cock-and-bull story about what a professional photographer he was. His photos were just terrible! He didn’t know what the f*ck he was doing. He had all this expensive equipment — fancy umbrellas and backdrops and fancy cameras and tripods and he was terrible! We got so disgusted with him after a few times of him doing those that then I got like Aline or Terry Zwigoff just to use a plain cheap little flash camera and we did better with that than Gregg with all his fancy sh*t. I still… When I look at those photos I still get angry all over again that I fell for his line of bullsh*t. CBC: Hm. And you also were influenced by the Mexican… Crumb: The fumettis, yes. Those Mexican photo comic books that were hugely popular. I don’t know if they still are. You know, they were always melodramatic. Bad girl gets punished and there’s these religious overtones and… [chuckles] Have you ever seen any of those? CBC: Oh, yes. Crumb: Mexican photo comic books. CBC: Yep. Crumb: The one that was most inspired by them was the one where Aline was pregnant and Erna Burger plays the bad girl, comes over and I strangle her at the end. [laughter] CBC: That was great! That was a great one. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

Crumb: She was a totally good sport! She was great. Erna was great. She loved to ham it up. None of it bothered her. She was completely up for all the hijinks — and her daughters, too! All three of ’em. All three of her terrific looking daughters were up for it. CBC: The Bean Sisters. [laughs] Crumb: What a family. Yeah. Erna Rae, Roberta, and Jenny. The three daughters. CBC: Yep. So some of this became a social thing, right? Crumb: Oh, the photo-funnies? Yeah, it was kind of a social thing. In fact, it was hard to keep people on track because people wanted to try to turn it into a kind of party, those photo-funnies sessions. Y’know? They’d bring alcohol or wine or beer or something. They’d bring food to eat. And Gregg was the worst. He always wanted it to be a party. He forgot… ! One time he forgot to put the film in the camera! We did a whole session! It was hot and we did a whole thing with the two Bean sisters, Erna and Jenny, and we thought, “Aw, it turned out great!” Everybody was lookin’ happy and Gregg looked all shot down. “Gregg, what’s wrong?” “I… I… I… forgot to put the film in the camera.” [laughter] We had to do the whole f*cking thing over again like a week later! CBC: So, were you gonna enlist your old ZAP [Comix] mates to work for it? Where did you see that you were gonna get people to contribute? Crumb: Ones that I liked like… Spain. I asked him to do stuff for Weirdo. Wasn’t so interested in Moscoso. Griffin was not available. Gilbert Shelton not so available. Who 5

Conducted by JON B. COOKE This spread: Clockwise from above is a detail of the Terry and the Pirates "Death of Raven" Sunday comic strip [Oct. 19, 1941], which caused a bona fide sensation in American culture at the time, outraging newspaper readers of the day; Amazing Spider-Man #121 [June 1973] cover art; Dragon Lady specialty drawing by Milton Caniff; Caniff self-portrait presumably from the 1940s; licensing drawing of Spider-Man by one-time Marvel art director John Romita, Sr.; recent candid photo of the man.

[A few years back, Ye Ed was also helming the monthly magazine ACE: All Comics Evaluated, and the following — a talk with the great Marvel Bullpen artist and all around superb human being, John Romita, Sr. (Jr.’s no slouch either!) — was featured in the first issue. Today, I can’t recall exactly what prompted me to call Johnny and ask for an interview about his devotion to Milton Caniff and Terry and the Pirates, but I’ll bet it was due to a reread of the awesome Doctor Strange cross-over in Amazing Spider-Man #108–109 [May–June, 1972], which has Caniff all over it! Anyway, while the artist said he didn’t do interviews any more, he couldn’t resist this chance to gab about a favorite comic strip creator. (Plus he likes me, so whaddaya gonna do?) The talk — of which here is an extended version than what was featured in ACE — took place via phone in Feb. 2014, and was transcribed by Steve “Flash” Thompson. — Y.E.]

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Comic Book Creator: I just read your afterward in an Amazing Spider-Man Marvel Masterworks and it’s just overflowing with gratitude — to Steve Ditko, to Stan Lee, but especially you talked about your favorite story arc in ASM, and that was the Flash Thompson Vietnam story. John Romita Sr.: Yeah, I just got the oversize IDW book and they’re in that. I’m sittin’ there glowing and it’s making my head swell. They just did the full-size 11" x 17". I just got a batch of books. They weigh a ton, but it’s worth it. [laughs] CBC: As a kid, I saw those stories and did appreciate your artistry. They were my favorite stories, as well, that you ever drew. I know they were influenced by your love of Milton Caniff and his Terry and the Pirates comic strips. John: I’ve got [the Terry and the Pirates collected editions] right here on my bookcase, in one of my cabinets. I’m looking at them now. I’m afraid to open them again because every time I open them, I lose two days. [laughter] I get into the books and never come out! CBC: I really think that there’s an entire generation who are starting to forget the history of comic strips. After all, it’s been a long time since Milt Caniff did a story. John: Oh, yeah. It broke my heart when I sat in on Klaus Janson’s class and asked if they’d ever heard of Hal Foster,

Caniff, and Alex Raymond. I asked them to raise their hand, and out of maybe 40 kids, maybe one raised his hand. If I were running this class, I’d have one day a week I would be teaching the evolution of comics from the book illustrators down through the comic strips — the Hal Foster initiation into adventure, and all of that stuff — and Caniff. I would stuff you so full of it, you’d probably hate me! [laughter] CBC: But then we’d get to look at this beautiful stuff! When did you first encounter Caniff? John: I will say that the biggest tragedy of my life is that I was born too late. I was 10 years old in 1940 and Caniff had already been doing that for six years! And I missed those six years! So, at 10 years old, I started to notice it in the Daily News with the full-page, glorious Sunday strips… I have a box in my cabinet here with tear-sheets that are crumbling. I have all the way up to ’46 when Caniff left the strip. Yellowed pages. I used to look through them almost once a month. And, just think, I missed some of the most glorious stuff in 1938, ’39, and ’40… and ’41 and ’42! So, it always broke my heart and when I got a chance to get these collected editions, I went back into ’34 and I just started from scratch like I should’ve done when I was a kid. CBC: So it was in the New York Daily News? John: It was the Daily News, on the back page of the Sunday comics section for a while, and then inside. Every Sunday, I spent two to three hours diving in and just gazing. I’ve said this many times in my interviews: I recognized almost immediately why he did things… why he put smoke in a certain place, why he put shadows in a certain place. I was aware, from the time I was 13 years old. I had been drawing imitation comics since I was 10. I started drawing when I was five and became a comic freak when I was 10. I was the kid in my neighborhood who discovered Jack Kirby and Milton Caniff. The biggest phenomenon of all, something I only realized until many years later, is that almost every time I go into the Caniff stuff to look at the artwork (because as an artist I need to study it), that, by page three, I’m interested in the story and forgetting the artwork! I’m accepting the art because it’s so brilliant and such great storytelling, and I don’t have to even think about it anymore and suddenly I’m hooked! Even if I’ve read those stories a hundred times, I still get hooked on the dialogue.

Terry and the Pirates, Dragon Lady TM & © Tribune Media Services, Inc. Caniff portrait © the estate of Milton Caniff. Amazing Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

So it isn’t just that he was a great artist; Caniff was a marvelous, marvelous writer! I don’t know if he got any help as a writer… I don’t know if his buddy Noel Sickles, who did Scorchy Smith, helped him write. I think more likely Caniff helped Sickles write Scorchy Smith! But the thing is, I realize Caniff not only made me an artist, but he also made me a storyteller, which is more important because the story is what sells a book. You can have the best artwork in the world, but the story is what gets the reader and digs into that person’s system. CBC: What a superb writer! What a superb storyteller! That really pulls you in. For a comic strip, when you read these continuities lasting months, there’s really little redundancy that’s rather typical of other strips. It just flows very naturally. John: Yeah, and even if you just saw the Sunday page, he used to do a recap of the week prior in the first panel and get people who missed all the dailies right up to date. He was an amazing, amazing storyteller. CBC: What is it specifically about his art that appealed to you? John: I used to tell young artists when I was art director at Marvel, “You must not make your stuff unpleasant to look at. In other words, it needs a certain amount of glamour. Even if you’ve got a villain, you have to give him some humanity and glamour. If you’re doing Doctor Doom, you can make him look horrendous or you could make him look like a human being with a tragedy because of his face.” The thing is, Caniff did this without even hesitating. Every one of his characters was glamorous, even the ugly ones. He had characters like Redbeard, whose commentary was funny but deadly, but he made him a jolly looking old man like Santa Claus with a red beard. To me, that stuck in my mind. Almost everything Caniff did stuck in my mind and I used it every one of the whole 50 to 60 years I was doing comics. I used almost everything Caniff did every chance I had. CBC: What specifically about the art itself appealed to you? John: Well, Sickles taught Caniff how to do the scenics, in other words, airplanes and mountains. I mean, when you were in Caniff’s strip, you were in China. I felt like the location was authentic and he did it all courtesy of a library card. He said he just read up on China and learned everything he could about it and he became a fanatic. I remember scenes that I could swear must have been taken COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

right out of the National Geographic. He was a genius about atmosphere, getting you to believe what you were looking at. Believability. The fact is, no matter how simply he did the work (he used to say he never could draw hands), he didn’t have to know how to draw every knuckle. All he had to do is do a genuine, familiar expression with the hand, the way a hand would act every day when you see people gesturing with their hands. All you have to do is make it a recognizable gesture and you don’t need to do every bone. That was another thing that was amazing to me, because he did not draw as well as, say, Alex Raymond or Hal Foster (although Foster was stiff and very limited by photography). Caniff was not limited. He got all the depth and all the convincability of every panel that he did without laboring over the art. CBC: Would you call it impressionistic at all or minimalist? John: It’s not impressionist; it’s illusionist. You’re giving the illusion of reality, because this is genuine. The characters in your strip are like an actor to a director. He directed his actors so beautifully. And, if you looked close, you will see that Pat Ryan had a certain body language, Terry Lee had a certain body language, Burma had her own. Everybody, all the villains, had their own body language, so subtly that you just accepted it! If you look back, you’ll see that Pat Ryan never did certain poses and Terry Lee did poses that Pat Ryan never did. My three heroes in the world are the movie director Frank Capra, Irving Berlin, and Milton Caniff. Those are people who I consider genius in every level. When Caniff was doing Dickie Dare, he was an average artist! I mean, he was already making you care about the characters, but he wasn’t drawing slick and he wasn’t making people look like movie stars. But, by 1936, he was just… boy! I know that it’s the influence of Noel Sickles and I think they helped each other. One of them helped for the scenics and the other one helped with the human beings. Because I don’t think Scorchy Smith was great on characterization as much as it was for scenics. CBC: Those three heroes of yours are quintessentially American guys who were from…. 23

from the golden age to new wave

Trembles Confesses: ‘I Was The Montreal-based cartoonist of oft-outrageous alternative comix fondly recalls his lasted through much of WWII. During the war years, comics from the Great White North were dubbed “Canadian Whites” because comic [Rick Trembles, who became an acquaintance due to his books published up here were largely printed in black-&work for Weirdo magazine, is probably best known for his white (the interiors, anyway). These vanished overnight comic-strip film reviews titled “Rick Trembles’ Motion Piconce WWII ended. According to John Bell’s 2006 book, ture Purgatory,” which has thus far been collected in two Invaders From The North: How Canada Conquered the Comvolumes published by FAB Press. He describes himself as an “illustrator, post-underground cartoonist, writer, filmmak- ic Book Universe, the origins of the Canadian Whites were er, and musician,” and The Comics Journal quotes R. Crumb a result of government austerity measures: as describing him as, “Even more twisted and weird than [S]hortly after Canada’s declaration of war against me.” It was likely through a Facebook connection where I Germany, the Foreign Exchange Control Board was eslearned Rick’s dad was also an artist who dabbled in comic tablished to oversee the rationing of foreign currency, books, albeit not in the 1980s/90s alt comix period, but in something it would do with varying severity until 1951. In the Golden Age, specifically contributing to the “Canadian December 1940, as Canada’s trade deficit with the United Whites” books, World War II era black-&-white comics. States grew, and British gold shipments were curtailed, This page: Cover of the second I had been pondering asking Rick for a feature on his dad government intervention in the economy broadened with volume of Rick Trembles’ Mo- when I learned Jack had passed away, on Nov. 11 of last the introduction of the War Exchange Conservation Act. tion Picture Purgatory collec- year, at age 92. This spring, I asked for that piece… — Y.E.] by RICK TREMBLES

tion, which compiles his movie review comic strips. Below is a hilarious — albeit gory — example (atypical as most Trembles strips include an excessive amount of text), this one making fun of the ultra-violent Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 movie Western, Django Unchained.

Aimed at countries outside the sterling bloc, it was primarily designed to conserve American dollars by restricting the importation of non-essential goods from Canada’s largest trading partner. Among the items banned were fictional periodicals, a category that encompassed pulps and other newsstand magazines, including comic books. As a result, the government inadvertently laid the groundwork for an indigenous comics industry.

The end of the war in 1945 meant American comics were allowed to flow back into Canada and since the Canadian companies couldn’t compete, titles started dropping like flies. My father’s work is cited in this book as part of Canada’s “Golden Age” of comics, and I even got acknowledged as his son in a mention of my own work being part of Canada’s DIY small press explosion of the ’90s. My father’s principal WWII character was Crash Carson, a pilot who’d shoot down Nazis and Japs in his fighter plane with the Devil’s Angels Squadron. Yes, racist cardboard stereotypes were the bad guys, as they were in most comic books of the era. Years later, when I found myself following in my father’s footsteps, I often joked how drawing comics was more complicated for me, because things weren’t as black-&-white anymore. So, since I was never given as clear an enemy as his generation, I decided to make myself my own worst enemy. One year, my father drew “the enemy” replacing Crash Carson when he doctored one of his old comic book covers swapping Crash’s face for mine to turn it into a birthday card for me. For drawing these comics at the time, he was the envy of all the other kids on the block and took home three big bucks per page after mailing out each issue’s artwork to Toronto from his Verdun, Montreal, neighborhood. Three dollars was a lot of dough for a 15-year-old back then. I probably make less than that in the equivalent of today’s currency with my comics. I managed to hold onto a stack of preliminary sketches from various aborted comics ideas of his which I cherish to this day, along with my yellowing collection of Wow Comics. The amateur stuff he drew as a kid before he got more polished was what gave me the courage to try my own hand at it. Young Jack made it look doable. Funny thing is, for some reason, up until very recently, the Whites weren’t #21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

My Canadian Golden-Age cartoonist dad, Jack Tremblay, was born on the first of May, 1926, in Providence, Rhode Island. His family settled in Montreal when he was eight, and he began drawing comics by age 13. Within two years, after winning a pair of roller skates from a drawing contest held by Toronto’s Bell Features Comics, Jack ended up working for them as 15-year-old writer/cartoonist for their line of Wow Comics and Commando Comics, a gig that

the Son of a Superior Artist!’

father, onetime “Canadian Whites” Golden Age comic book artist Jack Tremblay

even worth that much to collectors, probably because they’re from Canada. Maybe they weren’t as sought after because, like my father, so many early Canadian cartoonists moved out of the field as fast as they could to pursue more lucrative careers in commercial illustration instead of sticking to comics like their American counterparts, who established enduring cartoon characters that provided the kinds of trajectories and chronologies fans like to track. The fact that the Canadian comics industry took a nosedive after WWII surely was no help. The longest cartooning gig I ever had was drawing movie reviews done as comix splash pages called “Motion Picture Purgatory” for a free weekly, The Montreal Mirror, from 1998–2012 until the internet supposedly wiped out all print media. I’m still doing the same series, but it’s a monthly now, for the canuxploitation.com blog, and I have to make the panels scroll downwards like a roll of toilet paper, so people can read them on their phones. One of the earliest comics I have by my father, I used to like saying preceded my movie comix conceptually by seven decades. He’d create handmade renditions of favorite scenes from B-movie actioners he watched at his local theatre and sold them to the kids on his block for five cents. He originally “printed” them out individually on shabby newsprint by putting pencil shading all over a blank sheet to make homemade carbon paper, then he’d trace every copy onto multiple pages and bind them with string. I must have the only two duplicates left in existence, which were based on the 1941 film, “The Return of Daniel Boone.” In 2005, New York City cartoonist Michael Kupperman published his first Tales Designed to Thrizzle comic book and alerted me that one of his stories was directly influenced by this five-cent comic my father did. I had previously explained to Kupperman the storyline of Jack’s comic COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

when he was visiting Montreal and he found the premise so funny he had to replicate it. Jack’s story consisted of one incredibly long, drawn out fight between two tough cowboys about a horse. After pummeling the bullies, our hero turns to the reader and asks, “Now does anybody else wanna know where I got that horse?” Kupperman called his version, “Are Comics Serious Literature?” And he reproduced the fight scene, but changed the punchline; “Now who else says comics aren’t serious literature?” He even gave special thanks to my father in the credits page. Jack got a big kick out of this.

This page: Above left is photo of Jack Tremblay and son Rick Trembles from the 2014 documentary, Lost Heroes: The Untold Story of Canadian Superheroes. Above are covers of “Canadian Whites” Tremblay appeared in. Below, Tremblay doctored a Wow cover to feature his cartoonist son.

Comic Book Creator: Where are you from, Eric? Eric Powell: Nashville. I was born and raised in middle Tennessee and never left. I grew up about a halfhour from here, in a town called Lebanon. CBC: What was your childhood like? Eric: Pretty normal for an ’80s kid: playing in the woods, Nintendo, Saturday morning cartoons… back when we still had those. CBC: Were comics important? Eric: Not as much as you would think. I read them, but they were not something that occupied a lot of my time. I was more into movies. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I got really hooked on comics. I can’t remember not drawing. I was also writing stories to go with my illustrations. When I was a teenager, a buddy lent me some comics of his and I suddenly understood, “Oh, this is what I should be doing.” Drawing and telling a story. Which is what I had already been doing in my notebooks. That’s where the love of comics came from. CBC: What comics were you getting? Eric: I grew up reading the typical stuff. There was a lot of Superman and Spiderman, The Hulk, and stuff like that… the comics that drew me into the modern stuff. I remember reading some Wolverine, some , and I really got into Bernie

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke • Transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury 44

#21 • Fall 2019 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

This year has been a pretty big one for artist/ writer/publisher Eric Powell. It’s mostly due to the fact that 2019 marks the 20th anniversary since the first appearance of his signature creation, The Goon. Not only does the cartoonist have an exhausting schedule of 24 stops on the tour celebrating his milestone, but he’s also relaunched The Goon as a continuing series with his Albatross Funny Books. That ambitious imprint also publishes other creator-owned properties, such as Grumble, MegaGhost, Galaktikon, ’Namwolf, and Spook House, as well as another Powell creation, Hillbilly, which he describes as essentially a sword-&-sorcery epic set in Appalachia. Plus there’s progress being made on the long-planned animated movie adapting The Goon, with no less than David (The Social Network) Fincher attached as producer and Tim (Deadpool) Miller as director. So, by any measure,for this country boy made good, 2019 sure is a year to remember. This interviewed occurred in August.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2019 • #21

Comic Book Creator #21