Comic Book Creator #27 by TwoMorrows Publishing

82658 00444

Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

™

$10.95 in the USA

A TwoMorrows Publication No. 27, Winter 2022

W i n t e r 2 0 2 2 • T h e Pa u l G u l a cy I s s u e • N u m b e r 2 7

Ye Ed’s Rant: Your host’s EC Comics affliction reaches epidemic proportions!............... 2 007 WOODY CBC mascot by J.D. KING

COMICS CHATTER

About Our Cover

Belgian Dispatch: A Chat with Herr Seele: Michael Aushenker talks with Peter van Heirseele about his wacky, sublime European strip, Cowboy Henk......... 17

Art by PAUL GULACY Colors by TOM ZIUKO

Ten Questions: Italian comic book artist Roberta Ingranata chills with Darrick Patrick...24

Up Front: The Roots of Bud Plant: Part one of CBC’s interview with legendary comics retailer, publisher, mail-order maven, and Grass Valley super-fan!............... 3

Incoming: Our single letter o’ comment, plus Ye Ed experiences the Kafaybe Effect...... 25 Comics in the Library: Rich Arndt talks with Full Mag publisher/editor August Uhl... 26

Shang-Chi TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Remembering Joe Sinnott: The first installment of CBC ’s star-studded tribute to the late, great, and beloved Marvel Comics inker, compiled by Greg Biga................. 28 The Gift of Blab!: Monte Beauchamp shares about the history of his great mag........ 38 Once Upon a Long Ago: Booksteve on Batman and an alien named… Galexo?........ 42 Hembeck’s Dateline: Metamorpho and pals get the treatment from Our Man Fred... 43 The Mad Peck’s Pix: The famed cartoonist on Mr. Coffee Nerves and Mr. Crime!..... 44 THE MAIN EVENT No doubt due in part to the stellar work of writer Doug Moench and our featured artist, Paul Gulacy, Shang-Chi, better known to comics fans as the “Master of Kung Fu,” is now headliner in his own Marvel Cinematic Universe motion picture! In celebration, we chose to use Paul’s outstanding cover art for Master of Kung Fu #64 [May 1978] recolored by CBC’s Colorist Supreme, Tom Ziuko!

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

Enter the Artist—Paul Gulacy and the Cinema of Comics: CBC talks with a stellar line-up of the friends and peers of the great Ohio-born artist best known for his depiction of Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu! From Paul’s Youngstown roots to walk on the red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Greg Biga compiles a deep dive into the artist’s life and work through the recollections and observations of the man himself and his numerous collaborators, including “Devil-May-Care” Doug Moench!........ 46 BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse proves smaller is better............................... 78 Coming Attractions: Polymath/storyteller Stephen R. Bissette is coming next ish!...... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Butch Guice’s Sorcerer Supreme!............... 80 Right: Paul Gulacy recreated and hand-colored his iconic cover art for Master of Kung Fu #51 [April 1977], clearly showing the artist’s affection for the character and its inspiration, Bruce Lee. EDITOR’S CLARIFICATION: Friend and fellow TwoMorrows editor ROY THOMAS informs CBC that Ken Meyer, Jr.’s fanzine article last ish erroneously described R.T. as joining Alter Ego after the first issue, when, in fact, the current A/E editor was there with Jerry Bails from the get-go! After all— and Ye Ed shoulda known better than to have not corrected that—the Rascally One actually drew that inaugural issue’s cover and is explicitly credited as #1’s co-editor! Sorry about that, buddy!

Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly (more or less) by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 601, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $49 US, $72 International, $19 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2022 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Dedicated to the memories of all the lives lost to the COVID-19 PANDEMIC ™

JON B. COOKE Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER Associate Editor

PAUL GULACY Cover Artist

TOM ZIUKO Cover Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT TOM ZIUKO STEVEN THOMPSON Contributing Editors

STEVE THOMPSON Transcriber

J.D. KING CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON CBC Contributing Photographer

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK DARRICK PATRICK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists To contact CBC, please email jonbcooke@aol.com or snail-mail Comic Book Creator c /o Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892 2

My late-in-coming epiphany regarding the great comics outfit tered prose, I generally stayed away Honestly, I cannot fathom how I from EC’s horror, science fiction, and missed ’em. Except for a spell in the crime titles. Don’t get me wrong: I late ’00s, I’ve been a regular patron recognized the historical importance of comic book shops and, if not of Bill Gaines’ company if just for the necessarily a consumer of certain singular output of one H. Kurtzman. items, I’m generally aware of what’s Anyway, just as I did when I happening in the field. pestered Jerry Bails or Roy Thomas, Unlike too many of my fellow attempting to comprehend just what oldster whiners, I try not to bitch and was it about All Star Comics that moan that the comic shop’s new ofmotivated them so from the start, ferings ain’t like the days of old—say, you’ll see in this issue’s Bud Plant in the mid-’80s—when a solid amount interview that I root around and try of fresh alternative and neo-underto understand the phenomenon of EC ground stuff shared space with the Fan-Addict-dom. One likes what one mainstream on the “new this week” likes, I reckon, though I still scratch shelf. But those were exciting times, my ultra-thick noggin at times… I confess, and you’ll forgive me for But often it just takes time for me feeling a tad nostalgic for the glorious to get it. So, 50 years after my brain sense of discovery evoked. first exploded leafing through The Maybe that’s what so many of Brothers MAD paperback on College us do: like a drug addict seeking to Hill, in Providence, my synapses recapture his glorious first high, we snapped a few weeks ago when, in a fans try to relive the experience when blinding flash, I fully recognized that certain comics or artists or writers the entire EC line truly was revofirst captivated us. Certainly, I’m a lutionary and its five or so years of seeker in that way and I go to the existence as comics publisher shop every week to hopefully find —1950–55—was a seismic event. something new to fry my brain, but Had I known that good ol’ Russ that’s a rare occurrence, to be frank. Cochran, the late, great publisher But something recently happened who kept EC alive, actually, in the to me that I have to rave on about, Paul Gulacy by Ronn Sutton ’90s, reprinted issue by issue, every as I remain in the ecstatic throes of single New Trend and New Direction comic book, in afan amazing new revelation. The actual place and date fordable editions with crisp reproduction and blessedly I bought Shock SuspenStories Annual #4 is a hazy printed on common, glorious comic-book paper, I would memory, though it had to have been at my buddy Rob Yeremian’s Time Capsule store, where I must of bought have become nutty for the entire line way earlier. And, it cheap (bless you, Rob), and it sat ignored in my stack even better, Cochran collected chunks of each run and published annuals, a brilliant notion on his part! for a while. A week or two later, I was hanging with So, yeah, I’m now an unabashed, unapologetic superb cartoonist Rick Altergott at Rob’s shop and I noted he purchased an EC Comics reprint. And that got EC junkie, currently, after raiding Cochran’s webstore me interested to go home and dig out all my East Coast (which still has a solid number available) and an eBay buying frenzy (and help from Peck!), in possession of Comix/EC Classics/Gladstone/Gemstone reprints. most of the 63 annuals compiling the approximate 320 I’ve always been a rabid lunatic for Harvey Kurtzman’s work. My bookshelf has two different hardbound issues, and I’ve begun a chronological reading of the collections of his MAD comics, and I even own some of groundbreaking comic books. What heavenly bliss! On the homefront, we’ve been catching up on the the originals. I had less of his war comics stuff and, I’ll deliciously wicked Tales from the Crypt HBO series on be honest, those Cochran slipcase reprint collections YouTube, and previously discussed health concerns of Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales were always have thus far abated. Yours truly has been chugging way too expensive for me (though, c’mon, get real: the along planning CBCs devoted to Richard Corben, Steve MAD edition had to be had at any price!). Bissette, Don McGregor, Denys Cowan, and Michael And, truth be told, while I’ve read a smattering of Cho. The respective Charlton Comics and Heavy Metal/ the Feldstein-edited ECs, I think my attention deficit Metal Hurlant/adult illustrated mags of the ’70s/’80s condition (which slowed my reading considerably) caused me to be put off by the caption-dense Leroy-let- histories are progressing nicely. Keep ye eyes peeled!

cbc contributors Monte Beauchamp Greg Biga Jim Buser John Carbonaro

Michael Eury Steven Fears Clay Geerdes Paul Gulacy

D. & S. Kitchen Dave Lemieux David Miller Joe Orsak

James Payette The Mad Peck Bud Plant Greg Preston

— Ye Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com Patrick Rosenkranz Ray Sablack Cory Sedlmeier Mark Sinnott

Dick Swan August Uhl Charles Yoakum Olivia Zhao

#27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC Convention Photographer

My Deep EC Affliction

up front

The Roots of Bud Plant In the first of his two-part interview, the retail and mail-order pioneer on his start Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE [Francis Benjamin Plant might as well be considered a true artist by those of us appreciative of his achievements. Yes, through the ups and downs of this volatile business, Bud has survived—and sometimes thrived—and, over numerous decades, he can boast of running a legendary mail order business, one that offers the latest and finest items in the fields of comics, illustration, and, well, cool stuff. He’s also one of the nicest guys in all of comicdom and, when I fly into San Diego and he trucks down from Grass Valley, I’ve made sure to spend time for a chat. I miss his giant booth at Comic-Con International, but yakking with the guy poolside at the Marriott is still a highlight. What I think gives him an artistic flair is Bud’s outstanding taste, exemplified by his not-easily-earned recommendations, which are invariably spot-on and reliable. I’ve heard that to be given the appellation, “Our Highest Recommendation,” is akin to winning an Eisner Award… it is an absolute honor. Anyway, Bud’s history in the biz is fascinating, so let’s start digging to learn about the sprouting of Bud Plant! —Ye Ed.] Comic Book Creator: Where are you from originally, Bud? Bud Plant: San Jose, California. CBC: And your birthday? When were you born? Bud: May 4, 1952. CBC: Did you have siblings? Bud: Yeah, and I still have ’em. I have two older sisters. One is four years older than me and the other is six years older. So, we’re all baby boomers. CBC: Where is San Jose in relation to Grass Valley? Bud: It’s about three hours out west, at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay area whereas Grass Valley is on the way over the Sierras if you were driving from, say, middle California, Sacramento, and driving over to Lake Tahoe or Reno. We’re on the western slope of the Sierras. CBC: As an aside, how did you end up in Grass Valley? Bud: Well, actually that’s kind of an interesting aside: I stayed in San Jose to finish out college at San Jose State and, the minute I graduated, I got out, but I was running my mail order business at the time, which had to be moved with me, but I was also a partner in Comics & Comix, and I was supplying them with underground comix, fanzines, books, and stuff—all the secondary, non-traditional comic book stuff. So I needed to be within striking distance of them to, at least, drive a van down there once a week to make a delivery to ’em. I was looking around for places within shouting distance of where we had our stores, which were in Palo Alto, San Jose, and San Francisco, respectively. We also had a couple stores up in Sacramento. Around that same time, somebody—one of my old partners in the stores, actually, Jon Campbell—said, “Hey, Dan O’Neill lives up in Grass Valley. You should go check that out. It’s a pretty nice area.” And I’d been up there once and visited. So, my thenwife and my best friend and assistant in the business—in fact, my only employee at the time—we all trundled up to Grass Valley, Nevada City, and checked out the area. We said, “Wow, this is pretty cool,” and we ended up renting a house nearby and I started moving in. I rented a really COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

small warehouse, which I moved out of really quickly ’cause it had no heat and I quickly discovered living in San Jose was a lot different than living in Grass Valley at 2,500-foot elevation. I moved initially into that warehouse and that’s how we got to Grass Valley. It was all Dan O’Neill’s fault. CBC: [Laughs] Would you characterize it as country or rural? Bud: Well, the city of Grass Valley’s population is 12,000, but it’s in the mountains… or at least the hills. [laughs] It’s the hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We do get snow depending on what elevation you’re exactly at. My house gets a decent amount of snow, whereas where I used to live, down a little lower elevation, we hardly saw any snow at all, so we’re right on that edge. We’ve got big pine and oaks trees here. In fact, our big problem right now, of course, is fire danger, so I’m always working on clearing out space around the property. I’ve got four acres and I’m always having to take down the trees and consider, “Oh, God. I might have to cut another tree down.” I love the trees but they’re all gonna burn me up if I have too many of them, so… CBC: How far from your business do you live? Bud: I’m only about eight or nine minutes from the business. It’s really convenient to just zip over there. CBC: You seem like a very healthy guy. Are you an active guy? Do you bike ride?

Above: A relatively recent photo of Bud Plant, proprietor of Bud Plant Comic Art, the Grass Valley, California-based art book mail-order mogul and early pioneer in the history of direct sales.

Transcribed by

Steven Thompson Below: Bud at the 1982 San Diego Comic Con in a photo taken by Alan Light.

Above: Bud in the early 1970s. Photo by Clay Geerdes.

Coming next ish…

Bud on his mail order biz, foray as fanzine/comics publisher, retail adventures with the Comics & Comix chain, distribution exploits at the dawn of the direct market, and much more! 16

TO BE CONTINUED #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Photo of Bud Plant courtesy of David Miller and © the estate of Clay Geerdes. Batman, Robin TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Cool poster promoting the 2017 Oklahoma Alliance of Fans convention, a beloved old-time comics show Bud misses. Below: Logo for Bud Plant Comic Art, which graced decades worth of his Incredible Catalogs. Download his latest at www.budsartbooks.com.

comics! It’s hard to describe, but I’ll miss that village if it’s gone. Hell, I’ve missed you since your place went away! [laughs] Bud: No, I hear what you’re saying. I agree with you. There’s a comfort level of being down there with all these people who have similar interests and seeing old friends that you’ve known for years and years and years. That’s one of the real joys, honestly, of being into comics, alongside all the art appreciation and everything else and reading the stories but it’s the friendships. I mean, geez. Michelle Nolan! I’ve known her since she was, you know, 20! And she’s 70 now! I’ve known people for 50-55 years, and I still can relate to these guys. Larry Bigman—I’ve known him since 1969. Bart Bush. God. Oh, I was so upset when he passed away, but I’d known Bart since 1969. Anyhow, so the friendships and stuff. In San Diego, you get to rekindle those even if you don’t see those guys the rest of the time. At least you’re seeing them one time a year. And there are other conventions. You’ve gotta give it that. That’s why I bring up Bart because Bart was putting on the OAF show, which got canceled, of course, this year, too. OAF is like an old-time comics show and man, I love that show and so do other people! They just go because it’s such a joyous occasion to get together with these guys you’ve known for 50 years and we all have the same interests and some of us are still collecting comics. I take the new books—the new Crandall book or the Mac Raboy book, and I put it out there and I love having people get turned on to it. “Oh, wow! That’s that new such and such!” It’s a joy! It’s not the money! It’s just the joy of saying, “Yeah, take a look at this. Here’s a Nestor Redondo book. You haven’t seen that because it’s done by some obscure publisher somewhere, you know?” I love sharing that with either the people I know or the people that become friends. CBC: That’s great. You said you had a diary of sorts from the ‘60s. Do you still have that? Bud: Yeah. It’s a journal. What they call daybooks. You know, so you’ve got two dates on every page, and I used to write down what the comics were I bought that day or what the undergrounds I sold that day from the mail order were, or stuff about the shop, or going to movies. I’d cut out little tiny pictures of the latest James Bond movie and paste ’em in there. Just little weird sh*t like that. [Jon laughs] Like when I went back east in ’69-70, to Houston Con and New York Con, I didn’t take it with me, so I don’t have as much as I’d like to have, but I’ve got certain information in there, which is nice, because it’s pure documentation, you know? CBC: Wow, yeah! I hope that goes to a library or something. Bud: Well, it might. Who knows? I’ve made a couple

copies. I wish I had a spare set. I’d send it to you, but I don’t know if I’ve got a spare set. I had my sister run off four or five copies once. I sent one to Dick Swan and one to Michelle Nolan and… Yeah, just in case the house burned down I didn’t wanna lose that, because it is kinda cool. It documents what was happening. We’d go to a show and I’d come home with copies of this and that and the other thing and say, “You know how much I paid? I spend $3.25 for these seven comics!” That sort of thing. It really brings the memory back to have that stuff written down somewhere. Otherwise it would just be… Like, conventions in general were a mush to me. I mean, there’s just too many conventions. What happened in San Diego in 1976? I don’t know! Are you kidding me? I set up at 48 separate San Diego conventions. They’re all just this mush of odd memories, you know? CBC: Did you have that journal when you were doing the Berkeley Con? The first Berkeley Con? Bud: No, I stopped by about late ’71, which would have been my second year in college. I gave it up. So, yeah the Berkeley Con was in ’73 so that’s toast. You have to go back and talk to good ol’ Bob Beerbohm or me or… Mike Manyak’s still around! He was one of the founders of that thing. He’s a good guy. Him and Nick Marcus—one of the guys who started that show and then they realized they were in over their heads and so they came to Comics & Comix—to us—and they said, “Can you guys help us do this?” And we said, “Yeah, man! We’re veterans! We’ve been going to New York for three years, four years! [laughs] We know all about comic books shows!” We helped to put it on and then that was the show that helped me decide I don’t wanna put on any more comic shows. It’s much more fun to be a dealer and be a fanboy than it is working behind the scenes, trying to administrate that damn show. We had to build the art show. We didn’t have a room where we could hang any paintings and we wanted to put up all this art so what do we do? We had to go out and buy four big sheets of plywood and two by fours, and we had to literally build a room within the ballroom of UC Berkeley and just put it together and hang all the artwork there… overnight! It was, like… Yeah. Ridiculous. [Jon chuckles] I remember nothing of the art show itself but I remember building it. CBC: What’s your birth name? What’s your full name? Bud: Francis Benjamin Plant. CBC: Were you named for anybody? Bud: Yeah, the name Francis Benjamin runs down through my family. My father was Henry Benjamin. My grandfather was Francis Benjamin. My great-grandfather was Henry Benjamin again. I think he was in the Civil War. It ran down through the family. I hated the name Francis. CBC: When did you get the nickname? Bud: My mother had a brother named Buddy, who actually died when he was, I think, eight, nine, or ten, so she nicknamed me Buddy after her lost brother. And the name stuck, because I’ve never been known as Francis. And then when I thought I was getting mature and older, around seventh grade, I shortened it to Bud because I thought Bud sounded a bit more mature than Buddy. But Buddy Saunders doesn’t think so. [Jon laughs] He’s still Buddy. But yeah, I turned into Bud. Honest to God, I didn’t realize the botanical connotation between bud and plant until a teacher actually pointed it out to me. CBC: Oh, dude! I thought you made the name up, man! Bud: I know! I get that so much. Everybody thinks my name is a fake name and I go, “Not really.” [laughter] You know, Bud Plant, in Grass Valley, selling underground comix about dope and stuff! You know? Yeah… right. CBC: [Chuckles] “Got weed? I’m knockin’ on yer front door right now, dude!” Thank you. Bud. Bud: All right. Thanks.

belgian dispatch

Weirdest Hand in the West Forty years of Peter van Heirseele’s indefatigable gag comic strip Cowboy Henk dents, the comedy team of Kamagurka and Seele have become partners in crime Really quickly—and very subjectively—when one thinks on many fronts and in many of Belgian comics, a few major characters come to mind: media: as stars of television Herge’s Tintin, of course… Peyo’s Smurfs, no doubt… specials, radio programs, Lucky Luke, Spirou… and then there is the wildest, most and theatrical tours around irreverent one of all—Cowboy Henk. Since Cowboy Henk’s first appearance on Sept. 24, 1981, Belgium, but most famously and consistently, on their his hilarious escapades and non-sequitur episodes have been written by Kamagurka (born Luc Zeebroek) and drawn magnum opus, the Cowboy Henk strip. Yes, as anyone by Herr Seele, ne’ Peter van Heirseele. connected to van Heirseele The Flemish Cowboy Henk series is absurdist to the on Facebook knows, the nth degree; a surreal comic strip—usually black-&-white man is primarily a fast and strips, but also full-color full pages—centered around the furious fine artist whose oil titular free-wheeling, tall, buffed blond man with that big, paintings are essentially banana pompadour. The strip is offbeat and off-kilter: the mammoth political cartoons jokes abide less by set-up and punchline, but more often on canvas, often couched following a dream logic. The art is deceptively simple, with within parodies of famous some of the cleanest character designs this side of Basil Dutch paintings. Van HeirWolverton. And since this is a European comic strip, the seele is constantly drawing jokes can be scatological one day, include grisly violence and painting portraits of the next, or sex and full-frontal nudity—often featuring friends and family members, Henk himself. However, such strips are never truly sexual often with Henk included. and Henk remains asexual—the aim is not to titillate the reader or create shock value for a cheap thrill, but rather go He spent one year painting daily self-portraits, and to extreme places just for the sake of a gag. likes to adorn his anarchic According to van Heirseele, Kama—a cartoonist in his own right who posts his own weirdo gag cartoons regularly cartoon alter ego on everything from the sides of his beloved restored old pianos to public murals on the sides of on Instagram—and Seele consider Cowboy Henk just a schools. There are also giant Cowboy Henk statues looming piece (albeit a significant piece) of a greater oeuvre of large in Belgium. creative work. Since the start of their friendship as art stuConducted June 3, 2021, via video call (van Heirseele speaks fluent English), this interview with the cartoonist is the culmination of my own personal journey with Kamagurka and Seele’s highly entertaining, timeless and subversive Cowboy Henk strip—on a par, in my opinion, with classic American strips such as Nancy, Henry, and The Little King. As a practitioner of humor cartoons myself, I’ve long admired and read Cowboy Henk (in its various incarnations), first in English in the pages of RAW anthologies back in the 1980s and later in France’s Psikopat comics anthology magazine in the early 1990s while briefly living in Paris; and in various book collections (in French, Spanish and the native Dutch-language editions). The RAW inclusions aside, there is not a whole lot of Cowboy Henk translated into English, other than a 1994 full-color book called Cowboy Henk: King of Dental Floss, published by Scissors Books (which I felt didn’t capture the flat-out hilarity of the strips which ran in Psikopat). But here’s the rub: As it turns out, van Heirseele says that Cowboy Henk is way more influenced by Flemish art, the Dutch masters, and a gaggle of surrealists— from author Franz Kafka to Giorgio De Chirico and Belgian artist Magritte—than (one would think…) Bushmiller and Soglow.

Cowboy Henk TM & © Kama & Seele. Painting © Peter van Heirseele.

by MICHAEL AUSHENKER CBC Associate Editor

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2022 • #27

Above: Creation and creator in Peter van Heirseele’s painting. Inset left: Quintessential Cowboy Henk strip. Below: The singular English language collection, Scissor Books [1994].

sinnott memorial

Remembering Joe Part one of our celebration of the life of the late, great Joseph Leonard Sinnott by GREG BIGA

Above: In 2007, your humble editor was given the opportunity to design the TwoMorrows biography of Joe Sinnott by Tim Lasiuta—Brush Strokes with Greatness—and, in return for his effort, the great inker thereafter expressed his deep appreciation for Ye Ed’s work, which will always be comforting.

[Joe Sinnott has always been a gracious and appreciative friend to Yours Truly and, if you grant me the indulgence, please allow me to share about my experience with one of the warmest and kindest creators ever to grace the comic book industry. I first met the legendary artist at the Ramapo comic con, when the Jack Kirby Collector booth I was manning was fortuitously situated next to the man. This was in 1996 or so, when I was a total nobody who hadn’t yet encountered very many pros in person, but good ol’ Joe treated me like a prince, generously giving me three Silver Surfer prints, inscribing each to my three sons. A few years later, he readily contributed to the comics anthology I edited with John Morrow, Streetwise, and a few years after that, I leapt that the opportunity to design his TwoMorrows biography, Brush Strokes with Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott [2007], written by Tim Lasiuta. Joe always expressed a sincere appreciation for my effort, bringing it up every time we met. It was touching and I was deeply flattered. Thereafter we long planned for me to visit his beloved Saugerties, New York, and my promise stretched on for years. But I finally did find the time and, mere months before the pandemic hit, I spent a glorious Sunday afternoon with my friend. I will miss him but my love for the gent will live on. Godspeed, Joe! What follows is my Colorado-based good pal (and writing partner in the just released John Severin biography!) Greg Biga’s marvelous compilation of heartfelt tributes to a terrific artist and lovely human being.—Ye Ed.]

On June 25th, 2020, I received a text from my pal Jon Bogdanove sharing that Hall of Fame comic book artist Joe Sinnott had passed away. I was immediately and profoundly Below: Joltin’ Joe Sinnott in his devastated by that news. Now, what is to follow is not a Saugerties home studio, 1970. traditional recap of a remarkable career. There will be nu-

A REGULAR JOE Joe Sinnott spent his formative years living through the Great Depression. Like the rest of America, he found his way out of those hard times by going to war. Joe signed up for duty and saw plenty of it as a sailor. The young man saw action at the battle of Okinawa, part of the great push to overtake the Japanese islands on the way to an expected mainland invasion. This was one of the most brutal and soul crushing times of the U.S. war in the Pacific. Like many veterans from the time, Joe was a committed member of his local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Like many who had gone through the hell of war, he didn’t boast of his service. (Personally, I knew nothing about my dad’s time in the service until it was shared that he was on the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ve never heard my uncle talk about his time in Vietnam nor dared to ask why, for 30 years following his service, he never took off his sunglasses, and my grandfather, who likely shared time on the same Pacific convoy as Joe, never talked about his time as one of Merrill’s Marauders.) These were all men who would spend time at the VFW, among brothers who had seen and done similar things, and share a relationship of service. Coming through the Depression and putting his life on the line for his country made Joe, like so many of his generation, place a premium value on working, supporting his family, and defining his daily life through the quality of hard work. #27 • Winter 2022 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

merous colleagues elsewhere who will recollect the career timeline of “Joltin’ Joe” and do so in outstanding fashion. Joe’s impact on me was altogether different. I had the great fortune of getting to spend quality time over the phone with Joe’s colleague Jack Davis during the last two years of that artist’s life. Upon Jack’s death, I became highly motivated to honor him. I picked up my cartooning tools—which I set down when I became a high school teacher—and commenced drawing again. Specifically, as Jack had done for the University of Georgia, I became the caricaturist for my college alma mater’s football program. Jack motivated me to become an artist again. Joe, on the other hand, inspired me to endeavor to be a better man. In our brief phone conversations, Joe shared insights with me about decency, fellowship, and work ethics which rocked me to my foundation. All that I believed I could be—as a father, friend, and employee—changed, and very much for the better, all because of my talks with Joe. The magical thing about this is that Joe never specifically chatted about those things. He simply exemplified them. And he did so at all times. Joe stood up to be counted during World War II; he was a devoted husband and father; he loved sports and Bing Crosby; he committed his personal excellence to his craft; and he lived a life of quality into his 90s. I’d dare to say that Joe’s life is one sure-fire template for how to be a good man. Joe filled his work, every beautifully drawn and inked page, with those qualities. It was a unique proposition to look back over his work after he entered my life. The work, some of which being many decades old, resonated with new life and purpose for me. Knowing the personal place that his brush came from opened up a new world of appreciation (which was already running at a high pitch) for me.

For Joe, that work was cartooning. He brought his portfolio to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) and, like Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Wally Wood, Joe began training for a lifelong career under the great Burne Hogarth. The skill and excellence of work that came from the guidance of Hogarth is astounding. What is just as amazing is that Joe and this gang of artists chose a life where their work time was basically spent in quarantine. Up to 16 hours a day was devoted by Joe to toil at his drawing table. The need to give nothing less than a best effort and a devotion to financially support the household—burdens of many WWII vets—often limited the amount of time Joe spent being present with his family. The great treasures given by Joe’s beautiful wife, Betty, was her own devotion to being a mother, tutor, and shaper of hearts in the Sinnott homestead. She made it possible for her husband to pursue his days at the drawing table and for the father of her kids not to lose sight of his kids while he established his legend. For their 56 years of marriage, until her passing in 2006, Betty was Joe’s partner, rock, and inspiration. While being married to Betty was the greatest partnership of Joe’s lifetime, there were other significant collaborators over the course of his career.

JACK AND JOE Joe was, above all, a team player, and he was able to contribute not only his technical skill as inker, but an ability to support others to achieve their great successes. The most renowned example is his work with Jack Kirby. “Obviously, Joe’s work on the Fantastic Four with Kirby was masterful and stood out from the crowd,” recalls SCOTT HANNA, himself an accomplished inker. “Reading comics as a kid, I wondered why Kirby could look so very different from book to book, and it made me realize that the inker had a lot to do with the look of the finished product. The Sinnott/ Kirby FF was the best. Everything looked more powerful, shinier, more solid, and never lost any of the famous Kirby energy.” GEORGE PÉREZ, who himself would partner with Joe, distinctly remembers those Kirby/Sinnott collaborations. “Well, I don’t know if I was really aware of the Marvel style back when I first read the Marvel books, in the early 60s,” he shared, “but I knew there was something different about the darker, grittier Marvel titles compared to DC’s books,” he said. “Even as a young boy, I could feel there was a roughness and a sense of raw power in the art. None more so, in my opinion, than the early Kirby Fantastic Fours. However, even at that tender young age, I did notice a dramatic leap in the finished art in the issue [Fantastic Four #5, July 1962] that introduced Doctor Doom. There was a slightly

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cleaner, more polished, even a bit more elegant look to that issue. I would later find out why: a new inker who just came in for that one issue and then was gone. Of course, that inker was Joe Sinnott, who, a few years later, would come back to the title as the regular inker to Jack Kirby’s ever improving, explosive pencils, and a legendary team was born—as was the defining Marvel style for much of the company’s output.” It is within those collaborations with Kirby where the visual aspect to the Marvel house style was created. As Hanna recalls, “Joe definitely helped to create the ‘house style’ for Marvel when I was growing up, so there is no doubt that he influenced generations of new artists with his style and quality. His work was so elegant and precise while also being strong and powerful. The fact that he could not only make sense of the rather abstract Kirby style, but bring it to new heights, showed what an inker could bring to the process. He was also a great role model in being both thoroughly professional, and also a really nice guy. Both of which I have tried to live up to in my own career. (He made it look easy, but it is not.)” Kirby power and bombast siphoned through the technical skill and mastery of Sinnott created legendary pages. As Kirby protégé Mark Evanier put it in his excellent Kirby: King of Comics, “There is no one ‘best inker’ for Kirby and certainly others—including Joe Simon, Wally Wood, Mike

Above: This lovely portrait of the late artist was rendered by Joe’s friend and fellow New Yorker, Joe Orsak, as the cover art for the Inkwell Awards’ fourth annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge book. Below is the man proudly exhibiting the piece. Inset left: Jack Kirby and Joe in the mid-’70s.

blabbing ’bout blab!

The Gift of BLAB!

Monte Beauchamp talks about the background of his great, ever-evolving anthology by MONTE BEAUCHAMP

Above: Back cover detail from BLAB! #1, featuring CBC’s own cartoonist in residence, J.D. King’s artwork, and quote from the great “punk poet laureate.” Inset right: Monte Beauchamp. Below: J.D. King’s exuberant cover art for BLAB! #1.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been friendly with Chicago’s great editor and anthologist Monte Beauchamp for decades now, and I’ve long wanted to feature his amiable and massively creative self in my magazines. Very recently Monte reached out to suggest that time might be right now as he was planning a Spring 2022 revival of his great BLAB! That superb publication started out in 1986 as a self-published, professionally produced fanzine on EC Comics and then underground comix, quickly morphed into a truly great and increasingly eclectic digest-sized comics anthology (published by Kitchen Sink), and next reborn as an avant garde and even more eclectic illustration/comics showcase measuring a generous 10" x 10" (all but one issue published by Fantagraphics). Along the way there were BLAB! gallery exhibitions, yet another transformation—this time as a hardbound annual called Blab World (pub’ed by Last Gasp)—and various ancillary projects, including what I believe is his finest achievement, Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World [2014]. When I was putting together The Book of Weirdo, I wanted to include Monte’s take and he responded with a 7,000-word essay I had to severely edit for space constraints. But it included his BLAB! history, so I include it below, in lieu of discussing the mag’s revival, as that has been briefly postponed (but we’ll discuss it next ish). Monte was born in 1953 and grew up in Moline, Illinois, spending much of his teen years as an avid EC Comics collector and, soon enough, a fan of underground comix. Through luck and talent, Monte found a career in the Chicago advertising world. By the mid-’80s, the award-winning art director was growing frustrated… —JBC.]

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The only reason BLAB! exists is because my wife at the time suggested I draw a comic book to get my mind off the inner-office politics taking place where I worked. The idea of creating a comic book, on top of a 40-50 hour work week as an advertising art director, I didn’t find too appealing. But then the idea of producing a fanzine about comics flashed in my head. As an aficionado of comic art, I was aware that the underground cartoonists had flipped their lids over MAD and the rest of the banned EC comics line of

their youth, but there was never a publication that connected the threads. I thought a collection of memoirs about their EC experience would make for an interesting subject, so I reached out to the genre’s core artists to see if they’d “blab” about it. And nearly all of them responded—with a resounding yes. Since underground comics were referred to as “comix,” I dubbed my publishing house Monte Comix Productions, and set out to produce the first issue. In the summer of 1986, fifteen hundred copies of the first BLAB! rolled off a Chicago press. The 80-page, digest-sized endeavor sported a four-color cover with a black-&-white interior. The front cover featured an illustration by J.D. King based on a sketch I scrawled out of a one-eyed blob child picnicking under an apple tree enjoying an issue of MAD. The back cover drawing of a wild-eyed, MAD-reading youth whose brain is shooting out the top of his head was also by J.D., beneath which I ran a typeset quote by poet-songwriter Patti Smith: “After MAD, drugs were nothing.” Consignment copies were placed about town: at record stores, boutiques, and comic shops. I also ran a few ads and mailed out review copies. Orders began to trickle in, a couple here, a couple there, and then one Saturday the BLAB! p.o. box was jam-packed with mail. For the next eight to ten Saturdays, this same phenomenon occurred again and again. Though BLAB! was intended as a one-shot, the positive fan reaction spurred me on to attempt an encore. For #2, I decided to keep the EC-vibe alive and sought out talent who could deliver on that. I had been following Drew Friedman’s work in both Weirdo and RAW, and XNO I discovered in [independent music magazine] Forced Exposure. During a newsstand perusal of Cracked (a low-rung version of MAD), I came across a cartoonist who I just had to get in touch

hard time about it—I accepted Denis’ offer right there on the spot. A month later, more good fortune struck. Ian Ballantine of Ballantine Books fame tracked me down. A San Francisco associate of his had sent him a copy of BLAB! #2 and Ian phoned to say he hadn’t seen this kind of energy in a comics publication since Kurtzman’s MAD. Back in the ’50s, Ian came up with the idea of reformatting the content of Kurtzman’s MAD comics into paperback books, which turned into a publishing phenomenon. And Ian stayed in touch; he’d call from time to time. He proposed that we actually work on a book about MAD together, but it never got off the ground. That initial call from Ian, however, sure put the wind in my sails. When an advanced copy of the first Kitchen Sink edition of BLAB! arrived, I couldn’t have been happier. The printing was top-notch and the contents jelled incredibly well together. It was incredibly im-

Above: BLAB! #2–4 cover art by (from left) Kim Deitch, Charles Burns, and Drew Friedman. Below: From left is BLAB! #3–7 (with cover art by Joe Coleman, Richard Sala, and Dan Clowes, respectively), and promotional poster for “Chicago’s Very Own BLAB! Magazine” [1995], art by Archer Prewitt.

with—Daniel Clowes. At the time, he was working under a pseudonym. And who could blame him? Dan dug the idea of illustrating an overview of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1949 classic—The Show of Violence, which detailed famous murder cases the good doctor had been involved with. Drew illustrated the inside front cover house ad: “Nuclear Reading for the Nuclear Family,” and XNO contributed largely to “The BLAB! Dating Depot.” Kim Deitch, who had created several key drawings for BLAB! #1, drew the wraparound cover, which was a tip of the hat to the comic book burnings of the mid-’50s. Kim also delivered a stellar five-page story starring his underground character Waldo the Cat and EC comic book maven, Gary Arlington. J.D. King turned in a splendid in-depth interview with legendary Mars Attacks! bubble gum cards creator Len Brown that also featured unpublished preliminary drawings by Wally Wood. I managed to pull together another compendium on comic books: “Notes from the Underground,” featuring reminiscences by the likes of Gary Panter, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Charles Burns, Lynda Barry, and others. Twenty-two hundred copies of BLAB! #2 rolled off the same Chicago press a year later. At that summer’s comic con, I gave a copy to Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press, who paged through it, and then proposed a publishing deal. Though I had no intention of seeing BLAB! through to a third number—my wife at the time began giving me a real

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Enter Th aul Gulacy is among the great talents who ever put pen and marker onto a comic book page. His Jim Steranko-influenced work made him a superstar artist in the 1970s, but it is his continued excellence as a striving and original—and almost impossible to copy— craftsman over the next four decades which sets him apart from so many of his peers. Paul has grown into a storyteller whose eye befits a great film director rather than a typical comic artist. His use of panels, pacing, camera angles, chiaroscuro, drama, sexuality, a unique combination of cartoonish and realistic sensibilities, and the use of all-out talent brings to the page a wholly unique experience. If comics have a John Woo, it is Paul Gulacy. A career that has actively prospered from the 1970s through the 2010s has too many high spots to comment entirely in this magazine. Still, this walk-through Paul’s career, with interviews with the artist and numerous colleagues and contemporaries, will give a solid history lesson on his achievements and insight as to what made the man as unique as his groundbreaking pages.—G.B.

by Greg Biga • Portrait by Greg Preston 46

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e Artist

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